Despite allowing President-elect Joe Biden to formally begin his transition, Trump is still insisting he 'will prevail.'
More than two weeks after major media outlets called the presidential election for Joe Biden, Donald Trump finally announced on Monday night that he is "recommending" that the General Services Administration begin the official process of Biden's transition.
Emily Murphy, the agency's administrator, has come under intense pressure in recent weeks for her refusal to ascertain that Biden is the winner of the 2020 election. That refusal has prevented Biden's team from receiving millions of dollars and other government resources to help with the transition to the incoming administration.
"Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!" Trump tweeted Monday, not long after Michigan voted to certify its election results. "Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same."
In reality, Trump's case for overturning the election that Biden won by more than 6 million votes has failed miserably — nearly three dozen times, in many courts around the country. He has refused to concede and has instead spent the weeks since the election tweeting outrageous and repeatedly debunked lies that the election was somehow stolen from him.
It was not — a fact that even his own administration has admitted. Last week, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a statement that a coalition of federal and state officials had found no evidence of voter fraud and that the Nov. 3 election was the most secure election in American history.
"America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too," wrote Christopher Krebs, the agency's director.
Days later, Trump fired Krebs on Twitter, apparently for contradicting Trump's claims of voter "fraud."
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended the firing on Fox News, insisting that Krebs' assurance to the American people that the election had been secure was "a partisan attempt to just hit back at the president as he pursues important litigation."
Shortly before Trump's declaration on Twitter that he would permit the official transition to begin, CNN released a letter by Murphy to Biden, in which she said she was finally releasing the funds to Biden for his transition. She did not explain her delay, but merely said that she was now releasing the funds because of "recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results."
However, nothing has changed since the election nearly three weeks ago, so it remains unclear why Murphy waited until now to release the funds. In 2016 — a much closer election in which Trump lost the popular vote — the agency, under the leadership of an Obama appointee, ascertained the next day that Trump had won the election.
While Trump appears to be claiming credit for Murphy's decision, she insisted in her letter that she was "never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official" and that she came to her decision independently.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
