Georgia has finished its statewide audit of the razor-thin presidential race, according to a news release from the Secretary of State’s office.
President-elect Joe Biden beat President Trump by 12,284 votes, according to the final results from the audit. This is a slight drop for Biden compared to the pre-audit results.
Georgia plans to certify Biden’s victory on Friday.
Officials have said repeatedly that the audit confirmed there was no widespread fraud or irregularities in the election.
More on the results: According to the final results of the audit, Biden finished with 2,475,141 votes and Trump finished with 2,462,857 votes. That gives Biden a victory of 12,284 votes over the President.
A report released by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said, “The audit confirmed the original result of the election, namely that Joe Biden won the Presidential Contest in the State of Georgia.”
Raffensberger, a Republican who has been attacked by Trump for refusing to embrace conspiracy theories about fraud, said the audit uncovered “mistakes” but said the results can be trusted.
Watch CNN’s Erin Burnett and Amara Walker report:
Carlos Elizondo is expected to be named as White House social secretary tomorrow, a transition official said.
Elizondo worked in the Obama administration as social secretary for then-Vice President Joe Biden and second lady Jill Biden. He will be only the second man to serve as White House social secretary and will inherit a unique dynamic as the White House adapts its activities to the age of coronavirus.
Elizondo is expected to be among the White House officials announced tomorrow.
Elizondo also lends more diversity as the third Latino to be named to the East Wing. Earlier in the week, Anthony Bernal was named as a senior adviser to Jill Biden and Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon was tapped as her chief of staff.
President-elect Joe Biden has expedited the selection of his Cabinet and is planning to make the first of several key announcements next week, an official said, as part of a concerted effort to show that he is moving forward despite President Trump’s increasingly brazen attempts to sabotage the election.
Today, Biden said he has settled on his choice for Treasury secretary, but officials said he’s also reached a decision – or on the cusp of doing so – on other critical Cabinet posts, a few of which are expected to be announced before Thanksgiving. Monday and Tuesday are being eyed as tentative days for the first introductions of members of Biden’s Cabinet, an official said, with others coming later.
Lael Brainard, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, is seen as the top contender to lead the Treasury Department. If selected, she would become the first woman Treasury secretary, a move that would help Biden to start to deliver on his pledge to name a diverse Cabinet. But three officials close to the Biden transition declined to say whether Brainard was the final choice, saying it is a closely-held decision that Biden would likely reveal right after Thanksgiving.
But Biden could announce his choice for Secretary of State as soon as next week, officials said, along with another Cabinet post.
While Biden is well-known for his deliberate and often slow decision-making, particularly on personnel matters, the timeline of some Cabinet decisions is being accelerated because of a desire to move quickly to form a new government in the wake of Trump’s intransigence about the election. Biden had talked with his advisers about taking a far slower approach, including waiting for the outcome of the Georgia Senate run-offs that will determine control of the Senate, but Trump’s actions have motivated Biden to move without delay.
“There is a desire to convey that we are governing, operating and up and running,” an official close to the transition said, explaining the urgency facing Biden’s team in the wake of Trump’s antics.
It’s been only a week since Ron Klain was named White House chief of staff, but that decision jumpstarted movement inside the Biden team. And Jeff Zients, a co-chair of the transition, has been working for months on a variety of options for Biden to make about top personnel decisions.
Biden has been interviewing prospective Cabinet members virtually, with one or two exceptions, officials said, as serious steps are being taken to safeguard his health in light of the surging cases of coronavirus.
In an interview on The Situation Room on Thursday night, Klain said that more White House staff announcements would be made on Friday. Those posts are expected to be for the Office of Legislative Affairs and the Presidential Personnel Office, CNN has learned, in addition to White House social secretary.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, is under consideration to lead the Department of Defense, officials said, a decision that would be historic. Not only is Duckworth a decorated veteran, but also would be the first woman to serve as Defense secretary. Michèle Flournoy, who served in key defense roles in the Clinton and Obama administrations, is also a leading contender for the post.
“This is all expedited more than we thought it would be,” an official said, noting that Biden was projected as the winner less than two weeks ago.
A federal judge in Georgia has rejected a bold election lawsuit of a Republican elector, Lin Wood, who had alleged in court constitutional violations, perceived fraud in the presidential election, and sought to block the certification of election results.
“There’s no doubt an individual’s right to vote is sacrosanct,” Steven Grimberg in the Northern District of Georgia said Thursday evening. But, that “does not mean individual voters have the right to dictate” how votes are cast or decided to be counted. “It’s not for the courts to meddle with” processes set by the states.
The Georgia decision was the third against Republicans just on Thursday with judges in Arizona and Pennsylvania also rejecting election-related lawsuits from Republicans and the Trump campaign.
Wood’s attorney indicated earlier today he may want to try for a second round before the judge, representing the Trump campaign as it seeks to block a Biden win. But Grimberg’s ruling on Thursday, spoken from the bench, shuts down new rounds of lawsuits in multiple ways.
Grimberg decided that the elector in Georgia didn’t have the ability to show he could bring a case, didn’t have an avenue in court under the law, and had sued far too late to affect the election.
“I didn’t hear any justification for why the plaintiff delayed bringing this claim until two weeks after this election and on the cusp of these election results being certified,” Grimberg, a Trump appointee, said Thursday evening. Absentee ballot counting in Georgia, that Republicans were challenging in the lawsuit, started months ago, he noted.
A state judge in Pennsylvania has rejected an attempt by the Trump campaign to throw out more than 2,000 absentee ballots for technical reasons, adding to several losses the campaign has faced in the last week as it tries to contest votes in heavily Democratic counties.
The Trump campaign has made several attempts to do throw out absentee ballots in Pennsylvania courts and Judge Robert Baldi of the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas on Thursday ruled that throwing out the absentee ballots would disenfranchise voters.
The case was not among those where the Trump campaign has alleged fraud. Instead, the campaign had argued the state should enforce rules about when absentee ballots should or should not be counted, taking issue with 2,177 ballots in Bucks County that were in an unsealed privacy envelop or lacked handwritten dates, names or addresses on their outer envelopes
Those ballots will be counted, Baldi ordered.
The Trump campaign has lost several similar bids attacking small numbers of absentee ballots in two other counties.
Baldi, in his opinion on Thursday, made clear fraud was not an issue.
“There is nothing in the record and nothing alleged that would lead to the conclusion that any of the challenged ballots were submitted by someone not qualified or entitled to vote in this election,” he wrote. “At no time did Petitioners present evidence or argument to the contrary.”
Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs tells CNN that their office estimates that they will be ready to share the results of their statewide audit before 6 p.m. tonight.
That is the state’s latest estimate, but as today has shown, this process can be prone to delays.
The audit results were expected to come out earlier today. Fuchs said the delay today was caused by one county that realized they had some ballots that still hadn’t been audited yet.
Fuchs added, “we estimate it will be before 6 p.m.”
Two of Georgia’s largest counties outside of Atlanta — Cobb and Gwinnett counties — both uploaded their results of the hand-recount before noon today, as planned, officials told CNN.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Thursday that President Trump’s calls to the Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers was “improper.”
“I do think it’s certainly improper for any candidate on either side of the aisle to try to interfere with which is a very proper but administrative function of the Board of Canvassers,” Benson told CNN. “There’s no legal or factual basis to question their choice.”
Benson, a Democrat, suggested that Trump’s call influenced the Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, saying after the call, “I think we certainly saw a reversal of change of course.” After the phone calls, the two Republicans announced that they wanted to rescind their votes to certify the results.
Benson called Trump’s invitation to Michigan Republican legislators “at the very least improper,” but added, “I also have a lot of faith in those on both sides of the aisle of our leaders here in Michigan to fulfill the role, the role that they’ve already said they will fulfill under the law to affirm the will of the people and ensure that the votes that have been counted as valid will be in our official canvass that is approved by the State Board of Canvassers on Monday.”
When presented with Trump’s latest tweet stating that he won Michigan by CNN’s Brooke Baldwin, Benson strayed from saying directly that Trump lost but did say, “that’s certainly what the data shows.”
“Candidates don’t get to decide who wins elections, voters do and in this case the voters of the state of Michigan have spoken,” outlining Biden’s at least 150,000 lead over Trump in the state.
Watch:
President-elect Joe Biden vowed today that he would not shut down the economy as the US continues to struggle under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden added: “No national shutdown, because every region, every area, every community can be different. And so there’s no circumstance which I can see that would require total national shutdown. I think that would be counterproductive.”
Watch the moment:
Joe Biden said that he and his team have made the decision about who will serve as Treasury secretary in his administration, telling reporters that they’ll hear his choice “soon” — either before or shortly after Thanksgiving.
“You’ll find it is someone that will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic party — from the progressive and the moderate coalitions,” he said.
Read more about who could serve in top roles of the Biden-Harris administration here.
President-elect Joe Biden met with a group of 10 different governors today to discuss a litany of issues they are facing due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Among the issues discussed was getting governors economic relief because the pandemic has been “devastating” to state budgets, Biden said this afternoon during a news conference in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden also discussed the need to provide a safe and free coronavirus vaccine, which will also require a “massive public education campaign,” he added.
The third and fourth items discussed with the governors was National Guard funding and the implementation of a national mask mandate.
“Ten governors, Democrat and Republican, have imposed masking requirements and recognized the need for universal masking, north, south, east and west. It’s not a political statement. It’s a patriotic duty,” Biden said.
The last area of discussion was on Covid-19 testing, which needs to be more available and accessible, Biden added.
Watch Biden describe the meeting held with governors:
##Transition#
President-elect Joe Biden kept the coronavirus pandemic front and center during a news conference this afternoon from Wilmington, Delaware.
Some context: Biden’s remarks come just hours after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans should not travel for Thanksgiving.
“CDC is recommending against travel during the Thanksgiving Day period,” Dr. Henry Walke, Covid-19 incident manager for the CDC, told reporters in a conference call.
Biden held a virtual meeting with a bipartisan group of governors earlier today to talk about the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the pool, the list of governors that attended the virtual meeting included:
Watch:
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris vowed that she and President-elect Joe Biden would provide the resources needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Harris added, “That’s the kind of leadership the American people need and deserve, and it’s the kind of leadership President-elect Biden and I will provide.”
An Arizona state judge threw out the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit seeking a broader audit of votes cast on Election Day which county lawyers warned could have delayed the state’s certification of ballots.
In a brief order, the judge dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice and denied the Arizona Republican Party’s request to amend its complaint. He also denied the party’s request for an injunction to block Maricopa County from certifying the election results.
The judge said a fuller order explaining the decision will follow.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday, according to a transition official.
This will be the first in-person meeting for Biden, Pelosi and Schumer since he won the election.
Bloomberg was the first to report the news.
Joe Biden’s campaign called the fact-free press conference held by Rudy Giuliani and President Trump’s legal team earlier today, a “spectacle” that exposed the “absurdity of the President’s thoroughly discredited claims of voter fraud.”
The roughly 90-minute briefing, led by Giuliani, was overflowing with falsehoods and conspiracy theories as the President’s legal team laid out its case for widespread voter fraud in the election.
At no point did Trump’s legal team offer any proof for their allegations of widespread fraud.
Many of their specific claims have already been refuted by federal election security experts and a wide, bipartisan array of election administrators across the country.
“No matter how hard Trump and the flailing Giuliani try, they cannot overturn the will of the American people, who resoundingly picked Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States,” Biden spokesperson Mike Gwin said in a statement.
The full statement from Gwin says:
You can read a fact-check of Giuliani and the Trump legal team’s wild press conference here.
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is under consideration to lead the Department of Transportation in President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, people familiar with the matter say, a move that could return the former Illinois congressman and White House chief of staff in the Obama administration back to Washington.
Emanuel has expressed his interest in the post, telling allies that the nation’s infrastructure challenges are so dire that an experienced person from the executive and legislative branch would be an asset.
Yet his record in Chicago could be a major hurdle to confirmation, particularly among progressives, considering the city’s crime rate and the police shooting of Laquan McDonald, which is the leading reason he did not seek a third term as mayor.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris delivered brief opening remarks to reporters ahead of their virtual meeting with a group of bipartisan governors.
Biden expressed interest in hearing from the National Governors Association executive committee about what they feel they need from the White House to battle the pandemic.
The President-elect again lamented that the lack of an official beginning to the transition is preventing his team from getting the information they need to get to work on beating the pandemic.
Remember: The current GSA administrator still has yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory —as President Trump refuses to concede — and sign a letter to release funds to the Biden transition team through a process called ascertainment.
Biden said his team has not been able to “get access to information we need to be able to deal with everything from testing and guidance to the all important issue of vaccines, distributions and vaccinations.”
“We haven’t been able to get into Operation Warp Speed, but we will take what we learn today and build on that for our planning,” he said.
Biden, who was joined in person by Harris and virtually by his Covid advisory board member, said, “I don’t see this as a red state issue or blue state issue.”
“We’re all in this together,” he added.
Biden thanked the governors for their hard work on the frontlines of the pandemic and empathized that it has all been on their shoulders from the beginning.
He said he understands they have serious resource constraints which have limited their ability to get work done and added that he intends to work with the governors and Congress “on a bipartisan basis to work with you and get the resources you need.”
According to the pool, the list of governors attending today’s virtual meeting include:
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are virtually meeting with the National Governors Association’s executive committee in Wilmington, Delaware.
The meeting is expected to focus on the coronavirus pandemic. Biden and Harris will deliver remarks after the meeting.
Members of the executive committee group include:
Today’s meeting comes as the Trump administration continues to block the Biden transition. Biden’s incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Sunday that the President-elect’s team had been unable to talk to current top health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci about the pandemic owing to Trump’s refusal to trigger ascertainment— the formal process of opening a transition to a new administration.
More than 250,000 Americans have so far died of the virus — a higher death toll than any other country.
President Trump has invited Republican state lawmakers from Michigan to the White House on Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter, as he works to interfere in the results of the election.
It’s not clear at this point how many lawmakers will come. Trump extended the invitation on Thursday morning by calling the state senate’s Republican majority leader.
Nor was it immediately clear what Trump’s message would be to the lawmakers. The person familiar also confirmed Trump spoke Tuesday evening with two Wayne County canvass board members to offer his support as they went back and forth on voting to certify election results.
President-elect Joe Biden’s team is discussing ways to persuade resistant Republican governors to get on board with mandating masks to stop the spread of Covid-19, according to sources familiar with those conversations.
The Biden transition team is treading lightly so far, saying little about how the incoming administration plans to address what is likely to be among the first tests of Biden’s ability to bridge political divides and find consensus.
Before engaging with any of the 13 Republican governors who have yet to pass statewide mask mandates, sources say the Biden team is reaching out to more amenable governors — including holding staff level meetings with Republican Larry Hogan of Maryland, who was an early adopter of mask mandates and other preventive measures.
Another option under consideration is using economic incentives, which would likely be implemented in an upcoming spending bill, to induce mask mandates, according to one person familiar with the plans being discussed inside Biden’s transition team.
No matter what approach Biden and his team take, experts say the reality will likely be something of a patchwork set of rules and guidelines across thousands of localities that will rely as much on social pressure as legal mandates to enforce.
Biden has acknowledged that his authority to actually enforce a mask mandate is limited and that he will rely heavily on the cooperation of state and local leaders. With Covid raging across much of the country, and the death count surpassing 250,000, Biden’s most effective use of presidential power may be as a means of persuasion to set the tone for behavior.
Read more here.
