Our live coverage of the election has ended for the day.
A group of federal prosecutors, who were assigned by the Justice Department to enforce federal voting rights laws across the country on Election Day, urged Attorney General William Barr on Friday to rescind his order for prosecutors to examine allegations of voting irregularities before states move to certify the results in the coming weeks, according to an internal letter obtained by CNN.
The letter from the 16 prosecutors comes days after Barr released a memo earlier this week telling prosecutors not involved with the election crimes branch of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to skip procedural steps to investigate “substantial” allegations of voter fraud.
Barr’s memo served a catalyst for the resignation of Richard Pilger, the leader of the election crimes branch. Pilger spoke out against Barr’s memo in a resignation letter that he forwarded to colleagues.
“We urge you to rescind it,” the prosecutors wrote in bolded type about Barr’s memo.
The bipartisan coalition of federal “District Election Officers” said Barr’s marching orders “is not based on fact.”
The letter was co-signed by 16 assistant US attorneys from 15 out of the 44 jurisdictions that were chosen by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to monitor the Nov. 3 general election.
More background: The assistant US attorneys also said in the letter that, in the districts they monitored, they found no evidence substantial voting irregularities.
Kerri Kupec, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, declined to comment on the prosecutors’ letter.
Kupec referred to the last paragraph of Barr’s memo that said: “Nothing here should be taken as any indication that the Department has concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election. Rather, I provide this authority and guidance to emphasize the need to timely and appropriately address allegations of voting irregularities so that all of the American people, regardless of their preferred candidate or party, can have full confidence in the results of our elections.”
CNN’s Evan Perez contributed to this report.
Two judges in Pennsylvania on Friday tossed a half dozen court cases the Trump campaign had brought to invalidate thousands of votes around Philadelphia, where voters carried President-elect Joe Biden to a win in the battleground state.
In total, the Trump campaign had sought to throw out almost 9,000 absentee ballots because their outer envelopes lacked a name, date or address, or some combination of the three that voters could have filled out.
In five related cases, Judge James Crumlish of Philadelphia County’s Court of Common Pleas said the Trump campaign couldn’t invalidate 8,329 ballots it alleged were improper. The judge ruled those ballots should be processed and counted.
In another case, the President’s campaign sought for the Montgomery County Board of Elections to throw out 592 mail-in ballots where voters hadn’t filled out their address on the outside envelope. Those ballots will be counted, the second judge, Richard Haaz of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, ruled on Friday.
Haaz found that state law didn’t require voters to fill out the address section on the envelopes, and the instructions on the ballots didn’t tell voters they must have filled them out more.
“Voters should not be disenfranchised by reasonably relying upon voting instructions provided by election officials,” Haaz wrote.
The Trump campaign had said in court it wasn’t alleging voting fraud in the cases, just attempting to enforce the rules.
Some context: Though the ballots are numbered in the thousands, they would not be enough for Trump to overcome Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, even if all were Biden votes.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo today said President Trump’s denial of his electoral loss and his refusal to participate in a smooth transition process is “delusion… [and a] dislocation from reality.”
“For him not to have the Biden people in an orderly transition is just the height of irresponsibility and narcissism,” Cuomo said, speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon “…It’s shameful. He is still in denial. The numbers couldn’t be any more clear.”
Cuomo’s remarks came after Trump attacked him in a news conference earlier in the day and threatened to delay the delivery of any potential vaccine to the Empire State.
Speaking on the CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Cuomo also denied he is interested in working in the Biden administration, jokingly tell Blitzer he’d recommended him to join the Biden White House.
“I am staying right here,” he said. Cuomo’s current term as governor ends in January 2023, but he announced late last year he would a seek fourth term in office in the 2022 election.
Watch:
Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly issued a statement Friday night lambasting President Trump for not helping with the transition to a new Biden administration.
Kelly added: “[T]he downside to not doing so could be catastrophic to our people regardless of who they voted for. … The current administration does not have to concede, but it should do the right thing just in case the Constitutional system declares they lost. It is not about the GOP or the Democrat Party. It is not about the President or about Mr. Biden. It is about America and what is best for our people. Mr. Trump should order the transition process begin immediately. It is the right and moral thing to do.”
President-elect Joe Biden met with the co-chairs of his Covid-19 advisory board today and said that based on what he learned, “urgent action” is needed on the part of the current administration.
He renewed his call for Americans to wear masks, socially distance themselves and wash their hands.
“Today, I renew my call for every American, regardless of where they live or who they voted for, to step up and do their part on social distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing to protect themselves and to protect others,” he added.
During a news conference this afternoon, President Trump again falsely suggested that coronavirus cases are high because of more testing.
“We test far more than any other country so it shows obviously more cases,” Trump said.
Facts First: Trump’s claim that increased testing is why the US has increased cases is comprehensively inaccurate, just as it’s been when he has made the same claim repeatedly through the campaign and over the summer.
The spike in US coronavirus cases is not being caused by an increase in testing.
As of the day before Trump spoke, the number of confirmed new cases was increasing at a faster rate than the number of new tests, according to the COVID Tracking Project, an initiative that assembles and analyzes coronavirus data.
Testing this week had increased by 13%, which the COVID Tracking Project acknowledged was not enough to account for the 41% increase in cases. The number of hospitalizations and deaths is also rising, which shows that the increase in the case numbers isn’t merely being caused by tests capturing mild cases.
Taken together, the numbers tell a consistent story; the situation in the US is genuinely getting worse. Both case and hospitalization figures hit all-time highs on Thursday.
You can read a longer fact check here.
President Trump on Friday inched closer to acknowledging he will not be president after Jan. 20, though stopped well short of recognizing his loss, in vowing his administration wouldn’t order new coronavirus lockdowns.
“I will not — this administration will not be doing a lockdown. Hopefully whatever happens in the future — who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell — but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown,” Trump said in the Rose Garden, his first public remarks in days.
Trump’s willingness to suggest there might be a different administration next year is as far as he’s gone in recognizing the election results, which he is currently contesting.
While he went no further in publicly saying he would soon be leaving office, Trump did offer an opening.
“This administration will not go, under any circumstances, will not go through a lockdown, but we will be very vigilant. Very careful,” he said.
Some background: The US has added more than half a million new Covid-19 cases since hitting 10 million on Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
At this rate, the number should pass 11 million in the next four days, making for the fastest addition of another million yet, John Hopkins data show.
November already was crippling for American communities battling Covid-19 spikes in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Experts warn it will likely get worse before it gets better.
For the 10th day in a row, the US reported more than 100,000 infections, and the total since Monday hit 556,961. On Thursday, with its highest number yet at more than 153,000 new infections, the country inched closer to what one expert predicted could soon become a devastating reality — 200,000 cases a day.
Watch the moment:
CNN’s Jay Croft and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.
President Trump claimed during Friday’s news conference that the Pfizer vaccine was a result of the White House’s Operation Warp Speed, adding that Pfizer’s prior claim that it was not part of the program was an “unfortunate misrepresentation.”
Facts First: Pfizer’s vaccine progress is not solely attributable to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed public-private partnership program. But it was not accurate for Pfizer to suggest (as one executive did in comments to the New York Times) that it is operating entirely apart from Operation Warp Speed; the company has a major agreement to sell at least 100 million doses of its vaccine to the federal government, and Pfizer acknowledged in a Monday statement to CNN that it is in fact “participating” in Operation Warp Speed through this deal. Also, at least some independent experts say the Trump administration deserves partial credit for Pfizer’s progress.
Pfizer, unlike some other pharmaceutical companies, did not accept federal money for research into a coronavirus vaccine. Pfizer, unlike these competitors, is not getting payments up front even before proving its effort has been successful.
However, the Trump administration agreed in July to buy at least $1.95 billion worth of a Pfizer vaccine, at least 100 million doses, if Pfizer does get a vaccine authorized by the Food and Drug Administration.
Three experts told CNN that this purchase promise may have played an important role in expediting Pfizer’s vaccine development process.
Read a full fact check here.
President Trump said the federal government won’t deliver a possible coronavirus vaccine until the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, lets the administration “know when he is ready for it.”
President Trump’s term ends when President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.
What this is about: Last month, Cuomo called the White House Covid-19 Task Force’s vaccination plan “deeply flawed.” At that time, Cuomo said he was on a call with members of the national task force when he learned that the premise of the federal vaccination plan would be to use private pharmacies — like CVS and Walgreens — as the main distribution point for the vaccine.
“That is a very limited distribution mechanism,” Cuomo said, adding that the federal plan does not appear to provide for states to organize vaccination with state personnel on any scale.
Days later after his initial comments, Cuomo said the plan, as explained to him by the White House, involves the military distributing a future Covid-19 vaccine to large chain-pharmacies for distribution, a plan he said would disproportionately limit distribution in communities of color.
Today, Trump said the US government can’t deliver the vaccine “to a state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately.”
“So we won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorization to do so and that pains me to say that,” Trump said at an ongoing news conference. “This is a very successful, amazing vaccine at 90% and more, but — so the governor, Gov. Cuomo, will have to let us know when he is ready for it,” Trump said.
Watch the moment:
President Trump is giving an update on Operation Warp Speed from the Rose Garden.
This will be the first time the President has spoken publicly since CNN and other networks projected on Saturday that Joe Biden would win the presidency.
Trump last spoke publicly on Nov. 5, when he baselessly claimed the presidency was being stolen from underneath him.
Watch:
Republican Sen. Martha McSally issued a statement Friday conceding the Arizona Senate race to Democrat Mark Kelly.
CNN projected last Friday that the Democrat and former astronaut had defeated McSally in Arizona’s special election.
The Republican National Committee is set to invest at least $20 million in the upcoming dual Georgia Senate Runoff elections that will determine which party controls the majority in the US Senate.
Spokesperson Mandi Merritt told CNN that in addition to the hefty financial investment, the RNC is also planning on sending more than 600 staffers into Georgia to help support the campaigns of Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
This news was first reported by the Associated Press.
The Carter Center announced today it will monitor the ongoing hand recount of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia to “help bolster transparency and confidence in election results.”
It’s the first time the nonprofit, which has observed elections around the world, will monitor any part of an election process in the United States.
The move comes after an extraordinary and prolonged effort by President Trump and top Republicans to undermine confidence in the election’s outcome by baselessly claiming fraud and refusing to recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
For more than three decades, the organization, founded by former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalyn Carter, has helped support democratic elections in countries during fragile and volatile times.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday that the state will conduct an audit of race, which includes all counties recounting, by hand, the nearly 5 million ballots cast.
Today the Carter Center said it will dispatch monitors to several county audit boards across the Peach State to watch the recount. It did not monitor voters when they cast ballots last week and the organization said this review is “not part of a broader assessment of the election as a whole.”
Soyia Ellison, a spokesperson for The Carter Center, confirmed to CNN that Georgia will be the first time the organization has been involved in monitoring any part of a US election.
Read the full article here.
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is reaching out to former Pentagon officials who worked for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis as they seek to gather information for an incoming Biden team, according to two former officials who have been contacted by the transition team.
The conversations are the result of the inability to engage with current Pentagon officials at this time, the sources told CNN. And they come as an effort to build the transition team’s understanding about what has happened in the department over the last four years. Reaching out to former officials is “the next best thing,” one of the former officials explained.
Politico was the first to report on the communications.
More background: The Biden team is also aware that even when they are able to speak with current defense officials after the General Services Administration formally signs off on Biden’s victory, they may not be eager to engage or be as forthcoming as the officials who have already departed.
During some of these discussions people on the Biden transition team have sometimes referred to conversations with “Mattis people,” the second former official said, indicating that they are speaking to a group of these former officials.
But the Biden transition team – focused on information gathering – has not indicated that they want to hire these former officials who worked for Mattis.
“It is nice that I am not completely toxic because I was a Trump nominee, but I do not think that they would want to fill the place up with officials who were confirmed under Trump. They are not discussing a job with me,” the official said. “I am just being as helpful as I can be.”
The Biden transition team declined to comment.
A senior federal election security official, who is an appointee of President Trump, has blasted the President’s post-election claims calling them baffling, laughable and insulting.
They’re the strongest rejection from a Trump administration official so far of what the President is saying.
Remember: Last Saturday major news organizations, including CNN, projected Joe Biden will win the presidential election. Since then, Trump has continued to make baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud despite no evidence, and he’s launched a series of legal challenges to the results.
Ben Hovland was nominated by Trump last year and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. He runs the Election Assistance Commission which, in part, tests and certifies voting machines. He also works closely with other federal agencies that oversee elections, like CISA — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Asked what he would say to Trump about the election, he said “these conspiracy theories that are flying around, have consequences.”
In response to Trump’s tweet that millions of his votes were deleted, Hovland calls it “pretty baffling.”
“I just wish that if claims like that were going to be made, they would actually be backed up with something credible. I think those types of statements matter. They cause Americans to lose confidence in the process,” Hovland said.
The legal process that is taking place is very different than what we hear from the President and his aides, Hovland added.
“We see bold statements on Twitter or at the podium and we see hearsay and we see laughable evidence presented to courts,” Hovland said. “There’s just not a correlation between those.”
Hovland’s comments come as CISA Director Chris Krebs is also ratcheting up his rebukes of the President’s claims.
The Department of Homeland Security along with a group of national, state and private election officials said in a joint statement Thursday that there is no evidence of any voting system being compromised in the 2020 election despiteTrump’s deluge of election fraud conspiracies. They called the election “the most secure in American history.”
A senior administration official told CNN that CIA Director Gina Haspel has been iced out of an intelligence meeting that was to take place at the White House Friday that included President Trump, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and other top intelligence officials.
The official acknowledged that while her attendance is not mandatory, it doesn’t bode well for Haspel, although some of the President’s advisers and outside Republican allies continue to try to talk him out of firing her in this critical transition period.
The CIA declined to comment when asked if Haspel was iced out of the meeting. The White House has not responded to a request for comment.
A source familiar with recent discussions about Haspel’s potential firing told CNN that it is not surprising she was excluded from this meeting given the recent tension between her and Ratcliffe.
Some more context: Ratcliffe is in charge of the agenda for Oval Office meetings of this nature and the Presidential Daily Brief is compiled by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence based on intelligence from various agencies, including CIA.
CNN reported Thursday that some Trump advisers believe Haspel has been “insubordinate” to both the President and Ratcliffe, arguing she routinely circumvents the chain of command to further her own agenda and that of the CIA.
But while multiple sources have told CNN they expect the President to fire Haspel, they have also emphasized that nothing is set in stone until Trump makes an announcement.
A Republican congressional candidate from Pennsylvania lost a case on appeal over ballots in Pennsylvania that arrived late.
Jim Bognet, who also lost his race in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, filed the appeal just before Election Day.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the case today saying the voters and the candidate, Bognet, didn’t have the ability to sue and had gone to court too close to the election.
The appellate decision was in line with the lower court’s ruling in the case.
It’s the third court development just today that undercuts Republican attempts to push disinformation about election fraud in court.
The issue of the legality of those ballots was already at the US Supreme Court – and is still there. But Bognet and the voters had added to the effort in their own federal case that challenged those ballots, claiming that late-arriving absentee ballots in Pennsylvania hurt their Constitutional rights because they were potentially illegally cast votes.
The ruling on Friday – which will govern federal courts in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania – also appears to block voters from making broad, theoretical claims under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution about the possible dilution of their votes.
Lawyers representing Republicans in other suits since Election Day have tried to make similar Constitutional arguments to block Biden’s win in states including Pennsylvania.
CNN has projected winners in the two outstanding states — Georgia and North Carolina.
President-elect Joe Biden will win Georgia with 16 electoral college votes, and President Trump will win North Carolina with 15 electoral college votes.
Now that all the states have been projected, here’s the final tally:
Biden now has 306 electoral votes — well over the 270 threshold needed to win the presidency.
Trump has a total of 232 electoral votes.
President-elect Joe Biden will win Georgia, CNN projects.
There are 16 electoral votes at stake in Georgia, bringing the final electoral tally to 306 for Biden.
While Georgia’s electoral votes add to Biden’s total, CNN on Saturday projected Biden would win the election after the former vice president surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.
Watch CNN’s David Chalian report:
President Trump will win North Carolina, CNN projects.
There are 15 electoral votes at stake in North Carolina, bringing the final electoral tally to 306 for President-elect Joe Biden and 232 for Trump.
Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.
Watch:
On a press call with reporters, Biden-Harris transition officials indicated that no new personnel announcements will be made over the weekend as Biden will be spending time with his family.
He is currently in Rehoboth Beach and is expected to stay there until Saturday evening.
Transition officials Jen Psaki and Yohannes Abraham led the call.
They discussed Trump’s firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other concerns regarding the ascertainment process.
About ascertainment: All eyes are on Trump-appointed General Services Administration administrator Emily W. Murphy to recognize Biden as the president-elect and release funds to the Biden transition team through a process called ascertainment. You can read more on the process here.
Biden officials noted that they are not interested in a “food fight” with the administrator, but still have not taken any options, including legal action, off the table.
Psaki called President Trump’s firing of Esper and other changes around the Pentagon a “concern,” adding there shouldn’t be politicization of the military. She stressed again that until there’s ascertainment, there won’t be official engagement between personnel – members of the agency review teams – and national security agencies with current officials.
“Of course it’s of concern to see the upheaval, it should be of concern to anybody because there shouldn’t be a politicization of the military,” she said.
The transition pointed to the regular legal contact that they’ve had with nonpartisan transition experts. They argued that each day that goes on without ascertainment is detrimental to national security because Biden is not receiving “real-time” updates.
They announced they will be launching a feature in the upcoming days on the transition website BuildBackBetter.com, that will encourage Americans to apply for roles in the Biden-Harris administration. As Biden made clear throughout his campaign, he hopes to build an administration that “looks like America,” and they expressed they will be looking for “diverse experienced talent from across the country.”
A Michigan judge has rejected an attempt by two poll challengers to block the certification of a Biden win in Detroit, which helped carry his victory in the state.
The judge also denied the request for an audit of the election, after two poll watchers sued for it.
The case has been among a series of attempts by Republicans to delay President-elect Joe Biden’s win in key states, and hand an Electoral College victory to President Trump by blocking or overriding popular vote results.
In his opinion, Chief Judge Timothy Kenny said,
Attorney David Fink, representing Detroit, explained to the judge at Wednesday’s hearing that blocking the finalization of Michigan’s votes would either knock the state out of the Electoral College, kicking the selection of the president to the US House of Representatives, or would allow the Republican-held state legislature to try to seat its own slate of electors.
Earlier this month, Judge Kenny also denied a request in a similar lawsuit to stop the certification of election results in Detroit, noting there was no evidence that oversight procedures had not been followed.
CNN has projected Biden as the winner of the state by almost 3% over Trump, with nearly a 150,000 vote lead.
The Trump campaign has a separate lawsuit open in federal court that makes a similar attempt to slow down the certification of the state’s vote for Biden. That case is in its earliest stage.
President Trump will deliver an update on Operation Warp Speed from the Rose Garden at 4 p.m. ET.
This will be the first time the President has spoken publicly since CNN and other networks projected on Saturday that Joe Biden would win the presidency.
Trump last spoke publicly on Nov. 5, when he baselessly claimed the presidency was being stolen from underneath him.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made another outrageous TV appearance where she repeatedly referenced baseless claims of election fraud and claimed President Trump will win the election that has already been decided for his opponent.
Remember: There is no evidence of widespread fraud. In fact, a group of national, state, and private election officials called Nov. 3 the “most secure” election in American history.
McEnany was pressed on whether she could definitively say Trump will attend inauguration. She could not.
Host Stuart Varney responded that it would sound “a lot like sour grapes” if he did not.
“I think the President will attend his own inauguration he would have to be there in fact,” McEnany said.
A skeptical Varney pressed McEnany – “You really think you can turn this around?’ to which McEnany replied, “Absolutely.”
She also said she absolutely believes that when every legal vote is counted, “President Trump will win.”
Asked about a headline that suggested Trump may accept results but never concede, she said, “Yeah, the President’s just not even at that point yet. He’s pursuing this litigation,” going on to repeat falsehoods.
Though she did not appear to be live from campaign headquarters, McEnany was not appearing in her capacity as the taxpayer-paid press secretary but as a “Trump 2020 senior adviser.”
Major new organizations, including CNN, on Saturday projected Biden will win the presidential election. President Trump has not yet conceded to Biden.
Lawyers for the Trump campaign dropped its lawsuit seeking a review of all ballots cast on Election Day after finding that the margin of victory for the presidential contest in Arizona could not be overcome.
The Trump campaign filed the lawsuit on Saturday alleging some voters were confused on Election Day and feared that their ballots were not counted if the vote tabulation machines classified their ballots as overvotes. They were seeking a hand review of any ballots flagged by the machine as “overvotes” alleging it could result in thousands of votes for President Trump.
During a six-hour hearing yesterday a lawyer for the Trump campaign walked back its request, telling the judge that it would only seek a review of vote counts if the number of so-called overvotes exceeded the margin of victory.
The judge reserved decision. Lawyers for Maricopa County and the Secretary of State said 191 ballots were flagged by the machines as possible overvotes for the presidential race.
CNN projected Thursday that Joe Biden won Arizona. He has a vote margin of more than 11,000 votes over Trump.
Lawyers for the Maricopa County and Secretary of State filed papers on Friday noting that the latest ballot counts “moots” the Trump campaign’s claim. It reported that the difference in votes between Biden and Trump is 11,414 votes with 10,315 ballots remaining. The total number of votes flagged as possible overvotes remained at 191.
President Trump’s campaign has ended a “voter fraud” hotline it established last week so people could report alleged instances of fraud after it was flooded with prank calls.
The campaign went as far as to set up an entire conference room that was dedicated to the hotline where staff took calls, but sources said it was mostly spam or calls from people mocking the hotline, given the number was posted online.
It’s now been changed to a website where people can submit instances of alleged fraud via a web form, a campaign official says.
Remember: There has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud despite Trump’s claims. The President has launched a series of legal challenges to the results and has not yet conceded to President-elect Joe Biden, despite the fact that major new organizations, including CNN, last week projected Biden will win the election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to take responsibility for the loss of House seats Democrats suffered in the 2020 elections.
“I take credit for winning the majority,” she defiantly told CNN’s Manu Raju at her press conference today.
Asked how the smaller majority of Democrats in the House affects her approach, and if she will need to compromise, she replied, “No, not at all. We have a President of the United States.”
She later added,
But Pelosi did say she spent most of the weekend listening to the concerns of candidates who did not win their races, and that there’s a need for “a deep dive” to further understand the election results for Democrats.
Pelosi said she and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer spoke to President-elect Joe Biden yesterday “about the intensifying pandemic, and the economic crisis accompanying it, and about the urgent need for Congress to pass a bipartisan bill in the lame duck session.”
She argued that the longer Republicans refuse to accept the results of the presidential election, the more difficult it will be to address the coronavirus pandemic.
“The election is over. Joe Biden is the president-elect,” Pelosi said.”The longer the Republicans keep up the charade, the further out of control the Covid crisis will spiral.”
President-elect Joe Biden will spend the day and the weekend considering potential nominees to his cabinet, aides said. They cautioned that no major announcements are expected in the coming days.
Advisers to Biden describe him as “notoriously deliberative” in making personnel decisions, pointing to the most recent example of the multiple delays in selecting his running mate. The deadline for that announcement was repeatedly pushed back, aides said, as Biden asked for more information and bided his time.
While he has leading contenders for nearly all of his cabinet positions in mind, the outcome of the election has changed the calculus – particularly if Republicans maintain control of the Senate. For now, aides said, that is the operating principle the transition team is working on.
In the words of one longtime adviser, Biden can often be “slow” to make up his mind on hiring people, but aides say he is also cognizant of the fact that time is of the essence. The Biden team is poised to announce an ambitious timeline of its transition to power, hoping to keep driving the perception that they are not being slowed by the Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate.
But there are several reasons to be deliberate, given the political climate and the GOP control of the Senate.
That, of course, is what happened during the Obama transition. President George W. Bush was remarkably gracious and helpful, which Obama notes again in his new book, but several cabinet nominees were not properly vetted and ultimately had to withdraw: Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services and Bill Richardson and Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary.
“We made many missteps that Biden does not have the luxury of making,” the Obama official said, noting significant missteps also came during Bush and Clinton transitions.
The first month of the Obama transition also was weighed down with allegations of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich improperly trying to fill the Senate seat. The Obama transition launched an internal review of who spoke to Blagojevich, even as the US Attorney opened a criminal probe.
“I would ask for your patience” Obama told reporters during one news conference, “because I do not want to interfere with an ongoing investigation.”
While Biden does not face a similar situation – Sen. Kamala Harris is poised to resign from her seat in the coming weeks – the team is mindful of properly vetting all potential cabinet nominees.
This week in Wilmington, Biden hinted at a Thanksgiving timeframe for some members of his cabinet. Health, economic and defense are expected to be the first portfolios to be announced, aides said, given the rising coronavirus crisis and unsteady economy.
But if you look at his words carefully, aides said, there is sufficient wiggle room on the timing.
Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel said lawsuits filed in Michigan against state agencies and officials suggesting voter fraud, “provide no evidence to support their claims.”
Additionally, Nessel’s office issued five cease and desist letters to “entities and individuals spreading misinformation during the general election.”
Nessel also announced felony charges of voter fraud against a 47-year-old Michigan man who allegedly completed, “signed and submitted his daughter’s absentee voter ballot to his local clerk’s office.”
Remember: Major new organizations, including CNN, projected Biden will win the presidential election. President Trump has launched a series of legal challenges to the results, even though there has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud despite Trump’s claims.
Newly appointed Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said he has spoken to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
He’s also spoken to his counterparts in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, he said in remarks made to reporters before his meeting with Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis at the Pentagon today.
Former defense officials have raised concerns about how President Trump’s sudden replacement of Defense Secretary Mark Esper could endanger US national security in a vulnerable period of governmental transition.
Miller also said that he would be speaking to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this afternoon, saying he was doing “a remarkable job all around.”
The Arizona Republican Party filed a lawsuit late Thursday against the recorder of Maricopa County – the most populous county in the state – seeking a more expansive audit of ballots cast electronically.
The lawsuit is focused on a small number of votes and contains no allegation of fraud.
It alleges that under Arizona state law, the county recorder is required to conduct a hand recount of a random sampling of ballots cast in polling places, and electronic machines in at least 2% of precincts or two precincts, whichever is greater. The lawsuit alleges that secretary of state manual violates state law by defining the sample set to include polling places, not precincts.
The lawsuit alleges the recorder should sample ballots cast at 15 of the 748 precincts in Maricopa County, not 2%, or 3.5, of the 175 polling places.
CNN has reached out to the Maricopa County Recorder for comment.
The lawsuit is the second suit seeking a recount of a portion of ballots cast on Election Day. The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit on Saturday seeking to block certification of ballots until votes cast on Election Day could be reviewed. The campaign does not allege the county engaged in fraud but it alleges voters were confused and some believe their ballots may not have been counted if the machines read their ballots as overvotes. They are seeking a hand review of any ballots flagged by the machine as “overvote” adding it could result in thousands of votes for President Trump.
A judge heard six hours of evidence on Thursday but reserved decision. Lawyers for Maricopa County and the secretary of state said 191 ballots were flagged by the machines as possible overvotes for the presidential race.
CNN projected Thursday that Joe Biden won Arizona. He has a vote margin of more than 11,000 votes over Trump.
In a Friday morning meeting with the US Postal Service Board of Governors, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the USPS delivered the nation’s political and election mail on time, and securely.
According to DeJoy, on average, blank ballots were delivered to voters in 2.1 days. Completed ballots were returned to the Boards of Elections in roughly 1.6 days, DeJoy says.
“Despite a narrative that arose in certain circles, we never wavered in our commitment to fulfill our sacred duty to delivery election mail, and ballots in particular,” he said.
DeJoy did not address the fact that he and the USPS were enjoined in a number of injunctions in federal court that forced the USPS to do whatever it could to deliver ballots on time.
In all, DeJoy said that the USPS delivered 610 million pieces of election mail — which includes ballots and official communications to voters from election officials. The service also delivered 4 billion pieces of political mail.
A law firm representing the President’s campaign in a controversial and long shot attempt to block Pennsylvania’s popular vote for Joe Biden, is leaving the case.
The firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, had two Pittsburgh-based lawyers leading the effort for the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania. In an overnight filing they both told a judge they were withdrawing. The Trump campaign may bring in new counsel.
The Trump campaign is now down to one lawyer in the federal court effort in Pennsylvania—a solo practitioner in Philadelphia named Linda Ann Kerns who touts her media appearances and commentary as much as her legal experience.
Porter Wright is a mid-sized Midwestern law firm built to primarily represent corporations. Its choice to leave the Trump case signals a growing discomfort nationally with the President’s continued wish to push unfounded attacks on voting, and undermine Biden’s win in several key states with a play to block the popular vote and sway the Electoral College in his favor.
The case has major arguments and a hearing on evidence about voting set for next week.
The judge over the case, Matthew Brann, earned his seat during the Obama years but is a longtime leader in the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.
Earlier this week, Jones Day, a large and elite law firm that has long represented the interests of Trump, publicly distanced itself from cases where the President is contesting the popular vote or alleging voter fraud.
Remember: Major new organizations, including CNN, projected Biden will win the presidential election. President Trump has launched a series of legal challenges to the results, even though there has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud despite Trump’s claims.
Top Trump adviser Peter Navarro appeared on television Friday to baselessly yet emphatically claim that the White House is proceeding under the “assumption of a second Trump term,” and that President Trump “won the election,” even though he has lost.
Remember: Major new organizations, including CNN, projected Biden will win the presidential election. President Trump has launched a series of legal challenges to the results, even though there has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud despite Trump’s claims.
“We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption that there will be a second Trump term,” trade adviser Navarro lied on Fox Business Friday morning.
He continued to lie, saying:
There is no evidence of widespread fraud. In fact, a group of national, state, and private election officials called the Nov. 3 election the “most secure” election in American history.
Yet, Navarro continued to lie.
“Our assumption is the second Trump term, we think he won that election, and any speculation about what Joe Biden might do I think his moot at this point,’ he said.
Navarro declined to provide any proof when pressed on the legal argument.
After the Fox Business appearance, Navarro also declined to take questions from reporters that weren’t focused on the executive order aimed at China.
“Not my lane,” he said when asked by CNN’s Joe Johns about vaccine deployment. As director of trade and manufacturing policy, it very much is his lane.
John King Reports:
Last Saturday, major news organizations including CNN, projected Joe Biden will win the presidential election after his win in Pennsylvania put him over the 270 electoral college votes necessary to win the presidency.
CNN also joined other organizations late last night projecting Biden would win the state of Arizona.
This brings Biden’s electoral college votes to 290. President Trump currently has 217 electoral college votes.
CNN has not yet projected a winner in Georgia or North Carolina. Here’s an update of where things stand in those two states:
Georgia
North Carolina
As President Trump continues to fight the outcome of the election, he’ll be briefed of the country’s coronavirus vaccine efforts today.
Vice President Mike Pence will join Trump for the Operation Warp Speed briefing.
The latest on the virus: The pandemic is growing more alarming by the day. Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are piling up at record rates, and experts fear that daily deaths may soon follow. (These charts show just how bad it is.)
An influential Covid-19 model projected nearly 439,000 people in the US could die of the virus by March 1.
The vast majority of Americans are unlikely to see their taxes go up under President-elect Joe Biden, despite false claims by President Trump to the contrary.
In fact, middle-income households could see an average tax cut of $680 and low-income households could see their tax bills fall by $760, according to an analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
Only the wealthy and corporations would see their tax bills go up under Biden’s proposals.
But even those plans are likely to be dead on arrival if Republicans win at least one of two runoff races in Georgia set for Jan. 5 and keep control of the Senate. If Democrats flip both of those seats, the Senate would be evenly divided, giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.
Even then, raising taxes on anyone might be a hard sell during a pandemic. Americans could instead see bipartisan support for tax changes that lower the burden for some, like expanding the child tax credit or tax benefits for saving for retirement.
Versions of both already have support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and were included in Biden’s broad plan.
Read more about Biden’s plan here.
Conceding a lost election is the classy thing to do and it has usually been a part of the country coming together after a divisive campaign.
But President Trump has not yet conceded to Joe Biden, who was projected the winner of the 2020 election on Saturday, and has not indicated he has any intention of doing so.
Yet concession is a custom, not something required under the law. There are usually two elements to a concession — a call to the victor and a speech to supporters. Here’s how it played out in some recent elections:
The constitution is very clear that a new president will take the oath of office on Jan. 20 at noon. That will happen if Trump loses graciously or if he has to be escorted out of the Oval Office by Secret Service, although it’s not exactly clear what the Secret Servce would do in the event Trump wouldn’t leave.
Read more here.
Election Day is over, but the legal mechanisms that lead from Election Day to Inauguration Day have just begun.
Americans who went to the polls on Election Day didn’t actually select the president directly. They were technically voting for 538 electors who, according to the system laid out by the Constitution, will meet in their respective states and vote for president and vice president once the popular vote totals are completely counted and certified.
These electors are collectively referred to as the Electoral College, and their votes are then forwarded to the President of the Senate, who counts them in a joint session of Congress after the new year.
Here’s a timeline of what happens before Inauguration Day and key dates to look out for:
Nov. 4 – Nov. 23: Votes are counted
Mail-in ballots had to be postmarked by Nov. 3 in every US state, but they can be received late and still counted in many states. In most cases, they had to be received within a day or two of Election Day. But in Washington state, mail-in ballots could be received as late as Nov. 23.
Nov. 10 – Dec. 11: States certify election results
Each state does it a little bit differently, but starting a week after Election Day, state governments began to certify their election results. Those deadlines can change in the event of a state recount if there is an extremely close result.
Dec. 8: “Safe harbor” to determine election results and assign electors
Under the Electoral Count Act, this is the date by which states are meant to have counted votes, settled disputes, and determined the winner of their electoral college votes. Governors are supposed to create certificates of ascertainment listing the winner of the election and the slate of electors.
In 2000, the Supreme Court ended a targeted recount in Florida because it could not be completed by this safe harbor date. That recount would not have changed the outcome of the election, but a full statewide recount could have made Al Gore president. This is when it could become very important for Republicans that they control more state legislatures than Democrats, including in most of the contested 2020 battleground states.
Dec. 14: Electoral votes are cast.
In law, this date is the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. This year it falls on Dec. 14. Six days after disputes are supposed to be settled, electors are supposed to meet in their respective states and cast votes for US President. They certify six sets of votes and send them to Washington. Many states have laws requiring their electors to support the winner of their state’s election and can levy fines against faithless electors who go their own way.
Dec. 23: Electoral votes must arrive in Washington.
The certified electoral votes have nine days to get from their states to Capitol Hill.
Jan. 3: New Congress is sworn in
Members of the House and new members of the Senate take the oath of office at noon. This is the official start of the 117th Congress.
Jan. 6: Electoral votes are counted
Members of the House and the Senate all meet in the House chamber. The President of the Senate (that’s Vice President Mike Pence) presides over the session and the Electoral votes are read and counted in alphabetical order by two appointees each from the House and Senate. They then give their tallies to Pence, who announces the results and listens for objections.
If there are objections or if there are, somehow, multiple slates of electors put forward by a state, the House and Senate consider them separately to decide how to count those votes.
There are 538 electoral votes – one for each congressman and senator plus three for Washington, DC. If no candidate gets 270, the 435 members of the House decide the election. Each state gets a vote.
While there are more Democrats in the House, Republicans, as of now, control more state delegations, so it is very possible the House could pick Donald Trump even though there is a Democratic majority. It requires a majority of state votes to become President. The House has until noon on January 20 to pick the President. If they can’t, it would be the vice president or the next person eligible in the line of presidential succession.
Jan. 20: Inauguration Day
A new president takes the oath of office at noon. If the President-elect dies between Election Day and Inauguration, the vice president-elect takes the oath of office and becomes President.
In a disputed election, if the House has not chosen a President but the Senate has chosen a vice president, the vice president-elect becomes acting president until the House makes a choice. And if there’s no president-elect and no vice president-elect, the House appoints a president until one is chosen.
For just the second time in more than seven decades, a Democrat will carry Arizona in a presidential election, a monumental shift for a state that was once a Republican stronghold.
CNN projected late on Thursday that President-elect Joe Biden will carry Arizona, defeating President Trump and providing Democrats in Arizona and the universe of allied grassroots organizations in the state with a crowning achievement a decade in the making.
Arizona’s electoral votes brings Biden’s total up to 290. A candidate needs 270 to win the election.
President Trump currently has 217 electoral votes. CNN has not yet projected winners in Georgia and North Carolina.
