Trump and his allies still reject election defeat

WASHINGTON (AP) – Monday appeared to be the end of President Donald Trump’s relentless election challenges, after the federal government recognized President-elect Joe Biden as the “apparent winner” and Trump paved the way for cooperation for a transition of power.

But his baseless claims have a way to come back. And back. And back.

On Thursday, after a White House Thanksgiving evening conversation with troops stationed overseas, Trump abruptly turned to angrily allege – still without any evidence – that “massive fraud” was behind his defeat.

Speaking to media teams gathered to watch the traditional holiday conversation with the military, Trump denounced officials from the battlefield states he had lost as “communists” and “enemies of the state” . Trump has also announced he will travel to Georgia to meet with what he said are tens of thousands of supporters on December 5, ahead of two second rounds that will likely determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate.

The 2020 presidential race turns into a zombie election Trump just won’t let die. Despite dozens of legal and procedural setbacks, his campaign continues to present new challenges that have little hope of success and make new allegations of unsubstantiated fraud.

But that’s the point. Trump’s strategy, his allies privately concede, was not to change the outcome, but to create a host of phantom claims about the 2020 presidential race that would infect the country with doubt and keep its base loyal, even if the winner – Biden – was clear and there was no evidence of massive voter fraud.

“Zombies are the walking dead among the living – this litigation is the same,” said Franita Tolson, a professor at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California. “In terms of litigation that could change the election, all of these cases are basically dead men walking.”

It’s a strategy tolerated by many Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who clings to Trump as they face a test to retain their own power in the form of two second round elections in Georgia in January.

“This is really our version of a polite coup,” said Thomas Mann, senior researcher at the Institute for Government Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. “It could end quickly if the Republican Party recognizes what is going on. But they curl up in the face of Trump’s connection to the base.

A day after Trump said his administration should start working with Biden’s team, three more lawsuits were brought by allies trying to stop certification in two other battlefield states. In Minnesota, judge did not rule on lawsuit, state certified results for Biden. Another was filed in Wisconsin, which does not certify until Tuesday. Arizona Republicans have filed a complaint regarding the inspection of the ballots; state certification is due Monday.

And the campaign’s legal team said lawmakers in the states of Arizona and Michigan would hold election meetings “to ensure that all legal votes have been counted and that illegal votes have not been counted. not counted in the November 3 elections ”.

In Pennsylvania, where Republican state lawmakers gathered in Gettysburg on Wednesday to voice their grievances over the election, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was in person and Trump called from the Oval Office.

“We have all the evidence,” Trump said. “All we need is a judge to listen to it properly without having a political opinion.”

But the strongest legal rebuke yet came from a conservative Republican judge in Pennsylvania federal court, who on Saturday dismissed the Trump team’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results. The judge warned the Trump campaign in a scathing decision over its lack of evidence. The campaign seduced.

Trump’s allies privately acknowledged their plan would never reverse the results, but could instead provide Trump with an exit for a loss he didn’t own and a way to keep his base loyal for what he does next.

“And then our government and our politics will be hellish because it will continue to do what it does from its own perch,” Mann predicted.

Emily Murphy, Senior General Service Administration Officer, Biden declared the “apparent winner” on Monday, a procedural but critical step that allowed the transition to begin in earnest. She made the decision after Trump’s efforts to reverse the vote in battlefield states failed. She cited “recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results.

Michigan certified Biden’s 154,000 point win on Monday, despite Trump’s calls for GOP members to block the vote in order to allow an audit of ballots in Wayne County, where Trump has claimed to have been a victim of fraud. Biden crushed the president by more than 330,000 votes.

“The duty of the council today is very clear,” said Aaron Van Langevelde, Republican vice president. “We have a duty to certify this choice on the basis of these declarations.”

Still, Trump’s legal team dismissed the certification as “just a procedural step” and insisted it fight.

Trump and his allies have brought at least four cases to Michigan that sought – unsuccessfully – to block certification of election results in all or part of the state.

In Pennsylvania, after Gov. Tom Wolf certified Biden as the winner, an appeals court judge ordered state officials to suspend any further steps toward certifying election results. The state appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In Arizona, just as a Phoenix-area woman’s attorneys dropped a case alleging the equipment was unable to record her ballot because she had completed it with a Sharpie pen issued by the county, the Trump campaign filed its own complaint echoing some of the same complaints. As this action was on the verge of being dismissed, the woman’s lawyers filed a new case reviving the claims and demanding that she be allowed to recast her ballot. All three cases have now been closed.

“The legal process appears to be going as planned, but the Trump campaign has made it clear its willingness to throw keys in the system wherever it can,” said Lisa Marshall Manheim, professor at the University of Law School of Law. Washington.

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Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press writers Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota contributed to this report.