Biden begins transition plans as Trump refuses to concede

America's closest allies are calling to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden even as President Trump refuses to concede the presidential election.

According to Biden's transition team, the President-elect spoke Tuesday with:

• President Emmanuel Macron of France
• Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
• Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin of Ireland
• Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said Monday that he had called Biden to congratulate him on his win.

Trump meanwhile has not publicly conceded and continues to make baseless claims of election rigging and voter fraud. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders in Congress are following the President's lead and have not acknowledged Biden as the winner.

Biden said on Tuesday that he thinks Trump's refusal to concede is an "embarrassment" and hurts the President's legacy.

"I know from my discussions with foreign leaders thus far that they are hopeful that the United States democratic institutions are viewed once again as being strong and enduring," Biden said. "But I think at the end of the day, it's all going to come to fruition on January 20, and between now and then, my hope and expectation is that the American people do know and do understand that there has been a transition."

The President's refusal to accept his loss has stalled the required steps to transition government to Biden.

Without a formal transition underway, foreign leaders have called former diplomats from the Obama administration to get the contact information for Biden's team in order to call and congratulate him instead of using State Department channels, according to diplomatic officials familiar with how foreign governments approach a new administration.

Read more here.

“I think if the President and his team have real evidence of widespread voter fraud, they should come forward with it,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said during a news conference when asked about Trump not conceding the election and what he sees as the way forward.

Hogan said he had not seen anything that would change the outcome of the election.

“This is the way it works in America. We, we cast the votes, we count the votes, and we live with the results, and I think most people realize that this election is over,” he said.

Hogan called what is happening “really dangerous,” saying, “I think in the middle of this pandemic, this economic collapse, people dying across the country to not know if we're gonna have a transition, is the old coronavirus task force gonna be making decisions? Is the new one? There's no transition, and how long is this going to go on? With no stimulus package getting done with, with no additional virus relief with you know, it's crazy. We've got to move on.”

When asked about being a leading voice in the Republican party, Hogan said, “I was the first statewide Republican leader, I guess to come out and congratulate the President-elect on his victory, but a number of my fellow governors and a few senators and 37 Republican congressmen and others and many former elected officials and President Bush, you know, Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, there are a lot of people saying that the election is over and that congratulating the Vice President-elect meant even more do not want to stop the transition from happening.” 

When asked about the response other Republican leaders have given, Hogan said, “I was disappointed frankly, and I said so earlier with the some of the response from Leader McConnell and others who have a different you know, are taking a completely different take on it and I think it's a mistake. I think it's a mistake for the country. It's a mistake for the Republican Party and especially as we have the Senate hanging in the balance and two runoff elections in Georgia, doing anything to tarnish the brand and have cost us votes is a pretty, pretty significant thing.”

President-elect Joe Biden will meet with transition advisors on Wednesday, according to a news release from his transition team.

Earlier today, Biden's transition team announced the teams of people who will work to prepare the incoming administration to take control of the federal government.

The Biden transition posted the names of roughly 500 people who will work with the different government agencies — ranging from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Postal Service — to their website on Tuesday.

These people would, during a more traditional transition, work with career officials inside government to prepare a Biden administration to take over. But the Biden transition believes the groups can still get work done without full access.

Biden's announcement comes as outgoing President Trump and his administration fight the election results and decline to give access to the incoming President-elect's team.

Biden looks to project confidence about the work his transition team can do without Trump conceding the race or taking the required steps to begin the process of transitioning power from one administration to another.

The first, and most important step, is a formal determination from the General Services Administration, which would unfreeze more than $6 million in funding to Biden's transition team.

The Biden transition statement noted that while the General Services Administration waits to ascertain the results of the election, these staffers will meet with "officials from think tanks, labor groups, trade associations, and other NGOs."

Read more here.

When asked during a news conference Tuesday if he had heard from or planned to work with President-Elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 task force, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said he had not heard from them.

“I think [Biden] is doing the right thing in trying to prepare for the eventuality, if he wins the election and all the results come in from the different states. He’s got to be prepared for that eventuality,” Hutchinson said. 

“He would certainly be easy to work with. I worked with him when he was in the United States Senate, I was head of the DEA. I worked with him when I was in Congress, so it’s a good relationship there. And he would certainly be easy from my standpoint, to work on behalf of Arkansas and the American people – if that eventuality happens,” the governor added. 

The Trump campaign, still refusing to accept that Joe Biden is the President-elect, announced a new federal lawsuit that campaign officials said would be filed shortly in Michigan, and insisted that they “do believe that ultimately President Trump will be declared the winner of this election.”

A call with reporters about the action was originally scheduled to start at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, but was rescheduled until 6 p.m. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was billed as being on the call, but at the top of the presser, the campaign’s director of communications Tim Murtaugh announced that McEnany was “not able to be with us.”

“We are asking for patience,” Murtaugh said, despite previously claiming early victory in states that ultimately went to Joe Biden. “This is a process, and we’re going to be though it methodically.”

Campaign General Counsel Matt Morgan said the campaign would be filing a new federal lawsuit in Michigan, alleging that “unequal treatment of Republican and Democrat poll watchers violates equal protection under the law.”

The lawsuit has yet to be filed, and different campaign officials gave different timelines for when it would be. Murtaugh initially said it may have been filed already, while Morgan said the lawsuit had been “authorized,” and counsel to the campaign Thor Hearne said the suit would be filed “within an hour or so.”

When asked about Biden’s relatively sizable lead in Michigan, which currently stands at more than 100,000 votes, Murtaugh insisted that “every filing and every action we are taking are getting us closer to the goal to seeing the president reelected.”

Remember: Major new organizations, including CNN, projected Biden will win the presidential election on Saturday. CNN also projected Biden will win Michigan.

President Trump has launched a series of legal challenges to the results and has not yet conceded to Biden. There has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud despite Trump's claims.

The eyes of the political world continue to turn to Georgia, where both US Senate races are primed for runoffs.

If Democrats win both Georgia seats, there would be a 50-50 tie in the Senate, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris could serve as a tiebreaker.

Democrat Jon Ossoff, one of two Democrats who appears to be headed for a January runoff, is planning to make the response to the coronavirus pandemic a key part of his message and he welcomes an assist from President-elect Joe Biden.

"Now, we have two Senate runoffs in a single state. This is the moment to demonstrate that the people of this state and this country want a government that will respond properly in a focused, and coherent way to this pandemic," he told CNN's John Berman on "New Day" Monday.

CNN has not projected that the Senate race between Ossoff and Republican Sen. David Perdue will advance to a runoff, but both candidates are already campaigning to face each other on Jan. 5.

Ossoff told Berman "it's all about getting people out to the polls for this January 5th runoff," adding that again, the stakes against Perdue "are high."

"This isn't about partisan politics. This is about human lives and human livelihoods which are in the balance," he said. "If we cannot mount an effective response to this pandemic, more people will needlessly, more people will needlessly lose their homes, their jobs, and their businesses."

CNN projected last week a special election race between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock will advance to a runoff in January.

Biden, who defeated President Trump for the presidency after a win in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, is leading in the Georgia presidential race, though CNN has not projected a winner in the state. 

Read more here.

First lady Melania Trump, much like her husband, is operating as though he didn't lose last week's election: She has yet to reach out to first lady-elect Jill Biden, a source familiar told CNN on Tuesday.

On this day four years ago, Melania Trump had tea at the White House and a tour of the executive residence, at the invitation of then-first lady Michelle Obama, as is customary.

But this time around, any movement towards a transition of the East Wing and the Executive Residence has not begun.

Instead, another source with knowledge of Melania Trump's daily schedule said there is very little in the way of change taking place at all, and most of the focus of the first lady's office remains on day-to-day meetings and upcoming holiday planning.

"It's my understanding that it's business as usual in the East Wing," said the source. The source said that even if Melania Trump wanted to begin the process of a transition, the first lady is still hamstrung by President Donald Trump's baseless refusal to accept Joe Biden's victory.

Read more here.

Georgia's Lieutenant Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, said today there have been no substantiated cases of voter fraud in the state but pledged to continue to work with local officials to investigate any reports, and ensure every vote counts. 

 "We have not had any sort of substantial instances get to us yet, but there’s still time,” he told CNN's Jake Tapper of potential voting improprieties or voter fraud in the state.

"I'm going to continue to work hard to make sure that every voter in Georgia has confidence that our elections are fair and legal," he added.

Duncan would not say whether he'd felt pressure to say there was fraud or wrongdoing in the state's elections, even as the state’s incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have called for the resignation of the state's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger alleging, without evidence, that the state's election process was faulty. Both senators appear to be headed for runoff elections in January.

"Just because the person I voted for isn't in the lead right now doesn't mean my job description changes," Duncan told Tapper today.

Top attorneys for the Biden campaign called the onslaught of recent court cases and accusations of voting fraud from President Trump and Republicans "theater," during a phone briefing on Tuesday.

They reiterated that Biden had won the election, the vote margins couldn't be overcome by court cases or recounts, and that the Biden campaign is full steam ahead toward Inauguration Day.

The court fight that Trump has touted is "noise, not really law. Theatrics, not really lawsuits," Biden campaign senior adviser Bob Bauer said.

Bauer and campaign general counsel Dana Remus described how Republican allegations of fraud in court have repeatedly been found to be unmerited, and the recent spate of cases have offered no proof of supposed fraud. 

Bauer also noted that if the Trump campaign did prompt recounts to happen in one or more states, election recounts since 2000 have on average found changes in vote counts of about 400 votes on average or around 270 at the median.

"These margins cannot be overcome in recounts," Bauer said of Biden's battleground wins by several thousand votes.

When asked about the General Service Administration's refusal to certify Biden as the winner of the election, Bauer said the Biden team was continuing with its transition.

Some of the court cases, he noted, may be aimed particularly at slowing down or putting obstacles in the way of the "smooth functioning of the process."

He did not answer a question about legal options for the Biden campaign that are possible in response to GSA. "They will not be able to stop this process," Remus added.