Elections

WASHINGTON — Since he was elected, President Trump’s relationships with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have mostly fallen into one of two categories: the unbreakable bond with his most ardent followers, who defend him at all costs, and the tenuous, strained alliance with the rest, who share his agenda but often cringe privately at his language and tactics.Neither group is particularly well suited for the chore of trying to persuade Mr. Trump, who refuses to concede the election, that it is time to step aside — or at the very least, to stop spreading claims about the integrity of the nation’s elections that are contrary to considerable evidence. And there is little chance that Mr. Trump, who has been perplexed and sometimes enraged by the Republican institutionalists who might normally be expected to play such a role, would listen if they did.The dynamic helps explain why, days after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of the election, even Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, was unwilling to recognize the result. Instead, senators have tiptoed around — or in some cases blindly run past — the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss, and the lack of evidence to suggest widespread election fraud or improprieties that could reverse that result.“There is no bipartisanship to speak of, in terms of how many members are willing to speak up — and would it matter to him? Would he listen?” said William S. Cohen, a former senator and House member from Maine who was one of the first Republicans to break from his party and support the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon. “Trump doesn’t care a whit about the House or Senate, and he rules by fear. He still can inflame his supporters — there are 70 million out there. He still carries that fear factor.”By Monday evening, a club of only a few Republican senators known for their distaste for Mr. Trump — Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — had acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory.Mr. McConnell, who is poised to be the top Republican in Washington during the coming Biden administration, threw his support behind Mr. Trump, declining to recognize Mr. Biden’s victory as he argued Mr. Trump was “100 percent within his rights” to challenge the outcome.Far from attempting to influence the president’s thinking, most Republicans have gone out of their way to avoid seeming to dictate what he should do.“I look forward to the president dealing with this however he needs to deal with it,” Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican on Mr. McConnell’s leadership team, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, even as he noted that it “seems unlikely” that the outcome would change based on Mr. Trump’s legal claims.Some of the Mr. Trump’s acolytes, on the other hand, have rushed to advance his baseless theories of fraud. Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia, both of whom are facing runoff elections in January, demanded the resignation of their state’s top election official, a fellow Republican, after he said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the state’s elections.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, also insisted that Mr. Trump was right to contest the results of the election.“Every legal challenge must be heard,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Then and only then does America decide who won the race.”In 1974, as President Richard M. Nixon faced the Watergate scandal and the strong likelihood of impeachment and conviction, a cadre of powerful Republican lawmakers marched to the White House and one by one, naming lawmakers in their own party who were prepared to vote to convict him, told him it was time for him to go. The message was clear, and Mr. Nixon announced his resignation the next day.Expect no such reckoning for Mr. Trump, said Timothy Naftali, the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and a professor at New York University.Election 2020 More

President Trump has abused the pardon power like none of his predecessors. But we likely ain’t seen nothing yet. Now that he has lost the election, Mr. Trump will likely pardon himself, friends, family members and Trump business entities and employees for any crime they might have committed before or during his presidency.Mr. Trump’s pardons to date, and those likely to come during a transition, reveal the problems with the supposed “absoluteness” of the pardon power — and should prompt legal reform to clarify limits on its abuse.The pardon power that the Constitution confers on the president has just two stated limitations: A president cannot pardon for impeachment, and a presidential pardon can excuse or mitigate punishment only for federal offenses. There is little that can be done at this point to stave off a potential wave of pardons in the lame duck period, but the federal crime limitation means that Mr. Trump cannot stop state criminal investigations, including one in progress by the Manhattan district attorney into possible bank and insurance fraud by Mr. Trump and his companies.But for federal crimes, the president can — with the stroke of a pen — erase a criminal conviction or criminal exposure for basically whomever he wants and for almost any reason. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Trump’s pardons and commutations have largely served his personal interests.Notorious examples include the pardon for Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who was convicted of defying a federal court order against profiling Hispanics; the pardons for the president’s political supporters Conrad Black and Pat Nolan; and the sentence commutation for Mr. Trump’s friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of obstruction of justice and related crimes and who many believe refused to implicate Mr. Trump in the hope of presidential relief from punishment.Such self-serving pardons are not without precedent. Bill Clinton pardoned his half brother, a friend who refused to cooperate with the independent counsel investigating the president and two notorious fugitives from justice who were suspected of obtaining favorable consideration through an aggressive lobbying campaign and the support of politically influential allies. George H.W. Bush pardoned the former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and several national security officials who had been convicted or indicted on a charge of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the Iran-contra scandal, in which Mr. Bush himself was suspected of criminal involvement.But even against this background, Mr. Trump’s pardons have been unusual.First, of the 41 people who received pardons or commutations (or both) from Mr. Trump, 36 (or 88 percent) have a personal or political connection to the president. They advanced an aspect of Mr. Trump’s political agenda, knew the president personally (or had a connection to someone close to him), were someone he learned about on television (usually on Fox) or a celebrity he admired. By contrast, only five of Mr. Trump’s pardons lacked a personal or political connection and appeared to be vetted through the traditional Justice Department clearing process. No president has come close to using the pardon power in such persistently self-serving ways.Second, Mr. Trump issued almost all of these controversial and self-serving pardons well before the end of his first term. Most presidents have waited to issue most such pardons in the weeks before they left office. Mr. Trump’s pardons and commutations have been far more brazen. Now that he has lost the election, it’s plausible to assume he will go all in on self-serving pardons.Still, there are limits to a pardon spree. As Attorney General William Barr testified during his confirmation process, a pardon granted in order to corrupt a judicial proceeding can amount to a criminal obstruction of justice. Mr. Trump’s pardons will be closely scrutinized for any purpose to thwart an investigation or pending prosecution threatening to him, a family member or close associate.Mr. Trump has proclaimed “the absolute right to pardon myself.” While neither the Constitution nor judicial precedents overtly speak to the issue, the Justice Department declared in 1974 a self-pardon would “seem” to be disallowed “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” Scholars are torn on the matter. The issue, which would arise if after Mr. Trump leaves office the new administration indicts him for a crime for which he pardoned himself, can be settled only by the Supreme Court.There is little that can be done at this point to stave off a probable wave of opportunistic pardons. But in light of what we already know about his pardon practices, Congress should enact two reforms to prevent future abuses.First, it should check the most extreme abuses of the pardon power by expressly making it a crime for a president to issue a pardon as part of a bribe or as an inducement to obstruct justice. Current law does not explicitly cover the president and should be reformed to leave no doubt. Second, Congress should declare that presidential self-pardons are invalid. Such a declaration would not resolve the constitutional question, but it could inform the answer when a court addresses it.It might be that Mr. Trump’s pardons prove so abusive that a constitutional amendment to the pardon power will be warranted. The challenge in that case will be to draft an amendment that checks presidential abuses without curtailing a vitally important mechanism, when properly deployed, for mercy and reconciliation. This is one of many ways that Mr. Trump’s abuses of presidential power will have long-lasting consequences for American justice.Jack Goldsmith (@jacklgoldsmith), a law professor at Harvard, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, is a co-author, with Bob Bauer, of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

President Trump is planning to form a so-called leadership political action committee, a federal fund-raising vehicle that will potentially let him retain his hold on the Republican Party even when he is out of office, officials said on Monday.The announcement is expected as soon as this week, just days after the major news networks and newspapers, as well as The Associated Press, called the 2020 election for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.Such committees can accept donations of up to $5,000 per donor per year — far less than the donation limits for the committees formed by Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee — but a leadership PAC could accept donations from an unlimited number of people. It could also accept donations from other political action committees.A leadership PAC could spend an unlimited amount in so-called independent expenditures to benefit other candidates, as well as fund travel, polling and consultants. Mostly, it would almost certainly be a vehicle by which Mr. Trump could retain influence in a party that has been remade largely in his image over the past four years.A Trump campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, said the committee had been in the works for a while.“The president always planned to do this, win or lose,” Mr. Murtaugh said, “so he can support candidates and issues he cares about, such as combating voter fraud.”Still, a PAC could give the president an off-ramp after a bruising election fight, as well as keep him as a dominant figure as the next Republican presidential primary races are beginning for a new standard-bearer.“President Trump is not going anywhere anytime soon,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “He’s going to insert himself in the national debate in a way that’s unlike any of his predecessors.”Before the election, Mr. Trump told advisers, sometimes joking and other times not, that he might run again in 2024 if he lost to Mr. Biden.Even as Mr. Biden has gathered more than the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win, and as he has taken leads of tens of thousands of votes in several battleground states, Mr. Trump has maintained there was voter fraud on a wide scale, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He has directed his campaign to march forward with legal challenges in states like Arizona and Nevada, despite most advisers believing that the race is over and that he should move on.But Mr. Trump’s personal brand as a businessman is now intertwined with his political brand. And he has made clear he is not ceding the stage easily, even as advisers say he will most likely willingly leave the White House when his term ends.Since the 2020 race was called on Saturday, Mr. Trump has told advisers he is seriously considering running again in 2024 if the vote is certified for Mr. Biden, a development earlier reported by Axios.While the leadership PAC could not help him in such an effort, it could provide an interim vehicle that would let him travel and engage in some political activity, even if he never actually runs again.Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting. More

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The US attorney general, William Barr, has authorized federal prosecutors to begin investigating “substantial allegations” of voter irregularities across the country in a stark break with longstanding practice and despite a lack of evidence of any major fraud having been committed.
The intervention of Barr, who has frequently been accused of politicizing the DoJ, comes as Donald Trump refuses to concede defeat and promotes a number of legally meritless lawsuits aimed at casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election. Joe Biden was confirmed as president-elect on Saturday after he won the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Barr wrote on Monday to US attorneys, giving them the green light to pursue “substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities” before the results of the presidential election in their jurisdictions are certified. As Barr himself admits in his letter, such a move by federal prosecutors to intervene in the thick of an election has traditionally been frowned upon, with the view being that investigations into possible fraud should only be carried out after the race is completed.
But Barr, who was appointed by Trump in February 2019, pours scorn on such an approach, denouncing it as a “passive and delayed enforcement approach”.
The highly contentious action, which was first reported by Associated Press, was greeted with delight by Trump supporters but with skepticism from lawyers and election experts. Within hours of the news, the New York Times reported that the justice department official overseeing voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, had resigned from his position.
“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications,” Pilger reportedly told colleagues in an email, “I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.”
Doubts about Barr’s intentions were heightened after it was reported that a few hours before the letter to prosecutors was disclosed, he met with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader.
McConnell has so far remained in lockstep with Trump. Earlier on Monday he expressed support for the defeated president on the floor of the chamber. He said: “President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”
As news of Barr’s memo circulated, social media lit up. “Here we go,” tweeted Stephanie Cutter, Barack Obama’s deputy campaign manager in the 2012 presidential race after the Barr memo was revealed.
Mimi Rocha, a former assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York, decried the memo, saying it “negates DoJ policy re not getting involved til after election certified. Not good.” She added though that there were no “clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities”, as cited by Barr, and urged federal lawyers to “remain true to your oaths”.
The Barr memo is the culmination of months of cumulative controversy in which the attorney general has proven himself willing to imperil the reputation for impartiality of the justice department by following Trump into his election-fraud rabbit hole.
In particular, he has doubled down on Trump’s baseless claims about rampant fraud in mail-in voting. That included lying on television about an indictment for an electoral crime in Texas that his department later had to concede never took place.
Barr’s intervention emerged shortly after the Trump campaign filed another longshot lawsuit in Pennsylvania, attempting to block the state from certifying its election results. It was the calling of the Pennsylvania contest on Saturday by media organisations in favor of Biden, who remains about 45,000 votes ahead of Trump in the state, that tipped the Democratic candidate over the 270 electoral college mark and awarded him the presidency.
The new Pennsylvania lawsuit rehashes many of the already disproven claims that have failed to succeed so far in federal and state courts. The case hangs on the claim – posited without any new hard evidence – that voters were treated differently depending on whether they voted by mail or in person.
The legal action also claims that almost 700,000 mail-in and absentee ballots were counted in Philadelphia and Allegheny county, both Democratic strongholds, without observers present. That complaint has already been repeatedly debunked.
Josh Shapiro, the Democratic attorney general of Pennsylvania, dismissed the lawsuit as meritless. “I am confident Pennsylvania law will be upheld and the will of the people of the Commonwealth will be respected in this election,” he said. More

2016 +3.5 Trump 2020 +0.4 Biden Current statewide margin The presidential race in Arizona remained too close to call on Monday evening, but Joseph R. Biden Jr. held a lead in the state’s biggest city. Phoenix and its suburbs swung to the left, making it possible that Mr. Biden wins Arizona, even as other areas […] More

Transition officials for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. called on a top Trump administration appointee on Monday to end what they said was unwarranted obstruction of the money and access that federal law says must flow to the winner of a presidential election.The officials, speaking on background to reporters on Monday night, said it was nearly unprecedented for Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, to refuse to issue a letter of “ascertainment,” which allows Mr. Biden’s transition team to begin the transfer of power.By law, Ms. Murphy, the head of the sprawling agency that keeps the federal government functioning, must formally recognize Mr. Biden as the incoming president for his transition to begin. It has been three days since news organizations projected that he was the winner of the election, and Ms. Murphy has still not acted.The transition officials said her inaction was preventing Mr. Biden’s teams from moving into government offices, including secure facilities where they can discuss classified information. The teams cannot meet with their counterparts in agencies or begin background checks of top cabinet nominees that require top-secret access.A White House official pointed out, as several Trump allies have, that the transition after the 2000 presidential election was delayed by the court fight between the campaigns of Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas over several weeks. The official said it would be strange for President Trump to send some kind of a signal to allow the transition to start while he is still engaged in court fights.But Mr. Biden’s aides said that the dispute in 2000 involved one state with only about 500 ballots separating the winner and loser, far less than in the current contest. In every other presidential race for the past 60 years, the determination of a winner was made within 24 hours, they said — even as legal challenges and recounts continued for weeks.They said that they were considering “all options,” including potential legal action, to push Ms. Murphy to let the transition begin.Ms. Murphy, a Trump administration appointee who described herself as “a bit of a wonk” at her Senate confirmation hearing in October 2017, and also said that she was “not here to garner headlines or make a name for myself,” so far has chosen to side with the White House and Mr. Trump, standing between Mr. Biden’s team and a smooth transition.The president refuses to concede the election and has his campaign contesting results in multiple states. Most Republicans have declined to recognize Mr. Biden, much less appointees like Ms. Murphy. And so the transfer of power that must take place is in limbo.A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a question about whether Mr. Trump was willing to let Ms. Murphy begin the transition without a concession from the president, as his court fights play out.Leslie Dach, who was to lead the transition for the Department of Health and Human Services had Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2016, said that despite the advance work done by Mr. Biden’s team during the campaign, nothing could supplant having direct access to agencies, and that is impossible without Ms. Murphy.“I think this is Trump sending a clear signal to everybody still standing in the administration that you’ve got to still follow his grievances,” Mr. Dach said.The stalling of the transition is part of an overarching refusal to acknowledge the election results by the Trump administration.Officials in the White House presidential personnel office, known as P.P.O., have signaled that they will fire political appointees who search for new jobs outside of the administration during this time, according to two people briefed on the internal discussions. And on a call with U.S.A.I.D. staff members on Monday, officials described the election as still happening, according to a recording obtained by Axios.In a letter on Sunday from the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, veterans of previous administrations warned, “While there will be legal disputes requiring adjudication, the outcome is sufficiently clear that the transition process must now begin.”Aides to Mr. Biden have been working for months to develop fine-tuned transition plans to help the president-elect quickly make good on his campaign promises. Those review teams made up of people knowledgeable about each federal agency are critical.Ms. Murphy has the legal authority to “turn on” the transition, releasing the $6.3 million in federal funds budgeted for the effort, making office space available and empowering team members to visit agency offices and request information.It is often seen as the official starting gun. Under normal circumstances, Ms. Murphy’s decision would usually be prompted by the concession speech by the election’s loser, which is not a legal act, but it signals that both sides accept the result. In 2016, the acting administrator of the General Services Administration, also known as the G.S.A., under President Barack Obama made the determination on the morning of Nov. 9, right after the election.But there is no specific provision for when Ms. Murphy must act.Pamela D. Pennington, a spokeswoman for the G.S.A., said in a statement on Monday that “an ascertainment has not yet been made.”She added that the “G.S.A. and its administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law and adhere to prior precedent established by the Clinton administration in 2000.”In an earlier statement, Ms. Pennington said that “the G.S.A. administrator does not pick the winner in the presidential election,” adding that “the G.S.A. administrator ascertains the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.”Election 2020 More

President Trump’s refusal to concede the election to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has already affected Mr. Biden’s transition, particularly on national security issues.Mr. Biden has yet to receive a presidential daily briefing, and it was unclear whether his team would have access to classified information, the most important pipeline for them to learn about the threats facing the United States.Like previous presidents-elect, Mr. Biden is receiving Secret Service protection, and a no-fly zone has been established over his home in Delaware. But if Mr. Trump’s administration continues its refusal to recognize Mr. Biden as the winner, it could complicate his security until his inauguration.Here are some of the issues at play:Presidential Daily BriefingsMr. Trump can prevent Mr. Biden and his aides from receiving the presidential daily briefing, the compendium of the government’s latest secrets and best intelligence insights, for the entire transition. No law states that Mr. Biden must receive it, though under previous administrations dating to at least 1968, presidents have authorized their elected successors to be given the briefing after clinching victory.Previous presidents considered it good governance, said David Priess, a former C.I.A. officer and the author of “The President’s Book of Secrets,” about the daily brief.“As with so many norms and traditions, it is hard to say it will happen with this president,” Mr. Priess said.Mr. Trump’s indifference to norms is a central theme of his presidency, making him unlikely to begin following them now that he has lost the election.A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on why Mr. Trump had not authorized Mr. Biden to receive the briefing. A Biden campaign spokesman also did not respond to a request for comment on whether the president-elect should already be receiving the briefing.In the aftermath of the contested 2000 election, while votes in Florida were being recounted, President Bill Clinton authorized George W. Bush to receive the President’s Daily Brief. As vice president, Al Gore already had access to the intelligence.Classified InformationAlong with the presidential daily briefing, transition team officials need to have access to classified information at intelligence agencies, like the C.I.A., to make staffing decisions and begin planning for the administration.On this front, Mr. Trump can make it much more difficult for the Biden team to gain access to those materials. Under law, the Trump administration must formally recognize Mr. Biden as the president-elect to share classified information with his team. That decision is typically made by the head of the General Services Administration, a little-known government agency that oversees the transition. The head of that agency, Emily W. Murphy, is a Trump political appointee who so far has declined to designate Mr. Biden as the president-elect. As long as the G.S.A. refuses to recognize Mr. Biden, the team cannot legally view the materials.Personal SecurityFormer vice presidents like Mr. Biden do not receive full-time Secret Service protection, but Mr. Biden has had a protection detail since earlier this year. The Secret Service also extended the no-fly zone over Mr. Biden’s home to cover an entertainment complex in downtown Wilmington, Del., where he addressed the nation on Saturday night.But if the Trump administration — through the G.S.A. — continues to not recognize Mr. Biden as the president-elect, it is likely to stymie the typical transition that occurs between Mr. Biden’s temporary security detail and the one specifically devised to protect presidents, known as the Presidential Protection Division. Under previous administrations, the Secret Service has had the two teams begin working together during the transition with the incoming president’s detail becoming increasingly made up of Presidential Protection Division agents and officers as Inauguration Day approached. Such a handoff requires significant resources and changes in personnel work hours, and former agency officials say the Secret Service is highly unlikely to begin that transition unless the G.S.A. has authorized it.Maggie Haberman contributed reporting. More

Leading Republicans rallied on Monday around President Trump’s refusal to concede the election, declining to challenge the false narrative that it was stolen from him or to recognize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory even as party divisions burst into public view.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in Congress, threw his support behind Mr. Trump in a sharply worded speech on the Senate floor. He declared that Mr. Trump was “100 percent within his rights” to turn to the legal system to challenge the outcome and hammered Democrats for expecting the president to concede.In his first public remarks since Mr. Biden was declared the winner, Mr. McConnell celebrated the success of Republicans who won election to the House and the Senate. But in the next breath, he treated the outcome of the presidential election — based on the same ballots that elected those Republicans — as unknown.“President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” said Mr. McConnell, the majority leader. “Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.”In Georgia, where the continuing vote count showed Mr. Trump losing the state’s electoral votes, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — both Republicans now facing January runoffs to keep their seats — took the extraordinary step of calling on the state’s top election official to resign. Declaring Georgia’s handling of the election an “embarrassment” and citing vague “failures” in an echo of Mr. Trump’s evidence-free charges of stolen votes, they said Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, had failed the state.Mr. Raffensperger bluntly rejected their calls, declaring the senators’ claims “laughable” and suggesting that they were merely disgruntled because Mr. Trump might lose and their jobs were on the line.The intraparty feuding underscored how political considerations around Georgia, whose two Senate contests will most likely decide control of the chamber two weeks before Inauguration Day, are driving Republicans’ calculations about how to handle the election results. Republican leaders are reluctant to make any move that might alienate Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters and hurt their candidates’ chances. That includes appearing to bow to the reality that he has lost before the president himself is ready to do so.There was little sign on Monday that would happen in the near term. Mr. Trump’s team rolled out its latest legal moves to challenge the outcome in key states. And in Washington, Emily W. Murphy, a Trump political appointee and administrator of the General Services Administration, refused to formally recognize Mr. Biden as the president-elect with a letter of “ascertainment,” leaving the country’s transition of power in flux.Unperturbed, Mr. Biden plunged ahead with a transition operation that was quickly getting off the ground. In Wilmington, Del., he announced the creation of a Covid-19 advisory board and made an urgent plea to Americans to wear face masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus. He fielded a call from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, as a legion of advisers worked quickly to begin lining up candidates to fill top agency posts.“It doesn’t matter who you voted for, where you stood before Election Day,” Mr. Biden said after meeting with the advisory board. “It doesn’t matter your party, your point of view. We can save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months.”On Capitol Hill, even as many Republicans privately conceded that the president’s claims were outlandish and mostly avoided repeating them, their public statements suggested that they had no intention of forcing Mr. Trump to accept defeat and begin preparing to hand over the reins of power.They appeared intent on standing by him for a variety of reasons, hoping that the legal process might lend more authority to the final result or that Mr. Trump might simply give in without an intraparty fight.“I think the election is not over until the votes are counted and the legal challenges are decided,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of the president who was re-elected to his South Carolina seat, told reporters. “That’s why I would encourage the president not to concede.”Only a small group of independent-minded Republicans who have records of breaking with Mr. Trump said they had seen enough.Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate who last week resoundingly won re-election in a state that Mr. Trump lost, congratulated Mr. Biden as the president-elect and stressed the need to begin a transition. Still, even she said that Mr. Trump should be given an opportunity to challenge the results and urged Americans to be patient.“I know that many are eager to have certainty right now,” Ms. Collins said. “While we have a clear direction, we should continue to respect that process.”Mr. Trump and his allies intensified their baseless claims that fraud had wrongly tilted the election in Mr. Biden’s favor, filing a new lawsuit challenging the results in select counties where Mr. Biden won in Pennsylvania.The filing was preceded by a combative press briefing in which the president’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, and the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, alleged that the state election was improperly conducted.Election 2020 More