Edited by: JV Staff
Key Republican leaders in Washington are siding with President Donald Trump in his uphill legal fight claiming vote count fraud was widespread enough to overturn the projected presidential election victory of Democrat Joe Biden, according to a VOA report.
A handful of current Republican lawmakers and a broader list of former Republican officials are acknowledging Biden’s win in last week’s national election.
But the top two Republican lawmakers, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are saying that Trump should not concede the election as his campaign files suits alleging voting and vote count irregularities, as was reported by VOA.
When asked at the State Department Tuesday whether he would cooperate with President-elect Biden’s team on a transition, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
So far, however, Trump has lost the first five lawsuits that have been decided, with perhaps a dozen more yet to be considered by judges throughout the country, as was reported by VOA News. Political analysts in the US say that even if Trump is successful in some of the remaining suits challenging vote totals in a handful of states, the changes in the tally would not be enough to overturn Biden’s victory.
VOA reported that Biden’s effort to become the country’s 46th president became apparent on November 7, when the outcome in the eastern state of Pennsylvania tipped in his favor, giving him more than the 270 votes needed in the Electoral College, which decides the outcome of presidential elections, rather than the national popular vote.
Trump, however, has neither conceded defeat nor called Biden to discuss the contentious election.
Instead, Trump is now likely the third president in the last four decades to lose a re-election bid after a single term in the White House. He spent Tuesday posting a string of claims on Twitter which clearly insinuated that election fraud had taken place.
“WATCH FOR MASSIVE BALLOT COUNTING ABUSE AND, JUST LIKE THE EARLY VACCINE, REMEMBER I TOLD YOU SO!” Trump said in all caps Tuesday morning.
“WE ARE MAKING BIG PROGRESS. RESULTS START TO COME IN NEXT WEEK. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he claimed in another tweet.
VOA reported that Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who lost the 2012 presidential election to former President Barack Obama, and a handful of other Republican lawmakers have congratulated Biden, but most have either encouraged Trump’s challenges or stayed silent about Biden’s win.
“We have the system in place to consider concerns and President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” Senate Republican leader McConnell said Monday, adding that the process will play out and “reach its conclusion.”
House Republican leader McCarthy told Fox News on Sunday: “We’ve had the most competitive presidential race in our modern history. That’s why every vote should be counted, every recount to go forward, and every challenge should be heard.”
Another Trump supporter, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said, “This is a contested election. The media doesn’t decide who becomes president, if they did, you would never have a Republican president forever.”
“Do not concede, Mr. President, fight hard,” Graham told Fox News.
Attorney General William Barr authorized 92 federal prosecutors throughout the country to pursue credible accusations of wrongdoing, although no allegations of election-changing wrongdoing have emerged to date, as was reported by VOA.
About a dozen Republican state attorneys general said they support a legal effort pending before the Supreme Court to throw out mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania that were received after November 3rd.
In Georgia, Biden’s 12,293-vote lead over Trump is close enough that a recount will be conducted. However, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the top elections official in the state, emphasized it was unlikely to change the outcome there.
AP reported that Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler took the extraordinary step of calling for the resignation of Raffensperger.
Raffensperger flatly declined to step down, saying in a statement, “That is not going to happen.” He said his office is investigating any specific reports of illegal votes, but officials don’t expect to find any significant problems.
“Does it rise to the numbers or margin necessary to change the outcome to where President Trump is given Georgia’s electoral votes? That is unlikely,” Raffensperger said, as was reported by the AP.
Georgia is one front in a nationwide scramble by Trump forces to question his loss in multiple states. The Associated Press and other news organizations declared Biden the victor Saturday when he surpassed the 270 electoral vote threshold with victories in Pennsylvania and Nevada. The AP has not yet called the presidential race for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.
Elected in 2018 by a statewide vote, Raffensperger has overseen the rollout of Georgia’s new voting system, which features touchscreen machines that print paper ballots read by a scanner, according to the AP report. After the coronavirus pandemic began, he strongly encouraged voters to vote by mail, despite criticism from other Republicans.
Loeffler and Perdue, who both face a Jan. 5 runoff against Democrats that will determine party control of the U.S. Senate, accused Raffensperger of “mismanagement and lack of transparency,” according to the AP report.
“The secretary of state has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections,” they said in a joint statement. “He has failed the people of Georgia, and he should step down immediately.”
AP reported that other Republicans have been more cautious, with Gov. Brian Kemp, House Speaker David Ralston and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan all supporting the accuracy of the count in a joint statement on Friday.
On Monday, however, Kemp spokesperson Cody Hall said the Republicans’ concerns should be “a wake-up call” for Raffensperger to examine “any and all” fraud allegations, as was reported by the AP.
Kemp, a former secretary of state who oversaw the 2018 elections while he was running for governor, came under intense fire from Democrats and outside voting groups. AP reported that Kemp narrowly defeated Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, but she refused to explicitly concede, alleging systemic voter suppression by Kemp.
On Monday, Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group Abrams founded after her loss, attacked Perdue and Loeffler, as was reported by the AP.
“With their bizarre press statement, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have become full participants in Donald Trump’s crybaby campaign to undermine our democracy,” spokesperson Seth Bringman said. “Voters decided, and President-Elect Joe Biden won Georgia.”
Raffensperger’s office said officials are confident in the results of the 2020 election, according to the AP report,
“The facts are the facts, regardless of outcomes,” Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the new voting system, said at a news conference. He said he wanted everyone to understand “that in Georgia we had an actual accurate outcome.”
He debunked examples of what he characterized as misinformation about problems that occurred as votes were counted in several counties in the state.
AP reported that while Sterling was speaking at the Georgia Capitol, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was laying out the Republican Party recount strategy to House Republicans in the same building. Perdue, a former Georgia governor, is the cousin of David Perdue.
Recounts rarely change outcomes in races where a candidate leads by thousands of votes. By Monday, 55 of Georgia’s 159 counties had submitted certified, final results, including Gwinnett County, the state’s second-most-populous county, according to the AP.
“We must count every legal vote and cast out every illegal vote in the state of Georgia,” Sonny Perdue said. AP reported that Perdue said the Republicans are trying to flip the deficit before the state certifies overall results.
“We obviously know the president is currently trailing in Georgia,” Sonny Perdue said. “We do believe that Georgia may be his best chance of reclaiming that lead and helping secure the electors he needs to be reelected.”
Trump expressed that confidence himself, tweeting on Monday afternoon that “Georgia will be a big presidential win, as it was the night of the Election!”
AP reported that Perdue said the Trump legal team is focused on four issues. The first is whether people may have voted twice, as may have happened in some cases in Georgia’s June primary, where people who requested an absentee ballot may have gone to polls to vote in person because they believed their absentee ballot hadn’t been received.
Perdue also said Republicans are trying to make sure votes weren’t cast by people who moved out of state, on behalf of those who have died, or by convicted felons who haven’t completed probation or parole or paid all their fines, as was reported by AP.
Rep. Doug Collins, who gave up his seat and then came up short in his attempt to beat Loeffler and reach the Senate runoff, was tapped Sunday to lead the recount team in Georgia, according to the AP report.
VOA reported that some Republicans no longer in office urged Trump to accept the reality of his loss.
A group of 31 former Republican members of Congress — many of them vocal critics of the president — denounced Trump’s allegations of fraud in an open letter that called on him to concede.
Four former Homeland Security chiefs — Republicans Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff and Democrats Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson — said Trump’s legal claims should not delay Biden’s transition to power, which, barring Trump’s overturning the outcome, will be made official when Biden is scheduled to be inaugurated on January 20.
“By all credible accounts, state election officials have been diligent in conducting a fair, legal and accurate count — county by county, state by state,” the four former Homeland Security secretaries said in an open letter, as was reported by VOA. “President Trump is assured the benefit of a fair process and the right to file legal challenges and request recounts in certain states, but his legal claims cannot and must not prevent the transition process from beginning.”
According to a TJV News report on Tuesday, the mainstream media is continuing to broadcast to the public that absolutely no evidence of any voter fraud, irregularities, and suspicious activity ever took place in any part of the country, however, the reports are coming in by the minute showing otherwise.
Poll watchers in Wayne County have filed a lawsuit against the City of Detroit and several elections officials alleging widespread voter fraud has been taking place in and around the Detroit elections offices, Gateway Pundit reported.
Filed via the Great Lakes Justice Center for Plaintiffs Cheryl Constantino and Edward McCall, the suit claims that elections officials assigned random ballots to people who had not voted yet, accepted ballots after the deadline, failed to verify signatures and identification of voters, thousands of unsealed and unsecured ballots arrived and were all marked for Biden, officials instructed people to vote for democrats, challenges to ballots were not recorded, and poll watchers were eventually kicked out.
These allegations are backed up by sworn affidavits from multiple individuals who witnessed this rampant disregard for the laws and standards.
A Michigan county has flipped from a win for Democrat Joe Biden to one for President Donald Trump after the discovery of a software glitch and a manual recount.
“Officials with Antrim County posted updated results showing President Trump won the county with 9,783 votes making up 56.46% of ballots cast. Joe Biden earned 7,289 votes or 42.07%,” WLNS-TV reported.
Results in Antrim County published on Wednesday morning showed Biden winning by slightly more than 3,000 votes, with 98 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Detroit Free Press.
(VOA & AP contributed to this report)
