An Arizona state judge said he will issue a written ruling Thursday in the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit against Maricopa County, as he expressed skepticism in a case that could delay the state’s certification of ballots.
On Wednesday, the judge heard oral arguments in the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit against the recorder of Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state, which alleges the Secretary of State’s manual violated state law because its hand count of a random sampling of ballots was conducted based on polling places, not precincts.
Judge John Hannah expressed skepticism of the arguments made by a lawyer for the party, pointing out that an audit already found no errors. “How is this re-audit that you’re advocating for going to make a difference in the outcome of the election or create any type of tangible difference in the real world?” the judge asked a lawyer for the party, John Wilenchik.
When Wilenchik replied that “if there were to be some hacking of machines, it would be done by precinct,” the judge questioned him, saying, “What evidence is there of that?”
An attorney for the county, Joseph LaRue, said the party waited too long — until Nov. 12 — to file its lawsuit, given that it was aware as early as 2012 of the wording of the Secretary of State’s election procedures manual. “Waiting a few days to file a lawsuit isn’t a big deal in most litigation, but it is in election litigation,” LaRue said.
The county’s deadline for certifying ballots is Monday and a delay, LaRue has said, could impact the state’s ability to meet the Electoral College deadline. The state certification deadline is Nov. 30. The Electoral College votes on Dec. 14.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will meet virtually with the bipartisan National Governors Association’s executive committee in Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday.
CNN previously reported that Biden would participate in the call, which is expected to focus on the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden and Harris will deliver remarks after the meeting, according to the transition team.
Republicans continue to be divided about when the transition period to a Joe Biden presidency should officially begin.
“Let me just say, the transition work should begin,” said Sen. Pat Toomey.
Sen. Kevin Cramer said President Trump’s legal challenges are a “worthwhile pursuit,” but added, “It’s certainly likely he’s not going to be sworn in as president.”
Cramer said he spoke to Trump for a few minutes on Nov. 10, and Trump told him, “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll see what happens in a few years.”
Cramer added that as Trump pursues his legal remedies, “I think GSA (General Services Administration) and whoever else should help facilitate the transition.”
When asked if the GSA should sign off on the requisite paperwork, Sen. Ted Cruz, like other Republicans, said, “The legal process needs to conclude first. The results of the election are being contested and we have courts of law to resolve legal and factual issues of that nature.”
Georgia plans to announce the results of the statewide audit around noon on Thursday, said Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting systems implementation manager.
The Secretary of State plans to post county-by-county tallies with a timestamp, so the public can view the results of the audit.
Sterling said that the state has finished auditing virtually all ballots from the presidential race. About 5 million Georgians voted, and President-elect Joe Biden won by about 13,000 votes. Election officials have said the audit hasn’t found widespread fraud and will affirm Biden’s win.
Watch Jake Tapper’s interview with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for more:
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, urged the President to allow President-elect Joe Biden to receive classified intelligence briefings on Wednesday, as Trump continues to wage legal challenges in an attempt to delay the certification of election results.
Asked to respond to concerns about whether Biden was being briefed adequately on vaccine efforts by the Trump administration, Graham responded, “you know, the President is contesting the election, and I would urge him to give intel briefings to Biden.”
He did not say whether he had personally spoken with the President on the matter.
Last week, Graham said he thought Biden should be receiving intelligence briefings. He told CNN he had not expressed his thoughts with the White House but said, “I hope so,” when asked if he expects Biden to get the briefings soon.
President-elect Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration for failing to ascertain the election so his transition could receive access to necessary information to be prepared to tackle the pandemic beginning on day one.
During a roundtable with frontline workers, Biden cited as one example that his team does not know the depths of the personal protective equipment stockpiles and noted that the sharing of information is critical to vaccine implementation and distribution.
He added, “So I just want to tell you that that’s the only slow down right now that we have.”
Remember: Trump has refused to concede the race and blocked his administration from taking any of the administrative steps typically taken in a transfer of power.
This includes allowing the General Services Administration to declare that there is a president-elect — a move that triggers the transition process.
Watch the moment:
President-elect Joe Biden grew emotional, wiping away a tear after hearing an intensive care unit nurse describe her experience on the frontlines battling Covid-19.
Mary Turner, head of the Minnesota Nurses Association, recounted that she has held the hands of dying patients who cried out for family members they weren’t able to see, and that she has taken care of co-workers who fought for their lives on a ventilator.
Turner said that the nurses in her unit have had to reuse N-95s many times to the point that “sometimes the masks literally fall off our faces.”
After noting that she has yet to be tested for Covid-19, Biden spoke for the first time, interjecting, “You’re kidding me.”
As she finished, Turner apologized for being emotional, to which Biden replied, “No, you got me emotional.”
Watch Minnesota nurse Mary Turner describe her life as a frontline worker:
Officials on Joe Biden’s campaign expressed on a press call Wednesday afternoon that they believe the Georgia recount will finish today and that it will affirm Biden’s victory in the state.
Moore noted that while there have been a handful of discrepancies in the totals, this is normal.
“These developments are entirely consistent with what you would see in any full hand recount,” he said. “Because human error happens, the administration of elections is complicated, but through diligence it’s uncovered and addressed. And that’s exactly what has happened here.”
He added, “We continue to agree with the secretary of state that there is no reason to believe that any widespread irregularity has occurred.”
Marc Elias, an election expert, addressed the last pending lawsuit filed last week which called for a temporary restraining order, calling it “frivolous.” He added, like he said last week, that this was a bipartisan agreement that was struck between his clients.
Asked if they’ve considered any other routes the Trump campaign might pursue following certification, Elias dismissed the possibility.
“There isn’t any amount of recounting of these ballots that’s going to change [that Joe Biden won.] All it’s going to do is waste the taxpayers money of Georgia,” he said.
President-elect Joe Biden tested negative for coronavirus today.
“President- elect Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected,” Biden’s office said.
Biden is currently participating in a virtual roundtable with frontline health care workers.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said staff will not work with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team until the General Services Administration makes a determination that Biden is the President-elect.
Azar said that many people involved in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Operation Warp Speed team are “career officials” and not impacted by a change in leadership.
The Biden transition team has yet to be briefed on the pandemic and has not been given full access to information from agencies on vaccine distribution plans.
President-elect Joe Biden is participating in a virtual roundtable with frontline health care workers in Wilmington, Delaware.
The event comes as the US nears 250,000 coronavirus deaths and cases continue to surge across the country.
At least 1,707 new Covid-19 deaths were reported Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That’s the highest daily death toll since May 14.
Biden’s transition has moved to tackle the pandemic and announced a team of coronavirus advisers.
Another memory card with uncounted votes was discovered during Georgia’s statewide audit, giving a small boost to President-elect Joe Biden, a top election official told reporters on Wednesday.
Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting systems implementation manager, said local officials in Douglas County, just west of Atlanta, “forgot to upload” results from one memory card on Election Day.
The memory card had 156 votes for Biden, 128 votes for President Trump, and seven votes for Libertarian nominee Joe Jorgenson, Sterling said. That slight edge for Biden in this latest batch puts his statewide lead at 12,781 votes, with almost the entire audit completed, Sterling said.
“We are down to the tens-of-thousands of ballots left to go,” Sterling said, adding that his still expects to meet the self-imposed deadline of midnight tonight. That would give state officials enough time and certify the official results of the election by Friday, as required by state law.
The audit previously turned up three batches of uncounted votes, from Walton County, Fayette County and Floyd County, and those batches netted about 1,000 votes for Trump. Officials have stressed that these mishaps were caused by human error and are not indicative of vote-rigging or widespread fraud.
Sterling continued to rebut Trump’s claims of fraud, as he has done nearly every day this week.
“The President’s tweets basically targeting fraudulent votes is a little ironic because he has actually gained votes from this process. I hope people will go to trusted sources like the election county directors or the secretary of state site to get real information of how the system works and what we are doing to protect everybody’s vote in the state,” Sterling said during the news conference.
Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that the Georgia audit previously turned up two batches of uncounted votes from Fayette County and Floyd County. The previous audit resulted in three batches of uncounted votes, including from Walton County.
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is reacting to the Trump campaign seeking a partial recount in Wisconsin, arguing that it will not change the results and calling Biden’s victory “clear and resounding.”
“A cherry-picked and selective recounting of Milwaukee and Dane County will not change these results. Election officials worked extremely hard under unprecedented circumstances to ensure all votes were counted quickly and accurately, and the recount demanded and paid for by the Trump campaign will once again confirm Joe Biden’s victory,” he added.
Earlier: A Trump campaign official told CNN they will seek a limited recount of some Wisconsin counties, but the official declined to identify the counties. The campaign needs to officially request the recount, and pay an upfront fee, by 5 p.m. CT.
Wisconsin election officials confirmed on Wednesday that they received a partial payment of $3 million from the Trump campaign. These officials said last week that the price tag for a statewide recount would be approximately $7.9 million.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham acknowledged on Wednesday he is not seeking an investigation into states that President Trump won, telling CNN that that “they are not in question” so it isn’t an issue for him.
“We’re looking at states where there’s a contest,” Graham said. “I’m not looking at states that he lost. I’m looking at states where there’s a challenge.”
Graham has previously said he’s reviewed the voting practices of Georgia, Arizona and Nevada to learn about whether any changes needed to be made to verify ballots sent by mail. He continued to defend his effort on Wednesday.
Graham also told reporters this when asked about Trump’s lie that he won Michigan.
Asked if he’s okay with counties refusing to certify the election results, Graham said: “If they had a reason not to certify it, I’d be okay with it, but apparently they did.”
The day after President Trump terminated a top election security official who had pushed back on his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, Senate Republicans defended the President’s right to fire CISA’s Chris Krebs, while continuing to cast doubt on the integrity of the election.
Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham told reporters on Wednesday it was Trump’s “right” to fire Krebs, adding that he didn’t think there was any foreign election interference.
“Now there may be some irregularities at the state level, but I believe that this election was secure when it came to foreign influence,” Graham said. His comments come as the South Carolina Republican has been probing officials in states won by Joe Biden about mail-in voting, drawing much scrutiny over whether his actions were appropriate and whether he pressured states to discard legally cast ballots.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said it’s ultimately up to Trump to decide who he wants in his administration, but “from everything I saw it appeared that [Krebs] did an able job in a difficult important role.”
Last night, Cruz’s colleagues Sens. Ben Sasse and Rob Portman also defended Krebs’s work, but explicitly said they believed he should not have been fired.
Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana said he didn’t think Krebs’s firing was an act of retaliation by the President, even though Trump directly tied it in his tweet to the top election security official publicly defending the integrity of election amid claims of fraud.
“Vice President Biden is talking about unifying the country. I don’t think that’s possible until you overturn every stone out there because I think it should be in the best interest of all Americans to make sure there aren’t any irregularities in a process that’s so sacred to all of us,” Braun said.
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in this election.
Speaking broadly of the President’s many controversial firings of administration officials, Braun said “I don’t follow all of that.”
Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney publicly railed against the campaign’s use of Rudy Giuliani in election litigation in blistering remarks Wednesday.
“This is not a television program, this is the real thing,” Mulvaney said, adding that was “struck by some things” Giuliani said in a Pennsylvania court Tuesday.
He continued, “On one hand, I think it needs to go forward, it absolutely does, but I wish that it was being prosecuted a little more efficiently.”
Mulvaney was also asked to speculate on a Biden Cabinet, suggesting there would be a mix of centrists and progressives. He later called it a “potential Biden Cabinet,” adding the “if Biden is inaugurated” caveat.
A Trump campaign official told CNN they will seek a limited recount of some Wisconsin counties, but the official declined to identify the counties. The campaign needs to officially request the recount, any pay an upfront fee, by 5 p.m. CT.
Wisconsin election officials confirmed on Wednesday that they received a partial payment of $3 million from the Trump campaign. These officials said last week that the price tag for a statewide recount would be approximately $7.9 million.
Where the numbers stand: CNN projected that President-elect Joe Biden will win Wisconsin. According to unofficial results, Biden leads Trump by 20,470 votes, or 0.62%. Trump has refused to concede and instead has promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
Counties that undergo a recount will have 13 days to recount all their votes, starting on Thursday, according to procedures announced by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The commission must certify the final results by Dec. 1.
Remember: Experts say it’s extremely unlikely that the recounts will shift enough votes to overturn Biden’s lead of 20,470 votes. In 2016, a recount requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein ended up increasing Trump’s margin by just 131 votes.
Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, was reelected House Majority Whip, retaining the third-in-line leadership post.
Clyburn ran unopposed for the position.
He also served as Majority Whip between 2007 and 2011.
The House Democratic Leadership will remain largely unchanged in the upcoming Congress, with Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn retaining the top spots.
Assistant Speaker is the only leadership position that has two candidates running: Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island.
Georgia is on a “good schedule right now” to finish an audit of the presidential election by Wednesday and thus certify its results by Friday, a top state voting official says, and the vast majority of counties are reporting results that are “spot dead on” to the initial tallies or finding only minor discrepancies.
Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting systems implementation manager, said Tuesday there are only approximately 300,000 ballots left to be hand-counted in Georgia out of the nearly 5 million cast in the presidential election.
Meanwhile, election officials from 29 counties across Georgia told CNN that they had already completed their audits and found no discrepancies with the results — further discrediting President Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the state.
The state is required by law to certify its results by Friday, which would thwart long-shot efforts by Trump to delay certification and potentially overturn the results of the state’s election through the Electoral College.
What comes next: After the results are certified, the Trump campaign can request an official recount. Sterling said that the state of Georgia has already procured high-speed ballot scanners for all 159 counties to use in the event a recount is requested.
The President has repeatedly made unfounded allegations of fraud following his election defeat on Nov. 3, and his campaign has launched legal challenges in multiple states seeking to prevent certification of results.
Nancy Pelosi was reelected to lead Democrats in the House during virtual elections that took place Wednesday.
“Congratulations to. @SpeakerPelosi, once again elected by House Democrats to be our fearless leader and nominee for Speaker of the House for the 117th Congress! #DownWithNDP #ForThePeople,” the House Democrats account tweeted.
A full House floor vote for the speakership won’t take place until the new Congress is sworn in.
The fact that Pelosi is expected to remain on as speaker is a sign of how strong her hold is over House Democrats even after they suffered disappointing losses in the 2020 elections.
Top House Democrats had confidently predicted they would expand their majority only to instead see a number of incumbents ousted by Republicans, who are now emboldened and on the offensive, though they are still in the minority.
Those Democratic losses have sparked tense infighting among moderates and progressives with both factions of the party pointing fingers and casting blame. That rift, and a smaller majority, may create new challenges for Pelosi as she leads House Democrats in the next Congress.
Pelosi has remained defiant even after the losses, telling reporters last week, “I take credit for winning a majority and holding the House.”
Pelosi is expected to hold a presser at 12:30 p.m. ET to discuss the leadership.
