Mbabane: The Washington Post has reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans on Monday backed President Trump’s efforts to contest his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, despite the lack of evidence of significant fraud and sharp rebukes from election officials who defended the integrity of the vote.
McConnell said Trump is “100 percent within his right” to pursue recounts and litigation. McConnell did not repeat Trump’s baseless assertions that fraud had cost him the election, but said he had met with Attorney General William P. Barr earlier in the day and supports the president’s right to investigate all claims of wrongdoing.
“We have the tools and institutions we need to address any concerns,” McConnell said, adding that Trump has every right to look into allegations and request recounts under the law.
Separately, Barr on Monday gave federal prosecutors a green light to pursue allegations of voting irregularities in certain cases before results are certified. The memo appeared to reverse previous Justice Department guidance that prosecutors generally should not take overt steps in cases involving alleged voter fraud until results are in and official.
Meanwhile, other GOP officials also rushed to bolster Trump’s case, including the two U.S. senators from Georgia, who demanded the resignation of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, after his office said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the state.
And the general Republican attorneys of about a dozen states threw their support behind a legal effort pending before the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out mail ballots in Pennsylvania that were received after Election Day — a small number of votes that state officials said would not be enough to change the outcome.
Also, a handful of congressional Republicans called on President Trump to produce evidence of widespread election fraud after Trump baselessly claimed he had won.
Behind the scenes, Trump advisers and allies are increasingly resigned to a Biden victory, according to people familiar with internal discussions, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private conversations.
But few so far are actively discouraging the president or his campaign from pursuing all legal paths to contest the results. Only a smattering of Republican senators have acknowledged Biden’s victory, and there has been little coaxing on the part of senior GOP lawmakers to help Trump come to terms with his loss. Some said there is value in ensuring the integrity of this year’s results, while others described a chaotic and scattershot operation that they hoped would eventually push Trump to cooperate in a peaceful transfer of power.
Deflated president
As a result, two starkly different tones prevailed throughout the day. Inside the White House, aides described a deflated president aware of the difficulty of reversing the outcome and even declaring plans to run again in 2024. But publicly, Trump fired off tweet after combative tweet asserting without evidence that results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada had been illegally rigged against him. And his campaign announced at least one new federal lawsuit, in Pennsylvania, seeking to block state officials from certifying the results.
“Pennsylvania prevented us from watching much of the Ballot count,” Trump tweeted despite extensive reporting, and some live feeds.
Since Election Day, the Trump campaign and GOP allies have made claims of election irregularities in six states where Biden holds the lead in the vote count. But they have yet to prove any widespread fraud and have largely suffered defeat in courts.
Here are the GOP and Trump campaign’s allegations of election irregularities. So far, none has been proved, reported the Washington Post.
And much of the legal activity Monday recycled previously dismissed allegations. The new Pennsylvania suit filed by the Trump campaign alleged — again — that some counties had improperly allowed voters to fix problems on mail ballots, a claim that was thrown out last week. It also falsely claimed that observers were not allowed to watch the processing and counting of ballots.
Trump aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly, said there was little expectation inside the campaign that litigation would overturn Biden’s win — and said advisers have told Trump this directly. But they also said the campaign will pursue the cases to their conclusions, in part to sustain an argument about the risk of voter fraud. The campaign has also urged allies to publicly encourage people to report evidence or firsthand accounts of suspicious voter activity. –
Source – The Washington Post
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