Joe Biden is moving closer to occupying the White House after Michigan and Pennsylvania certified their elections, and after President Trump ordered a federal agency to cooperate on a transition, but all three indicators of a coming Biden administration have been downplayed, too.
Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor announced Tuesday the Dept. of State has certified the vote county for president and vice president, The Associated Press reported. That official vote tally, which showed Biden with 3.46 million votes and 3.38 million for Trump, gives the Biden-Harris ticket the state’s 20 electoral votes.
In the state of Michigan, the state Board of Canvassers voted on Monday to certify the state’s election results and the state’s 16 electoral votes.
Yet attorneys representing the Trump campaign insist their legal battle is not over. State certifications are “simply a procedural step,” attorney Jenna Ellis said in a statement released Monday after news broke of Michigan’s actions. It went on to read:
We are going to continue combatting election fraud around the country as we fight to count all the legal votes. Americans must be assured that the final results are fair and legitimate.
Referring to a campaign lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania, which was dismissed last week, Ellis also announced Monday that a federal appeals court had granted the campaign’s request for an expedited review of the lower court’s ruling. The deadline for the Trump campaign to file a briefing in its appeal was yesterday, Fox News reported.
That appeals court ruling came after the Trump campaign sought to stop the certification but was denied that request by a U.S. District Court judge who accused the campaign of asking the court to “disenfranchise almost seven million voters.”
In related news on Monday, the chief of the U.S. General Services Administration informed Biden that the federal agency was cooperating with him and his campaign, and moving ahead with what Fox News described as “transition proceedings.”
The agency’s chief, Emily Murphy, had refused to cooperate citing legal challenges in several key states, and she reported she had been threatened and harassed by Biden supporters for failing to recognize Biden as president-elect.
In a series of tweets published late Monday, President Trump thanked Murphy for the “loyalty to our Country,” mentioned the harassment and threats directed at her, and then stated, “Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail.”
Despite that legal fight, Trump wrote, he had recommended that the GSA cooperate with "initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same."