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      US postal worker recants voter-fraud claims after Republicans call for inquiry

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      A postal worker whose allegations of ballot tampering have been the basis of Republicans’ calls for investigations has reportedly recanted his story.Democrats on the House oversight committee have said that Richard Hopkins, the worker who claimed in a signed affidavit that a supervisor at the US Postal Service (USPS) in Erie, Pennsylvania, instructed staff to tamper with ballots by backdating ones that arrived late, recanted this allegations yesterday in an interview with investigators for the USPS Inspector General.Investigators told the committee that Hopkins “did not explain why he signed a false affidavit”, the committee wrote in a statement.Hopkins admitted to fabricating his claims, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing three officials. After he the affidavit, the South Carolina Republican senator Lindsay Graham, who heads the Senate judiciary committee, called for a federal investigation.BREAKING NEWS: Erie, Pa. #USPS whistleblower completely RECANTED his allegations of a supervisor tampering with mail-in ballots after being questioned by investigators, according to IG. THREAD:— Oversight Committee (@OversightDems) November 10, 2020
      Yesterday, the US attorney general sent a memo to prosecutors approving federal investigations into voter fraud, despite a lack of evidence that such fraud was taking place.In response, the top justice department official in charge of voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, resigned – pointing to a 40-year department policy to refrain from intervening in elections and carry out investigations only after elections are certified.News that Hopkins had fabricated his claims came as the Trump campaign continued to pursue longshot lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia that are not backed by credible evidence.Among these lawsuits is an effort in Pennsylvania to push the US supreme court to reject mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day and arrived at election offices up to three days later. The state’s supreme court had approved a deadline extension for ballots that arrived late; several other states accept late-arriving ballots.The Trump campaign attempted to argue in federal court that Republican observers were blocked from monitoring the vote count, until a lawyer for the campaign had to admit that actually a “non-zero” number observers had been allowed.These dubious lawsuits and investigations have continued after media outlets projected that Joe Biden was the clear winner of the election. Trump has yet to concede and has illegitimately declared himself the victor.Top Republicans, including the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, have defended Trump’s right to challenge the election results. On Monday, McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor that Trump was “100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options”.Republicans have been scrambling to drum up any evidence to back their baseless claims of fraud, opening up a hotline that was inundated with prank calls. On Tuesday, Dan Patrick, the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas, said he was offering $1m to incentivize people to come forth with evidence of irregularities.The party’s efforts are unlikely to have any effect on the outcome of the presidential election. Biden has secured a big enough lead in swing states that even if some ballots that Republicans want thrown out were discarded, he would still win.But critics have said that the president’s refusal to admit defeat and Republicans’ efforts to challenge the results are sowing doubt in the US elections system.A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week of 1,363 adults found that 79% of Americans believe Joe Biden won the election, including about 60% of Republicans. About 72% said that the loser of the election should concede. A separate poll from Politico and Morning Consult, however, found that 70% of Republicans do not believe the presidential election was “free and fair”.The president and his party’s efforts to undermine the effectiveness of the US elections system began before election day.In August, Trump admitted he was undermining the postal service so the USPS would have a harder time delivering mail-in ballots. Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general and a major Republican donor, was found to have made cuts to the service amid major service delays reported around the country. More

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      'An embarrassment': Biden responds to Trump's refusal to concede election – video

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      President-elect Joe Biden says Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the presidential election is ‘an embarrassment’. Biden was outlining plans for the transition period before he takes office in January 2020 when he was asked what he would say to Americans anxious over Trump’s refusal to concede and what it would mean for the country. “Well, I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly,” Biden said. “I think it will not help the president’s legacy.” Biden has promised to “get right to work” despite alarm over whether there would be a smooth transition of power
      ‘An embarrassment’: Joe Biden criticises Trump’s refusal to concede election
      Joe Biden says Trump’s refusal to concede defeat ‘an embarrassment’ – live More

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      The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump's election lies

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      The networks have made their calls, world leaders have begun paying their respects, and even Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s other media outlets appear to have given up on a second term for Donald Trump. But in a video posted on Facebook on 7 November and viewed more than 16.5m times since, NewsMax host and former Trump administration official Carl Higbie spends three minutes spewing a laundry list of false and debunked claims casting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election.
      “I believe it’s time to hold the line,” said Higbie, who resigned from his government post over an extensive track record of racist, homophobic and bigoted remarks, to the Trump faithful. “I’m highly skeptical and you should be too.”
      [embedded content]
      The video, which has been shared more than 350,000 times on Facebook, is just one star in a constellation of pro-Trump misinformation that is leading millions of Americans to doubt or reject the results of the presidential election. Fully 70% of Republicans believe that the election was not “free and fair”, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted since election day. Among those doubters, large majorities believe two of Trump’s most brazen lies: that mail-in voting leads to fraud and that ballots were tampered with.
      Trump himself is the largest source of election misinformation; the president has barely addressed the public since Tuesday except to share lies and misinformation about the election. But his message attacking the electoral process is being amplified by a host of rightwing media outlets and pundits who appear to be jockeying to replace Fox News as the outlet of choice for Trumpists – and metastasizing on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.
      Since election day, 16 of the top 20 public Facebook posts that include the word “election” feature false or misleading information casting doubt on the election in favor of Trump, according to a Guardian analysis of posts with the most interactions using CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool. Of those, 13 are posts by the president’s own page, one is a direct quote from Trump published by Fox News, one is by the rightwing evangelical Christian Franklin Graham, and the last is the Newsmax Higbie video.
      The four posts that do not include misinformation are congratulatory messages by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for Biden and Kamala Harris and two posts by Graham, including a request for prayers for Trump and a remembrance by Graham of his father, the televangelist Billy Graham.
      On YouTube, hosts such as Steven Crowder, a conservative YouTuber with more than 5 million followers, have also been pushing out content questioning the election results. A video from Crowder called Live Updates: Democrats Try to Steal the Election was viewed 5m times, and a nearly two-hour video headlined Fox News is NOT your friend has already racked up more than a million views. More

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      'An embarrassment': Joe Biden criticizes Trump's refusal to concede election

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      Joe Biden said Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election was “an embarrassment”, vowing to move forward with the presidential transition despite resistance from the White House and Republican leaders.
      Biden, answering questions for the first time since he was declared the winner of the 2020 election, intensified his criticism of the president, who continued to baselessly allege voter fraud, and said Trump’s denial would “not help his legacy”.
      Though the situation at the White House has caused deepening alarm over whether the US would witness a smooth transfer of power that has been a hallmark of American democracy for generations, Biden promised his team was “going to get right to work” confronting the compounding crises facing the nation.
      Pointing to unfounded claims of voter fraud, Trump, with the support of senior Republicans in Washington, has maintained that the election is not over and is contesting the results in several states, despite it being called for Biden on Saturday morning almost four days after the polls closed.
      In a call with reporters on Monday, transition officials said the General Services Administration had yet to issue a letter of “ascertainment” that would recognize Biden as the president-elect and allow his team to begin the transfer of power.
      Until the decision is made, Biden’s staff cannot meet with their counterparts in the White House and other federal agencies, begin to perform background checks for potential appointees or receive security briefings.
      Biden insisted the delay “does not change the dynamic at all of what we’re able to do”. Receiving the intelligence briefings that are traditionally shared with the incoming president “would be useful,” he said, but added: “We don’t see anything slowing us down, quite frankly.”

      Biden was joined by the vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, at a theater near his home in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, where they delivered remarks after the US supreme court heard the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
      The Democratic leadership have vowed to protect and expand the signature legislation from the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice-president, during the worst public health crisis in more than a century.
      The US recently surpassed 10m cases of coronavirus, as most states struggled to contain outbreaks during the latest wave of infections.
      “In the middle of a deadly pandemic that’s affecting more than 10 million Americans, these ideologues are once again trying to strip health coverage away from the American people,” Biden said of the Republican state officials who brought the lawsuit that has ended up before the supreme court, aiming to invalidate the healthcare law.
      Democrats made healthcare a central theme of the election, and a focus of the supreme court hearing last month for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whose confirmation cemented a 6-3 conservative court.
      The health coverage of millions of Americans hangs in the balance if the court rules in favor of Republicans, though Tuesday’s arguments indicated that the justices were skeptical of striking down the entire law.
      “Each and every vote for Joe Biden was a statement that healthcare in America should be a right and not a privilege,” Harris said in her remarks. She added: “And Joe Biden won this election decisively.” More

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      Biden calls Trump's behavior 'embarrassing' as Pompeo dismisses election result – video

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      The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has predicted ‘there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration’ while US allies offered their congratulations to the president-elect, Joe Biden.
      Pompeo focused on the various legal challenges being pursued by the Trump administration, while Biden, who said he has not spoken to Donald Trump since the election was called in Biden’s favor on Saturday, said Trump’s refusal to concede defeat was ‘an embarrassment’
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      Pompeo makes baseless claims about ‘smooth transition to second Trump administration’ More

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      Boris Johnson phones to congratulate Joe Biden and discuss 'close' relationship

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      Boris Johnson has spoken to Joe Biden to congratulate him on his victory over Donald Trump and allay fears Brexit could damage the Northern Ireland peace process, as world leaders lined up to speak to the US president-elect.Johnson was the second world leader to reveal he had spoken to Biden, after the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, did so on Monday. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said they had also received a call on Tuesday.“I just spoke Joe Biden to congratulate him on his election. I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our countries and to working with him on our shared priorities – from tackling climate change, to promoting democracy and building back better from the pandemic,” Johnson tweeted.Johnson and Biden are understood to have spoken for around 25 minutes from 4pm on Tuesday in a wide-ranging conversation on trade, Nato and democracy.Biden’s transition team said he thanked the prime minister for his congratulations and expressed his desire to “strengthen the special relationship” and “reaffirmed his support for the Good Friday agreement”.Downing Street said Johnson “warmly congratulated” Biden on his victory and “conveyed his congratulations to vice-president-elect Kamala Harris on her historic achievement”, but the official account did not specifically mention Brexit. However, a No 10 source said: “They talked about the importance of implementing Brexit in such a way that upholds the Good Friday agreement, and the PM assured the president-elect that would be the case.”Biden, who has Irish ancestry, has criticised Johnson’s intention to renege on parts of the EU withdrawal agreement in new Brexit legislation, and said that a US-UK trade deal was contingent on upholding the Good Friday agreement.Theresa May was 10th in line when Trump was elected in November 2016, after Ireland, Turkey, India, Japan, Mexico, Egypt, Israel, Australia and South Korea. Trump told May casually that “if you travel to the US you should let me know” – far short of an official invitation.Downing Street said the president-elect had been invited to attend the Cop26 climate crisis summit the UK was hosting in Glasgow next year, and the G7 Summit, also being hosted by the UK next year.Johnson and Biden have never met, although Biden allies have been disparaging about the prime minister. They include a former aide to Barack Obama, who said Democrats had not forgotten about Johnson’s suggestion the “part-Kenyan” former president held an “ancestral dislike of the British empire”.However, Downing Street has emphasised that the two leaders have much in common, in particular a commitment to tackling the climate emergency, which was not shared with the Trump administration.Over the weekend, Johnson said there was “far more that unites the government of this country and government in Washington any time, any stage, than divides us”. He added: “I think now, with president Biden in the White House in Washington, we have the real prospect of American global leadership in tackling climate change. And the UK, as you know, was the first major country to set out that objective of net zero by 2050.“We led the way a few years ago. And we’re really hopeful now that president Biden will follow and will help us to deliver a really good outcome of the Cop26 summit next year in Glasgow.”Senator Chris Coons, a close friend and ally of the president-elect, said he hoped Biden would look beyond the caricature of the UK prime minister. “In my meetings with the prime minister, he’s struck me as someone who is more agile, engaging, educated and forward-looking than perhaps the caricature of him in the American press would have suggested,” he said. “I found an engaging person to meet with and speak to and it’s my hope that president-elect Biden will have a similar experience.”The UK foreign office permanent secretary, Sir Philip Barton, rejected claims that Britain was trying to have it both ways by congratulating Biden but saying that some processes were “still playing out” in the US, a reference to Trump’s refusal to accept the election result.The Labour MP Chris Bryant, a member of the committee, accused Barton of relying on inertia and presiding over a half-hearted and incompetent congratulation. He said he did not see any of the necessary flair coming from the Foreign Office to build the personal relationships on which successful diplomacy rested.PA Media contributed to this report More

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      How US voter turnout increased in key states – a visual guide

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      Voter turnout has been a key strategy for Democrats this election season. For the presidential race, the strategy worked. The US experienced a historic turnout rate of 65.1% – the highest in over 100 years – delivering the popular vote and electoral college to Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate.
      Over half of states saw an increase in voter turnout since 2016, with key battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania seeing participation well above the national rate.
      Though the pandemic introduced a number of complications to voting day, early voting and mail-in ballots brought a record turnout for some states. This was further complicated by the fact that some Republicans have further restricted access to voting, and voting protections in several states are weaker than ever. Many communities continued to experience difficulties this year in the form of long voting lines and sparse polling locations.
      Small multiple line chart of voter turnouts for each state. More