Obama says he’s ‘troubled’ GOP backs Trump refusal to concede
Donald Trump says Joe Biden ‘won’ election, then backtracks and says he won’t concede
DAVID JACKSON | USA TODAY | 34 minutes ago
The admission on Twitter was quickly followed up with a tweet doubling down that he was not actually conceding.
USA TODAY, WOCHIT
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time Sunday that Joe Biden won the presidential election, even as he repeated false claims that Democrats “rigged” the balloting and again refused to concede the race.
“He won because the Election was Rigged,” Trump tweeted early Sunday, referring to Biden. His assertion about election malfeasance was at odds with a finding from a national coalition of election security officials, which concluded that the Nov. 3 general election was “the most secure in American history.”
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” said a statement from the security group, which included the cybersecurity agency within Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, along with the National Association of State Election Directors.
Trump later tweeted of President-elect Biden: “he only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go.”
Biden defeated Trump in a series of crucial battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, achieving the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidential race with room to spare.
He leads Trump in the popular vote by more than 5 million votes, or 3.6 percentage points.
Will Trump remain the GOP kingmaker? Trump wants to run the Republican party even if he leaves office. Can he?
President Donald Trump waves to supporters from his motorcade as people gather for a march Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020, in Washington.
JULIO CORTEZ, AP
Trump’s campaign and its allies have filed lawsuits that aim to delay the certification of the results in some of the states that Biden won. But his team has offered no evidence of widespread fraud, and many of the lawsuits have been rejected by the courts.
Legal experts have said Trump’s challenges are almost certain to fail.
Meanwhile, Trump has blocked federal resources for Biden’s transition team and has refused to allow the president-elect access to high-level classified briefings. Incoming presidents typically have access to those assessments, so they can be prepared to deal with any national security threats on Day One.
Several GOP senators have urged Trump to allow the briefings.
Re-tweeting commentary from Fox News host Jesse Waters, Trump repeated false claims that Republican election observers not allowed to watch the vote count (they were). He again decried alleged media bias, and he revived a discredited claim that a company behind the vote tabulation in some states contributed to his loss to Biden.
More: Trump campaign’s challenge of election results in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona push US toward ‘loss of democracy’
MAGA supporters gather in DC: Tens of thousands rally in DC to support outgoing President Trump
Thousands of President Trump supporters joined together for the ‘Million MAGA March’
USA TODAY
Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, said Sunday that Trump’s refusal to concede was harmful to the country.
“Every day that he delays … ultimately is to the country’s disadvantage,” Bolton said on ABC’s “This Week.”
As recently as last week, some of Trump’s top aides were continuing to insist that the president won a second term, despite the results.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany answered a question about whether Trump would attend Biden’s inauguration by saying that Trump will attend “his own inauguration.”
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo falsely claimed Trump won a second term, saying there would be a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
Biden’s aides welcomed Trump’s seeming acknowledgement Sunday of the president-elect’s win, but added that they want him to authorize the transition.
“I accept it as a further confirmation of the reality that Joe Biden won the election," said incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
Trump aides said that he was mocking the idea of a Biden victory, and that he still expects to prevail after a series of lawsuits, recounts and election challenges.
“The president was referring to the mindset of the media,” said Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman. "His goal remains to un-rig the election and continue exposing voting irregularities and unconstitutional election management by Democratic officials.”
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The New York Times
The Presidential Transition
Trump, Trying to Cling to Power, Fans Unrest and Conspiracy Theories
The president’s refusal to concede has entered a more dangerous phase as he blocks his successor’s transition, withholding intelligence briefings, pandemic information and access to the government.
Image
President Trump waved to his supporters at a demonstration near the White House on Saturday. Pockets of violence broke out that night as they clashed with anti-Trump protesters.
President Trump waved to his supporters at a demonstration near the White House on Saturday. Pockets of violence broke out that night as they clashed with anti-Trump protesters.Credit…Kenny
Updated Nov. 16, 2020, 11:34 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s refusal to concede the election has entered a more dangerous phase as he stokes resistance and unrest among his supporters and spreads falsehoods aimed at undermining the integrity of the American voting system.
More than a week after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner, Mr. Trump continues to block his successor’s transition, withholding intelligence briefings, critical information about the coronavirus pandemic and access to the vast machinery of government that Mr. Biden will soon oversee.
Some former top advisers to Mr. Trump have said that his refusal to cooperate is reckless and unwise. John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, called it “crazy” on Friday. John R. Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser who wrote a scathing memoir about his time in the administration, said the refusal “harms the country.”
“Every day that he delays under the pretense that he’s simply asking for his legal remedies ultimately is to the country’s disadvantage,” Mr. Bolton said on ABC’s “This Week” program on Sunday morning.
The president’s attempt to cling to power played out against a backdrop of protests by Trump supporters and opponents late Saturday, with sporadic clashes near the White House. The police arrested 21 people as one protester was stabbed and four officers were injured. Rather than seek to calm tensions, Mr. Trump lashed out.
“ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills,” he posted on Twitter on Saturday as he urged the police to move in aggressively. “DC Police, get going — do your job and don’t hold back!!!”
By Sunday morning, the president seemed to briefly acknowledge defeat, but he quickly reversed himself, declaring “I concede NOTHING!” He repeated lies about the vote-counting process, falsely insisting that Mr. Biden’s victory was the result of a “RIGGED ELECTION” orchestrated by the “Fake & Silent” news media.
Facing his final 66 days in office, Mr. Trump appears unwilling to break from the gut instincts that have guided his pursuit of the presidency and his exercise of authority in the past five-and-a-half years: a fierce determination to act only in his self-interest and a near-total refusal to accept blame or responsibility for his failures.
As the total number of coronavirus cases in the United States soared past 11 million and deaths neared 250,000, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, warned that 200,000 more people could die by spring if Americans did not more fully embrace public health measures, even with an effective vaccine.
“We are not going to turn it on and off, going from where we are to completely normal,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, challenging Mr. Trump’s claims that the virus would go away quickly once a vaccine was ready. “It’s going to be a gradual accrual of more normality as the weeks and the months go by, as we get well into 2021.”
Dr. Fauci said health officials had not begun working with Mr. Biden’s transition team. He also said the president had not attended a meeting of his coronavirus task force in “several months,” vanishing from participation in the panel.
But anyone hoping for a similarly quiet withdrawal from Mr. Trump as he leaves the presidency appears destined not to get it. He continues to deny facts and science in favor of baseless conspiracy theories and has moved aggressively to remove anyone he views as disloyal: a fact underscored by a purge of top officials at the Pentagon last week that was followed by an implicit rebuke by the military’s top general.
“We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech on Wednesday. “We take an oath to the Constitution.”
The president’s desperate language as he tries without success to preserve his position stood in stark contrast with the disciplined silence from Mr. Biden, who spent Sunday morning at church services and later met behind closed doors with his transition advisers. Ron Klain, who will be Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a concession tweet from the president was not necessary.
“Donald Trump’s Twitter feed doesn’t make Joe Biden president or not president,” Mr. Klain said. “The American people did that.”
Before going to play golf at his club in Virginia for the second day in a row on Sunday, the president once again lashed out at the news media and Mr. Biden’s supporters, retweeting reports of a university professor who said that anyone who voted for the Democrat was “ignorant, anti-American and anti-Christian.” In his tweet, Mr. Trump called that “Progress!”
He also continued to attack the election results, calling a hand recount underway in Georgia, a state he narrowly lost, “a scam.” Despite the president’s assertions, the recount, which is being conducted at the direction of a Republican secretary of state, appeared to be going smoothly, as about 50 of Georgia’s 159 counties had completed their new counts.
As Mr. Trump arrived at the golf course, dueling signs showed the deep rift in the country that he has sought to exploit with false allegations of vote-counting fraud since Nov. 7, when Mr. Biden was declared the winner. The president’s supporters at the entrance waved “TRUMP 2020” and “KEEP AMERICA GREAT” messages while protesters held signs saying, “SURRENDER DONNIE.”
The nation’s divisions were on grim display in the capital on Saturday night, when pockets of violence broke out between people rallying on behalf of Mr. Trump’s desire to stay in office and anti-Trump demonstrators. After a day in which thousands of the president’s supporters gathered mostly peacefully in support of his false election assertions, the scene turned darker as night fell.
Counterprotesters, including some from a group calling themselves Refuse Fascism, confronted Trump supporters. One threw bottles and fireworks, a USA Today reporter said. People backing the president at one point ripped “Black Lives Matter” signs off a building before trampling them on the ground.
“You could feel the intensity,” said Damien Courtney, 24, a Trump supporter from Tennessee. “It was nerve-racking.”
The rally on Saturday also prompted Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, to wildly exaggerate the size of the pro-Trump crowd. In a tweet from her personal account, she claimed that “more than one MILLION marchers for President @realDonaldTrump descend on the swamp in support.” In fact, the authorities estimated it was far short of her claims, which echoed the falsehoods that Sean Spicer, the president’s first press secretary, told about the inaugural crowd four years ago.
Former President Barack Obama warned in an interview that aired Sunday night that Mr. Trump’s willingness to spread misinformation about the election was hurting the country’s ability to conduct the basic functions of democracy.
“It’s very hard for our democracy to function if we are operating on just completely different sets of facts,” Mr. Obama said on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “Any of us who attain an elected office — whether it’s dogcatcher or president — are servants of the people. It’s a temporary job. We’re not above the rules. We’re not above the law. That’s the essence of our democracy.”
Mr. Obama said he worried that many parts of what he called a “deeply divided” nation believed Mr. Trump’s falsehoods.
“The power of that alternative worldview that’s presented in the media that those voters consume, it carries a lot of weight,” Mr. Obama said.
Inside the West Wing, most of Mr. Trump’s top advisers have privately told him what is clear to everyone except his most loyal supporters and the Republican politicians who fear his wrath: His re-election bid has failed, and Mr. Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
A few Republicans have acknowledged that publicly. On Sunday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas joined their ranks, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he expected that Mr. Biden would be the next president and should have access to intelligence briefings.
But publicly, Mr. Trump’s aides and virtually all Republican lawmakers continued to stand by — or at least not challenge — his false assertions about the election.
The president’s supporters argued with counterprotesters near the White House
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, has taken over the president’s legal fight to overturn the election results. In interviews on Sunday with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, Mr. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, another member of the president’s legal team, floated false conspiracy theories that there was a sweeping effort to switch votes using specific software.
“President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes, that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose,” Ms. Powell insisted. “We have so much evidence, I feel like it’s coming in through a fire hose.”
In fact, Mr. Biden leads in the popular vote by more than 5.5 million votes, a total that has climbed as states have continued counting.
At another point, Ms. Powell claimed that the C.I.A. had ignored complaints about the software, “which makes me wonder how much the C.I.A. has used it for its own benefit in different places.” She then urged Mr. Trump to fire Gina Haspel, the agency’s director.
Asked by Ms. Bartiromo whether the president was conceding the race, Mr. Giuliani said: “No, no, no, far from it. What he’s saying is more, I guess you’d call it sarcastic.” He added that “obviously he’s contested it vigorously.”
The president’s tweets about whether Mr. Biden had won the election came as Mr. Trump continued to spread misinformation about the vote-counting process.
His first tweet on Sunday came at 7:47. Referring to Mr. Biden, the president said that “he won” and claimed again that “all of the mechanical ‘glitches’ that took place on election night were really THEM getting caught trying to steal votes.” Twitter quickly labeled almost all of Mr. Trump’s posts on Sunday morning as “disputed.”
After a flurry of tweets and news reports about his “concession,” Mr. Trump insisted that he had been misunderstood.
At 9:16, he insisted: “RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!”
The rapid flip-flop made clear that Mr. Trump was still refusing to abandon his false narrative about the vote being rigged and stolen that he has been spreading since Election Day, inflaming anger among his supporters about his defeat.
There was no indication that his tweet would immediately prompt the administrator of the General Services Administration to officially allow the Biden transition team to have access to the money and information they are due, which she has so far refused to do. Mr. Trump later retweeted a post by the administrator, Emily W. Murphy, on veteran-owned small businesses, adding, “Great job Emily!”
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Trump’s latest election lawsuit is dead on arrival, legal experts…
‘100 percent dead’: Court ruling could torpedo some lawsuits challenging Trump’s loss
KEVIN MCCOY | USA TODAY | 2 hours ago
The admission on Twitter was quickly followed up with a tweet doubling down that he was not actually conceding.
USA TODAY, WOCHIT
A federal appeals court ruling may have torpedoed several federal lawsuits that seek to overturn President Donald Trump’s all-but-certified defeat by former Vice President Joe Biden.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Friday that Pennsylvania voters and a congressional candidate could not use certain constitutional arguments to back their claims that some voters were disadvantaged by changes to election rules spurred by the coronavirus pandemic and U.S. Postal System delays.
On Monday, Trump supporters who used similar constitutional arguments in federal lawsuits in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin voluntarily dismissed their claims.
The dismissals came in advance of Tuesday’s scheduled oral arguments in a federal lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania. On Sunday, attorneys for the campaign narrowed their legal arguments in that case to avoid running afoul of the appeals court ruling.
Although the revised complaint still argues 689,472 ballots were improperly processed and counted outside the view of Trump election watchers, it does not not seek legal relief specifically on that point.
Election workers count ballots at the Philadelphia Convention Center on November 06, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Election workers count ballots at the Philadelphia Convention Center on November 06, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
CHRIS MCGRATH, GETTY IMAGES
Some election law and constitutional law experts predict that case, too, is in trouble.
“Trump’s legal path to overturn the election results appears 100 percent dead,” Richard Hasen, an election and campaign law expert at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law wrote on his Election Law Blog on Monday.
Even if the Trump campaign succeeded in its slimmed-down arguments in the case to be argued Tuesday, "it does not involve enough ballots to call Pennsylvania’s election results into question,” Hasen said in an email to USA TODAY.
Biden led Trump by 67,353 votes in Pennsylvania as of Monday, according to Associated Press tallies.
The Trump campaign’s lawsuit seeks to delay Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. It asks the court to bar certification of results that include absentee and mail ballots that it claims were improperly “cured” of mistakes made by voters, without adequate oversight by Trump campaign monitors. It couldn’t be immediately determined how many ballots are in question.
From the beginning, legal experts said the case had no chance of success. Courts are reluctant to invalidate ballots cast by voters who relied on instructions from election boards, they said, and mail balloting is constitutional and common.
Analysis: Nine legal experts say Trump’s lawsuit challenging election results in Pennsylvania is dead on arrival
The Trump campaign’s arguments center on the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which requires “equal protection of the laws” for citizens. The pared-down complaint retains an argument based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore ruling that decided the 2000 presidential election.
Appeals court: Bush v. Gore ruling was limited to the 2000 election
The case that went before the appeals court was filed by Republican congressional candidate Jim Bognet and voters who alleged Pennsylvania’s three-day extension for mail and absentee ballots improperly allowed county election boards to accept ballots “that would otherwise be unlawful.”
What history has shown us about contested elections and peaceful transitions of power.
JUST THE FAQS, USA TODAY
An appeals court panel denied some of that suit’s constitutional arguments. The court said it did not review the Bush v. Gore decision in evaluating plaintiffs’ equal protection arguments because the Supreme Court said in that ruling it was “limited to the present circumstances” of that case.
“That is a bad sign” for the Pennsylvania case set for arguments on Tuesday, said Kermit Roosevelt, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in an email.
That case and others are among an explosion of election-related legal challenges that even before Election Day had topped the number of similar federal lawsuits filed during the three prior presidential elections, a USA TODAY analysis found.
Trump’s election challenges haven’t gone far
Trump’s efforts to challenge election results, partly based on allegations of ineligible votes and inadequate observer access to ballot counting, have largely failed. In Pennsylvania alone, Trump supporters have filed at least 15 legal challenges in an effort to reclaim the state’s 20 electoral votes, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Judges in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada, however, have quickly dispatched some of them. A few have been appealed.
On Friday, Pennsylvania courts dismissed six Trump campaign lawsuits that argued nearly 9,000 absentee ballots should be disqualified for violations of state election code requirements.
With the U.S. Capitol in the background, supporters of President Donald Trump rally in Washington.
JULIO CORTEZ, AP
Rival appeal petitions were filed over the weekend in those cases.
The four federal lawsuits voluntarily dismissed by voter plaintiffs on Monday in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin were linked to the law firm of conservative attorney James Bopp Jr. He is a legal consultant for Trump’s 2020 presidential election campaign.
The cases focused on alleged violations of the equal protection clause, as well as constitutional directives on elections and presidential electors. Each of the cases challenged election officials’ inclusion of “illegal presidential elector results in certain counties.”
Trump campaign alleged "two-tiered voting system in Pennsylvania
The Trump campaign’s case set for arguments on Tuesday initially alleged that Pennsylvania used an “illegal, two-tiered voting system” — in-person and mail ballots. It argued that ballots cast in person were devalued because of the extended deadline and a lack of oversight for mail and absentee ballots.
But after Friday’s appeals court ruling in the other case, Trump campaign lawyers scrapped most of the references to a “two-tiered” voting system, as well as constitutional arguments based on issues other than the equal protection clause.
The amended complaint alleges that Pennsylvania election officials in areas with heavy Democratic Party enrollment improperly enabled mail voters who had made technical mistakes on their ballots to “cure” the errors. Election officials in other areas of the state followed the law by not providing such assistance, the lawsuit charged.
A Phila. city commissioner says the ‘highest ethical standards’ were followed during the election and subsequent canvassing. Omar Sabir says he understands the Trump campaign filing lawsuits but feels 'America really needs healing" going forward. (Nov. 10)
AP
When the ballots were being counted, election officials in Democratic-majority areas “intentionally denied the Trump Campaign access to unobstructed observation … denying plaintiffs and the residents of Pennsylvania the equal protection of the law.”
Late Monday, the Trump campaign’s lawyers in the case were granted permission by the court to withdraw. They were the second set of lawyers to depart.
The campaign is now being represented by the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, law firm of Marc Scaringi, whose biography on the firm’s website says he once worked as a part-time radio talk show host.
The Trump campaign asked U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann to delay Tuesday’s hearing. Brann denied the motion.
Originally Published 12 hours ago
Updated 2 hours ago
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