President Donald Trump has finally stepped aside to allow Joe Biden’s transition to the White House begin but vowed to ‘keep up the good fight’.
Mr Trump insisted he will keep challenging his election loss but said he had given permission for the chief of the General Services Administration (GSA) to formally start working with Mr Biden’s team on Monday evening.
The GSA said it had determined Mr Biden as the winner of the November 3 election, following weeks of deadlock with the current president refusing to concede the vote and launching legal bids based on unfounded claims of voter fraud.
GSA Head Emily Murphy wrote to Mr Biden to announce the move after Mr Trump’s efforts to subvert the vote failed across battleground states, highlighting ‘recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results’.
Earlier in the day, Team Trump was dealt another huge blow when the swing state of Michigan voted to certify Mr Biden’s victory.
It came after a federal judge in battleground Pennsylvania also threw out a Trump campaign lawsuit over the weekend that sought to discredit the president-elect’s win.
The move by independent agency GSA will now allow Mr Biden to formally co-ordinate with federal agencies on plans for taking over office on January 20.
Despite stepping aside, Mr Trump vowed to ‘never concede to fake ballots’ and called his loss the ‘most corrupt election in American political history’ in a tweet that was quickly censored by Twitter saying ‘this claim about election fraud is disputed’.
Mr Trump continued: ‘Our case strongly continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!
‘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.’
Pressure had been mounting on Ms Murphy as an increasing number of Republicans, national security experts and business leaders said it was time for the transition process to move forward.
But she insisted in a letter that the final decision which she based on ‘the law’ and ‘facts’ was ‘solely mine’ and that she was ‘never pressured’ to delay or speed up the process.
The GSA certification process typically begins shortly after news outlets have called the election win. The delay has meant that Mr Biden and Vice-president elect Kamala Harris have not been able to meet with government officials nor access federal funding ahead of the January inauguration.
Yohannes Abraham, the executive director of the Biden transition, said in a statement that the move ‘is a needed step to begin tackling the challenges facing our nation, including getting the pandemic under control and our economy back on track’.
He added: ‘In the days ahead, transition officials will begin meeting with federal officials to discuss the pandemic response, have a full accounting of our national security interests, and gain complete understanding of the Trump administration’s efforts to hollow out government agencies.’
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/24/trump-finally-lets-biden-transition-begin-after-weeks-of-delay-13644121/