ATLANTA — After six days of hand-counting ballots, the Georgia secretary of state’s office reaffirmed on Thursday that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. had defeated President Trump in the state, which had long been considered a Republican stronghold.
The Trump campaign asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, a Republican, for a full hand recount one week after Election Day. Mr. Raffensperger announced soon after that all 159 counties would participate in a “risk-limiting audit” that would include a hand recount. The audit of roughly five million votes was completed late Wednesday.
Though the result was something of a foregone conclusion, the recount took place amid escalating tension over the election outcome. The New York Times and other national news outlets called Georgia for Mr. Biden last week. But Mr. Trump has raised baseless accusations of fraud, and his allies — most notably Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Republicans who are facing tough runoff races in the state in January — disparaged Mr. Raffensperger and accused him of mismanaging the election.
The process revealed a few significant hiccups in the process, with four counties — Floyd, Fayette, Walton and Douglas — discovering votes during the audit that were not part of the original count. Mr. Trump carried Floyd, Fayette and Walton Counties; Mr. Biden won Douglas County.
On Thursday, Floyd County’s Board of Elections voted unanimously to fire its chief election clerk, Robert Brady, according to Dr. Melanie Conrad, a board member. Mr. Brady was fired after officials found 2,600 ballots that were left uncounted before the county’s initial certification of votes.
Factoring in these newly discovered ballots, and others in counties with small discrepancies around the state, cut Mr. Biden’s lead by more than 1,200 votes. His revised margin of victory is 12,284 votes.
Most counties saw only minor changes in their tallies, with the recount vote totals differing by single digits. Patrick Moore, a lawyer for the Biden campaign, predicted on Wednesday that the results would show that “the president-elect has won the state of Georgia.”
The state has until Friday to certify the election results. The Trump campaign then has two business days to request a second recount, which would be conducted using high-speed scanners.
President Trump on Thursday accelerated his efforts to interfere in the nation’s electoral process, taking the extraordinary step of reaching out directly to Republican state legislators from Michigan and inviting them to the White House on Friday for discussions as the state prepares to certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner there.
Mr. Trump’s outreach to Republican officials in Michigan represented a remarkable intrusion into state and local politics: a sitting president personally contacting officials who usually play a small and invisible role in a routine process.
The president requested the White House meeting with Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader, and Lee Chatfield, the speaker of the Michigan House, and they will sit down with him on Friday afternoon, according to a person briefed on the arrangements. It is not clear what the president will discuss.
It comes as the Trump campaign and its allies have been seeking to overturn the results of the election in multiple states through lawsuits and intrusions into the state vote certification process, often targeting cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta with large and politically powerful Black populations. Mr. Trump himself reached out personally to at least one election official in Wayne County, Mich., home of Detroit, who tried to decertify the results there.
At the same time, he has made few public appearances since the election and his daily schedule often has no events on it, despite the worsening coronavirus pandemic.
Some members of Mr. Trump’s team have promoted the legally dubious theory that friendly legislatures could under certain scenarios effectively subvert the popular vote and send their own, pro-Trump delegations to the Electoral College.
The Trump campaign’s lead election lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, announced Thursday morning that the campaign was withdrawing a federal suit it had filed seeking to stop the certification of results in Wayne County. The campaign attached the affidavits to the dismissal notice.
Mr. Biden won nearly 95 percent of the vote in Detroit and around 70 percent of the vote in Wayne County en route to winning Michigan by more than 150,000 votes.
With the withdrawal of the Wayne County suit, the Trump campaign and its Republican supporters have now lost or withdrawn from all of their major legal actions in Michigan, although the state’s Supreme Court is still considering an appeal of a lower court’s decision not to halt the certification of Wayne County’s results.
At a news briefing on Thursday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, was asked about what her message to Mr. Trump would be on his election efforts.
“Stop spending energy to mislead about what happened in this election and spend it on a real Covid relief package,” she said. “This election was overwhelmingly decided. It was a safe, it was a secure, it was a fair election, and Joe Biden won the state of Michigan by over 150,000 votes.” She added, “The canvassers need to do their job. I expect that they will do their job and certify this result.”
House Democrats on Thursday ratcheted up pressure on the head of the General Services Administration to grant President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. the money and government access set aside by law for the presidential transition process, demanding that she brief lawmakers and possibly testify in public.
In a letter to Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the sprawling agency, the chairwomen of the House Oversight and Reform and Appropriations Committees said it was past time for her to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s clear Electoral College victory and grant the letter of “ascertainment” allowing his transition team to begin the transfer of power. They argued that President Trump’s refusal to concede the election should not relieve Ms. Murphy of the legal requirement to recognize “the apparent successful candidates.”
“We have been extremely patient, but we can wait no longer,” wrote the chairwomen, Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney and Nita M. Lowey of New York. “As G.S.A. administrator, it is your responsibility to follow the law and assure the safety and well-being of the United States and its people — not to submit to political pressure to violate the law and risk the consequences.”
They said they wanted to question Ms. Murphy no later than Nov. 23. The course of the briefing, they added, could determine whether Ms. Murphy and two of her deputies would be summoned to testify in person on Capitol Hill. Representatives Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia and Mike Quigley of Illinois, two subcommittee chairs, also signed the letter.
Ms. Murphy has not given a reason for her decision not to recognize Mr. Biden as the president-elect, though it comes as Mr. Trump and his administration have defied historical precedent and routinely insisted that he won, citing baseless claims of widespread fraud. Ms. Murphy’s office has said that it is not up to her to choose a winner and that she is following “the process laid out in the Constitution.” Her predecessors moved much more quickly to recognize apparent winners.
Democrats warned there would be costs to Ms. Murphy’s inaction. Though Mr. Biden’s team is moving quickly to form a government, it cannot move into offices, formally meet with officials in federal agencies or conduct certain business involving government secrets until she signs off.
“Your actions in blocking transition activities required under the law are having grave effects, including undermining the orderly transfer of power, impairing the incoming administration’s ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, hampering its ability to address our nation’s dire economic crisis, and endangering our national security,” the Democrats wrote.
The letter came after Mr. Biden himself put public pressure on the agency to authorize the transition process and allow his team to begin preparing to take over the nation’s coronavirus response effort. Some Senate Republicans have begun to suggest that Mr. Biden should be given access to certain sensitive national security and health information, and a handful have said it is time for Ms. Murphy to act.
Senate Democrats, led by Gary Peters of Michigan, dispatched a similar letter of their own, requesting a briefing and pressing Ms. Murphy to reverse course.
ATLANTA — On the eve of Georgia’s deadline for certifying its statewide election results, a federal judge on Thursday rejected a last-minute effort by a supporter of President Trump to halt certification.
The rejection was the latest in a string of failed efforts by the Trump campaign and its allies to legally challenge the election in courthouses around the country. The ruling also came amid news that the president was reaching out to Republican lawmakers in Michigan in an apparent effort to subvert the election results there, and a judge rejected a request by the Arizona Republican Party to postpone certification in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
The federal lawsuit seeking to halt Georgia’s certification was brought by L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta lawyer best known for his defense of Richard A. Jewell, the security guard who was falsely accused in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996. Mr. Wood is an outspoken conservative and supporter of the president.
In his suit, Mr. Wood claimed that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, a Republican, and the state elections board had violated the Constitution by creating new rules for checking absentee ballot signatures. Mr. Wood argued that the Constitution allowed state legislatures to determine only the manner in which presidential elections are conducted.
Mr. Wood also claimed that Republican monitors had not been allowed to see some parts of the sweeping hand-recount of Georgia’s five million ballots, which began Friday and appears to have been largely completed by Wednesday evening. State elections officials have repeatedly said the results of the recount would not change the fact that Mr. Biden narrowly won the state.
Mr. Wood also asked the court to order that the hand-recount be performed again.
After a three-hour hearing, Judge Steven D. Grimberg, whom Mr. Trump nominated to the bench in the Northern District of Georgia, denied Mr. Wood’s motion for an emergency injunction. The judge said that Mr. Wood lacked standing to bring the suit, and he described the relief Mr. Wood was seeking as “quite striking.”
“It would require halting the certification results in a state election in which millions of people have voted,” Judge Grimberg said. “It would interfere with an election after it has already begun, which is a significant hardship that certainly outweighs any threatened injury to this particular plaintiff.”
Once Georgia certifies its election results, Mr. Trump will have two business days to demand another recount, this one conducted by machines, in the state.
A few dozen right-wing activists gathered on Thursday afternoon at the State Capitol in Atlanta, where the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones had urged “freedom-loving patriots” to show up and protest the certification.
Gloria Gill said she drove more than three hours from Augusta to rally for “election integrity.”
“No matter which side wins and which side loses, we have to be able to trust the system,” she said. “It’s not about Trump winning; it’s about election integrity.”
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transcript
Biden Says Trump Is Showing ‘Incredible Irresponsibility’
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke in Wilmington, Del., on Thursday after a virtual meeting with several governors pledging that he would not pursue a national shutdown and criticized President Trump for delaying the transition process.
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“The governors all acknowledge that this be a massive undertaking, one of the greatest operational challenges we will have faced as a nation. One statistic that was raised by the governors: It took eight months to provide 100 million Covid tests, eight months to provide Covid tests. Just imagine how much more difficult it would be, they pointed out, if we don’t find a more efficient and effective way to provide 330 million vaccinations. The answer was I would follow the science. I am not going to shut down the economy, period. I’m going to shut down the virus that’s what I’m going to shut down.” Reporter: “So that’s ruled out?” “I’ll say it, again. No national shutdown, no national shutdown because every region, every area, every community can be different.” Reporter: “In your view, Mr. President-elect, what do you think the president is doing? What are Americans witnessing here?” “Let me choose my words here. I think they’re witnessing incredible irresponsibility, incredibly damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions. And I think it is — well I don’t know his motive, but I just think it’s totally irresponsible. And I think most of the Republicans I’ve spoken to, including some governors, think this is debilitating. It’s not a — it sends a horrible message about who we are as a country.”
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Thursday that President Trump was showing “incredible irresponsibility” by contesting the results of the presidential election and delaying the beginning of a transition process.
“Incredibly damaging messages are being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions,” Mr. Biden said, adding that Mr. Trump’s reaction would ensure that he is remembered “as being one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history.”
The president has continued to pursue lawsuits and peddle baseless conspiracy theories disputing his election defeat. “I don’t know his motive, but I think it’s totally irresponsible,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump’s actions. “It’s hard to fathom how this man thinks. I’m confident he knows he hasn’t won, and is not going to win, and we’re going to be sworn in on Jan 20.”
Mr. Biden spoke in Wilmington, Del., shortly after a virtual meeting with several governors from both parties. The president-elect also said he had not ruled out taking legal action to force the head of the General Services Administration, Emily W. Murphy, to sign paperwork authorizing a presidential transition process that would give his team access to federal resources, data and personnel. But he played down that option, saying that lawsuits would “take a lot of time.”
As he has several times in recent days, Mr. Biden warned that the delayed transition process made it harder for him to plan an effective response to the coronavirus pandemic and that it could slow the nationwide distribution of vaccines.
“We can’t wait,” he said, calling vaccine distribution “one of the greatest operational challenges we will have faced as a nation.”
He added, “There is no excuse not to share the data and let us begin to plan.”
Increasingly brazen attempts by President Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election drew little response on Thursday from congressional Republicans, who have stood by the president’s side and declined to acknowledge President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Among Republican leaders, only Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, challenged aspects of groundless claims about election wrongdoing put forward by Mr. Trump’s lawyers on Thursday, including that there had been nationally coordinated fraud by Democrats.
In an interview with Fox News’s Guy Benson, Ms. Ernst defended Mr. Trump’s right to challenge the results in court. But she stressed there needed to be “proof” of wrongdoing and called accusations by Sidney Powell, one of the president’s lawyers, that lawmakers in both parties had helped rig the balloting “absolutely outrageous.”
“That is an offensive comment for those of us that do stand up and represent our states in a dignified manner,” said Ms. Ernst, the fifth-ranking Senate Republican who was re-elected this month. “We believe in honesty.”
She added: “I’ve worn our nation’s uniform to protect the values and freedoms that our nation espouses and to have that accusation just offhandedly thrown out there just to confuse our voters across the United States, I think that is absolutely wrong.”
Ms. Ernst said she worried that sowing doubts about the election system could depress Republican turnout when voters in Georgia return to the polls in January for two runoff Senate contests, imperiling control of the Senate.
The pushback came as her colleagues in leadership in the House and Senate maintained a familiar silence.
A spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, declined to comment on the claims made by Mr. Trump’s legal team or the president’s invitation to Michigan lawmakers to meet with him as he tries to subvert the Electoral College process and claim its electors despite losing the state.
Aides to Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican House leader; and his top deputies, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, did not respond to requests for comment.
Among the few direct critiques of Mr. Trump that emerged from a Republican was by Representative Francis Rooney of Florida, who is retiring.
“Talk of manipulating the Electoral College is a very dangerous thing to be discussing in our configuration of democracy,” Mr. Rooney said. “We are out in the thin air. We really are.”
He criticized his colleagues, who he said were “just hiding out” as the president steered toward ever more extreme claims.
“What about self-esteem or respect?” he said. “What are these people going to do in the long run when they look back at how they just sort of slavishly devoted themselves to this guy?”
Another retiring Republican, Representative Peter T. King of New York, said he was uneasy about the tone of the claims.
“The president has the right to have his lawyers investigate and look for recounts,” he said. “But I don’t think we should be describing the election as fraudulent until there is evidence submitted in court and accepted.”
“The rhetoric,” he added, “should be toned down.”
Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who has already congratulated Mr. Biden as the victor, told CNN that he saw no evidence to back up Mr. Trump’s fraud allegations in his home state’s largest city, Detroit.
“No one has seen any real identification of any real fraud,” he said, adding that it was time for the president to concede.
Michigan’s Democratic congressional delegation issued a sharply worded statement on Thursday against two state lawmakers who had been invited to the White House by President Trump in a brazen attempt to upend President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory.
The state’s Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, and speaker of the House, Lee Chatfield, who are both Republicans, are to meet with Mr. Trump on Friday at the White House.
Nine congressional members from Michigan, including Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, said “history will judge” Mr. Shirkey and Mr. Chatfield on whether they accept Mr. Biden’s victory “or simply be loyal to one man,” referring to Mr. Trump.
“The continued attempts to disenfranchise voters, particularly people of color, are shocking and unacceptable,” they added. “The votes have been counted, Michiganders have spoken, and they chose Joe Biden to be our next president.”
Mr. Trump’s invitation to Republican lawmakers in Michigan, a battleground state, adds to a string of attempts he and his allies have undertaken to overturn the results of the election.
Mr. Shirkey has balked at the prospect of overturning Michigan’s results and publicly questioned the president for not accepting the state’s vote tally, which has Mr. Biden ahead of Mr. Trump by nearly 150,000 votes.
The state’s Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to meet on Monday to review and certify the electoral results. Despite Republican protests over the certification of results in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, Michigan is expected to certify on time.
A little-known manufacturing executive serving out his final two years as majority leader of Michigan’s Republican-controlled Senate finds himself thrust into the maelstrom of President Trump’s scheme to subvert the election.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump invited Mike Shirkey, who turns 66 next month, to the White House with other Republican lawmakers — at a moment when he seems to be pressuring officials to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s decisive victory in the state by appointing new electors.
Mr. Trump may have a tough sell during the meeting, which is expected to take place on Friday, and also include the Republican speaker of the Michigan House, Lee Chatfield.
Mr. Shirkey has committed to heading a legislative probe into “numerous allegations” of election irregularities. But he has balked at overturning the results, and publicly questioned the president for not accepting an official accounting that shows Mr. Biden with a lead of nearly 150,000 votes.
Attempts to convince state lawmakers to change the election outcome in favor of Mr. Trump is “not going to happen,” he told the nonprofit publication Bridge Michigan on Tuesday before the dramatic 24 hours of back-and-forth actions of a four-member board charged with certifying elections in Wayne County.
“We are going to follow the law and follow the process,” said Mr. Shirkey, who endorsed Ben Carson in the 2016 primary but backed Mr. Trump in the general election. “I do believe there’s reason to go slow and deliberate.”
Mr. Shirkey added that he did not expect any of the Trump campaign’s legal challenges would “ultimately change the results of the election.”
He did not respond to requests for comment, and the White House did not say why he had been summoned.
As a Republican leader in his state, Mr. Shirkey has tried to maintain political equilibrium, opposing efforts by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, to close businesses and schools to fight the pandemic — while resisting efforts to impeach her.
Before being elected to the Senate in 2015, Mr. Shirkey served four years in the Michigan House of Representatives, worked for General Motors, and founded Orbitform, which produces prototypes for manufacturers at a facility in the southern part of the state.
He will be forced to retire under the state’s term limits law on Jan. 1, 2023.
In his interview with Bridge Michigan, he went further than most Republicans in accepting Mr. Biden’s win, urging Mr. Trump to begin facilitating the transition.
“I do think that it’s inappropriate for the Trump administration to not start sharing information,” Mr. Shirkey said.
Mr. Chatfield has been more equivocal, tweeting on Nov. 6 that every “legal vote needs to be counted” and “whoever gets the most votes will win Michigan! Period. End of story. Then we move on.”
In the strongest criticism of President Trump by a fellow high-ranking Republican so far, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah on Thursday night excoriated the president on Twitter for his continuing and overwhelmingly unsuccessful efforts to overturn his election defeat earlier this month to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said that the president had exhausted his legal challenges in several battleground states and had resorted to trying to defy the will of the voters.
His rebuke of Mr. Trump came on the same day that the president invited Republican state leaders in Michigan to the White House to discuss their efforts to stop the certification of the election results in the state.
“Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the president has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” Mr. Romney wrote. “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president.”
The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Romney has been tempestuous, with Mr. Romney casting the lone vote by a Republican in the Senate to convict the president of one article of impeachment in February in an otherwise party-line vote. Mr. Trump was acquitted by the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans.
Mr. Romney was not the only member of the Senate to suggest on Thursday that Mr. Trump should stand down.
Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska said in a statement on Thursday night that it was telling that Mr. Trump’s campaign lawyers had refused to “actually allege grand fraud.”
“Because there are legal consequences for lying to judges,” Mr. Sasse said. “President Trump lost Michigan by more than 100,000 votes, and the campaign and its allies have lost in or withdrawn from all five lawsuits in Michigan for being unable to produce any evidence.”
Mr. Sasse said that the efforts of the Trump campaign and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, to attack the integrity of the election had caused damage.
“Wild press conferences erode public trust,” Mr. Sasse said. “So no, obviously Rudy and his buddies should not pressure electors to ignore their certification obligations under the statute. We are a nation of laws, not tweets.”
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
Senator David Perdue, one of two Republican senators from Georgia facing runoff elections in January, began making large and ultimately profitable purchases of shares in a Navy contractor in 2018 just before taking over as chair of a Senate subcommittee overseeing the Navy fleet.
The disclosure, first reported Wednesday by The Daily Beast, comes as both Mr. Perdue and Georgia’s other senator, Kelly Loeffler, have been under fire for their stock trades.
Mr. Perdue, a millionaire and formerly a prolific trader of individual stocks, announced in May that he would divest from his large individual stock holdings after questions were raised about his well-timed purchases of Pfizer stock in February, after senators were briefed on the coronavirus threat.
At a debate last month, Mr. Perdue’s Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, called him a “crook” who sought to profit from the pandemic. Mr. Perdue has since twice refused to debate Mr. Ossoff.
“Senator Perdue doesn’t manage his trades, they are handled by outside financial advisors without his prior input or approval,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Perdue said in response to the report about Mr. Perdue’s trades in shares of the Navy contractor, BWX Technologies.
Mr. Perdue bought a total of $38,000 to $305,000 worth of BWX on dates when prices averaged about $40 per share and never closed above $43, according to a Times analysis of Senate filings. He sold his stock on dates in 2019 when prices averaged more than $50 per share and never closed below $49. The filings give only a value range for stock transactions, making it impossible to know how many shares are bought and sold.
Mr. Perdue purchased his shares of BWX, which supplies nuclear components and fuel for submarines and aircraft carriers, in the six weeks before the January 2019 announcement that he would take over as chair of the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee.
Mr. Perdue sold his positions in BWX between February and July 2019. In June of that year, he announced that he had helped push through additional funding for the Navy in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020, including money for an extra submarine.
As subcommittee chair, Mr. Perdue has been a strong proponent of increasing Navy spending. “In this era of great power competition, there is no question our Navy needs to grow larger and become more capable,” he told a committee meeting in December 2019, after he had sold his BWX shares.
While not officially prohibited, individual stock trades by members of Congress have long raised questions, according to Kedric Payne, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
“This is just a perfect example of why many members of Congress have decided on their own to not trade individual stocks, even though there is no evidence of insider trading. It still begs the question of whether his official actions are somehow motivated by personal interest.”
“David Perdue’s corruption and self-dealing are flagrant,” Mr. Ossoff said in response to the Daily Beast article. “He is blatantly exploiting his office to line his own pockets. This conduct is utterly inexcusable.”
A spokesman for BWX Technologies, Jud Simmons, said the company was not aware that Mr. Perdue had been a shareholder until recent media reports. “Like other companies, BWX Technologies is not aware of, and does not control, purchases of its stock by individuals,” Mr. Simmons said.
In a news conference filled with falsehoods, President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others made baseless claims on Thursday that the election was marred by widespread voter fraud.
Christopher Krebs, the senior cybersecurity official and election fact checker fired by Mr. Trump earlier this week, wrote on Twitter that the event “was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history.”
MSNBC aired muted snippets as the host Chuck Todd called the presentation “bonkers” and “an SNL skit of sorts.” CNN’s Brianna Keilar told viewers that the Trump legal team “is right now holding a news conference that is so bananas we can’t even bring it to you.”
Fox News aired the entirety of the event live, without interruptions.
Byron L. Dorgan, a Democrat who represented North Dakota in Congress for decades, wrote on Twitter that the news conference was an “irresponsible attack on our voting system” and questioned “how Fox News can justify that live coverage.”
Mr. Giuliani repeated many of the conspiracy theories and debunked claims that he has recently spouted in recent media appearances and on social media.
After the broadcast, Fox News correspondent Kristin Fisher said that Mr. Giuliani “failed to provide any hard evidence” for his claim of “a nationwide conspiracy.” The news conference, she said, was “colorful” but “light on facts.”
“So much of what he said was simply not true or has already been thrown out in court,” she said.
She pointed out that Mr. Giuliani declined to show documents that he claims will reveal voter fraud and “never credibly explained a single path” to victory for Mr. Trump.
“The fact remains that the Trump campaign has yet to provide, at least in court, hard evidence of voter fraud and irregularities widespread enough to overturn the outcome of the election and to effectively challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s stance as the president-elect,” Ms. Fisher said.
Several guests on Fox News, which called the election for Mr. Biden and has faced backlash from the president and his allies in recent weeks, also took issue with Mr. Giuliani’s statements.
Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who worked for Mr. Giuliani, pointed out that Mr. Trump’s team “spent the better part of 90 minutes saying they’ve put all this together and now they’re going to bring it to court and prove it,” even though several challenges have failed or been dropped.
The Republican strategist Karl Rove pushed the Trump team to provide evidence of its claims.
“By God, you cannot make an accusation like that without following it through by going to court and trying to prove it,” he said on Fox News. “If it’s left out there, it will be both unfair to the president if it’s true and unfair to the American people if it’s false.”
Hispanic lawmakers in Congress are calling on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to name five Latinos to his cabinet, the latest effort in a broader push for Latino representation throughout the incoming administration.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus made that request in a letter on Thursday to Jeffrey D. Zients, a co-chair of the Biden transition.
The letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, also urged Mr. Biden to put at least one Latino in the top four cabinet positions — secretary of state, Treasury secretary, defense secretary and attorney general — and said it was “imperative that Latinos account for about 20 percent of personnel across all suites of federal government.”
The letter from Hispanic lawmakers comes amid an effort by Latino organizations, called Proyecto 20%, that seeks to ensure that at least 20 percent of Mr. Biden’s political appointees across the federal government are Latino.
Mr. Biden has promised an administration that “looks like America,” and he named three Latinos to senior White House positions this week.
A spokeswoman for the Biden transition, Jennifer Molina, said on Thursday that Mr. Biden “has been intentional in building teams that are reflective of the diversity of America,” adding, “He is committed to continuing this approach as he staffs his administration and prepares to tackle the challenges we are facing as a nation.”
Mr. Biden has previously objected to committing to appointing a certain number of Latino cabinet members, but he has promised to have Latino representation in his cabinet.
At an event in Nevada in January, he was asked if he would commit to having four Latino cabinet members. He declined to commit to a number but said, “There will be a significant number of Latinos in my cabinet, and you’ll see Latinx women in my cabinet.”
Business leaders in Washington and on Wall Street are increasingly calling on the Trump administration to recognize Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the presidential election and initiate a formal transition ahead of Mr. Biden’s inauguration in January.
Some of the biggest corporate lobbying groups — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers — supported President Trump in his push to cut taxes and roll back regulations while in office but are now breaking with the president as he pushes unfounded claims of fraud and wages a protracted court battle in an attempt to overturn the election results.
The business pressure comes as the General Services Administration refuses to issue a letter of “ascertainment,” which would allow Mr. Biden’s transition team to begin the transfer of power, and as top Republicans refuse to formally concede that Mr. Trump lost. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has yet to recognize Mr. Biden’s victory publicly, but said this week that there would be an “orderly transition of power” before the next inauguration.
The National Association of Manufacturers on Wednesday called on the head of the G.S.A. to formally initiate the transition between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.
“It’s imperative that our nation has a president and advisors who are fully prepared to lead our nation on Inauguration Day given the magnitude of the challenges ahead and the threats to our economic and national security, and most importantly, to the public health,” wrote the manufacturing group’s leaders, including its president and chief executive, Jay Timmons, and the chief executives of the chemicals giant Dow and Trane Technologies.
“We call on the Trump administration to work cooperatively with President-elect Biden and his team,” the letter said.
On Thursday, the chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, told Axios that “while the Trump administration can continue litigating to confirm election outcomes, for the sake of Americans’ safety and well-being, it should not delay the transition a moment longer.”
As President Trump and his Republican allies continue trying to undermine the election, the certification of the vote totals in each state is the next major step in formalizing President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Here’s a breakdown of the certification deadlines between now and Inauguration Day.
Friday, Nov. 20: Georgia
There is a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for officials to certify election results in Georgia, which Mr. Biden won.
The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has said the state will meet the Friday deadline despite having conducted a hand recount of the five million ballots cast there.
Monday, Nov. 23: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine
Mr. Biden won these states, though Mr. Trump won one electoral vote in Maine’s Second Congressional District.
In Michigan, the Board of State Canvassers has scheduled a meeting on Monday. Despite Republican protests over the certification of results in Wayne County, the state is expected to certify on time.
Monday is also the deadline for counties in Pennsylvania to certify their totals and send them to Kathy Boockvar, the secretary of the commonwealth, who will certify the state results.
Maine’s certification deadline is also Nov. 23.
Tuesday, Nov. 24: Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio
This is the certification deadline for Minnesota, North Carolina and Ohio, none of which are expected to be contentious. Mr. Biden won Minnesota; Mr. Trump won North Carolina and Ohio.
Monday, Nov. 30: Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska
Arizona has to certify its results by this date, as do Iowa and Nebraska. Mr. Biden won Arizona; Mr. Trump won Iowa; Mr. Trump won statewide in Nebraska, but Mr. Biden won one electoral vote in the state’s Second Congressional District.
The Arizona Republican Party asked a court to postpone certification in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, but a judge rejected the request on Thursday.
In the absence of a court order, Arizona counties are expected to certify on time. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is expected to sign off on the statewide certification.
Tuesday, Dec. 1: Nevada, Wisconsin
This is the deadline for Nevada and Wisconsin, both of which Mr. Biden won, to certify their results.
In Nevada, the first step is for county commissioners to certify the results and send them to the secretary of state. Ultimately, the governor will need to confirm the outcome. The Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit baselessly claiming that the president actually won Nevada, and conservative groups are trying to nullify the results, but these claims are highly unlikely to lead anywhere.
Wisconsin has already completed county-level certification, but the Trump campaign is seeking a partial recount, which, if it proceeds, should be complete by the deadline and is not expected to alter the results significantly.