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- The Russian government will not recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 U.S. election, the Kremlin spokesman said Monday morning.
- “Legal proceedings are ongoing,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement. “We believe the right thing to do is wait for the official election result.”
- Biden was declared the winner of the presidential race by Insider on Friday and other media outlets the next day.
- But President Donald Trump refused to concede the election, making false claims of widespread voter fraud and rigging.
- Trump’s campaign has also filed a wave of lawsuits in battlefield states, although legal experts say they are unlikely to overturn the results.
- Biden’s projected victory is bad news for Russia, which meddled in the 2016 and 2020 races in Trump’s favor, the U.S. intelligence community has determined.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
The Russian government will not recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 US election, the Kremlin spokesman said Monday morning.
“Legal proceedings are ongoing,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement. “We think the right thing to do is to wait for the official election result.”
Biden is expected to win at least 279 electoral votes with victories in battlefield states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all won by President Donald Trump in the 2016 election. The number needed to clinch the presidency is 270 .
Although Biden is the expected winner of the election, the results are not certified until the second Monday after the second Wednesday in December, which is December 14. On that day, constituencies will meet in all 50 states and Washington, DC, and voters will officially vote for president and vice president. The vote count will be finalized and the results certified on January 6 at 1 p.m. ET.
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, refused to concede the election, filing a wave of lawsuits in at least five battlefield states to challenge the results.
Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani have circulated false allegations of widespread electoral fraud, rigging and a plot between the Democratic Party and the “mainstream” to tip the race in favor of Biden. Trump also falsely declared himself the winner shortly after polling day, even though millions of ballots had yet to be counted.
There is no empirical evidence or data to suggest that the election was rigged against Trump or that widespread electoral fraud occurred.
None of the campaign’s many lawsuits reported electoral fraud or electoral conspiracy; instead, they focus on postponing the counting of the ballots or rejecting a small number of ballots in states that would have no effect on the end result due to the victory margins of Biden.
Overall, as Business Insider previously reported, this election was among the safest and most secure in part due to the use of paper ballots and voting machines with verifiable paper traces.
Paul Nakasone, the director of the National Security Agency, also said there was less foreign interference this time around than there was halfway through 2018.
That said, the United States was bracing for foreign interference in the electoral process after the race winner was screened, especially if it took a few days to call the results, Nakasone said last month.
The New York Times also reported that officials believe Russia will step in to help Trump in part by “exacerbating disputes over the outcome.”
The U.S. intelligence community has determined that Russia waged an organized and elaborate campaign to interfere in the 2016 election in order to propel the then-Republican candidate Trump to the Oval Office. Over the summer, the intelligence community concluded that Russia was meddling with Trump again.
The majority of world leaders praised Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for winning the election. But Putin and other nationalist strongmen, like China’s Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory.
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