Trump, GOP continue to legally challenge election results, call on media to investigate fraud allegations



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Trump’s campaign and the GOP leadership on Monday continued to raise allegations of voter fraud and misconduct at the polls last week as it moves forward with its legal challenges despite lengthy difficulties given the electoral college count and recent court rulings that have found no evidence of widespread vote fraud.

White Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was joined by Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel at a turbulent Washington DC press conference, argued the presidential election was far from over, despite the major networks and news agencies calling for the race for President-elect Joe Biden.

“We have only started the process of getting an accurate and fair count of the votes,” McEnany said. “Our position is clear: we want to protect the franchise of the American people.”

She added: “We want maximum transparency… We want every legal vote to be counted.”

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McEnany and McDaniel claimed there had been numerous instances of voter fraud and inconsistencies in the vote count last week. They also lamented allegations that Republican election observers were not allowed to observe the counting process.

“We should all be alarmed by this,” McDaniel said before urging members of the media to “interview these people, talk to these people”.

However, neither the Trump campaign nor Republican officials have so far disclosed the names of election observers or election officials who they say have reported incidents in key battlefield states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. .

Trump’s lawyers fought six days after the election on Monday, just as personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani had vowed to do at a surreal weekend press conference outside a landscaping storefront in the North. is from Philadelphia.

Giuliani denounced the city’s vote count – which fell about 4-1 for Biden, giving the Democrat victory on Saturday in Pennsylvania and in the US election – as “extremely disturbing.”

Across the country, Republicans complained about issues with signatures, secret envelopes and postmarks on ballot papers, the inability of their poll observers to review them, and extensions granted for the arrival of the ballots. postal ballots.

However, judges broadly dismissed Republican challenges over the past week as the campaign sought to interrupt the vote count as it leaned towards Biden. Trump has yet to concede the election, even as the former vice president has claimed victory and got to work on his transition plans.

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At the United States Supreme Court, 10 Republican attorneys general filed an amicus brief on Monday in support of a challenge to Pennsylvania’s decision to count the mail-in ballots that arrived until Friday. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had unanimously upheld the three-day extension set by Democratic state officials concerned about postal service delays and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump allies have claimed Democratic lawmakers in battlefield states used the coronavirus pandemic to manipulate the electoral process.

“They took a global pandemic and turned it into a nationwide election epidemic,” McEnany said Monday.

Earlier Monday, a Michigan anti-abortion legal center filed a lawsuit complaining about the counting procedures in Wayne County. A Michigan appeals court, meanwhile, has asked the Trump campaign to remand a case submitted last week, saying the appeal was incomplete.

And in Arizona, the Trump campaign asked in a lawsuit filed on Saturday for the right to inspect thousands of in-person ballots filled out on election day in the Phoenix area, alleging that polling officers mismanaged them.

In Georgia, where Biden has a small lead over Trump but the race remains too early to be called, a state elections official on Monday pledged to investigate any polling issue he finds.

Despite these efforts, Trump’s aides and allies have privately acknowledged that legal battles will – at best – prevent the inevitable, and some have deep reservations about the president’s attempts to undermine confidence in the vote. But they said Trump and a group of allies were aiming to keep his staunch supporter base on his side even when defeated.

Election fraud is extremely rare, and when it does occur, people are usually arrested and prosecuted and it does not change the outcome of the election. Typically, this is someone who wishes to honor the wishes of a loved one who has recently passed away and knowingly or unknowingly commits a crime by filling out this ballot.

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Trump’s own administration rebuffed allegations of widespread electoral fraud and illegal voting, although it did not mention that Trump was the one making the allegations. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal agency that oversees election security in the United States, also noted that local election offices have detection measures that “make it very difficult to fraud through fake ballots.” .

Senior election officials from the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada – Republicans and Democrats – all said they saw no widespread voting irregularities, major cases of fraud or illegal activity.

While some Republican lawmakers have accepted that Biden won the election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not congratulate the president-elect on his projected victory and argued that Trump was “100% in. his rights ”to question election results and consider legal options.

The Republican leader’s remarks, his first public comments since Biden was declared the presidential winner, come as Trump allies on Capitol Hill have hesitated to praise Biden or push the president to accept the result.

McConnell said the process would unfold and “come to a conclusion.”

“Our institutions are actually built for this,” McConnell said as he opened the Senate. “We have the system in place to address concerns and President Trump is 100% within his rights to review allegations of wrongdoing and weigh his legal options.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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