Politics Trump only agreed to unlock Biden's transition when aides told him he didn't have to admit that he lost, report says

© Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images President Donald Trump (R) golfs at Trump National Golf Club on November 22, 2020 in Sterling, Virginia. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

• President Donald Trump only unlocked the presidential transition process after being assured he wouldn't have to concede defeat, The New York Times reported.
• Despite losing the election more than two weeks ago to Joe Biden, Trump refused to admit that he lost, instead alleging without evidence that his victory was stolen by fraud.
• Trump's statement on allowing the transition to take place emphasized heavily that he does not accept defeat.
• Some advisors believe that Monday's approval of the transition is as close to a concession as Trump will ever come.
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President Donald Trump agreed to let the transition to a Biden administration proceed only after being told by advisors that he wouldn't have to say he conceded defeat, reported The New York Times Monday.

Lindsey Graham says he's spoken with multiple battleground state officials about ballot counting

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key ally of the president, said he has spoken with officials in a number of key swing states about the election and ballot counting/Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger accused Graham Monday of pressuring him to find ways to exclude or invalidate legally cast absentee ballots and reverse Trump’s loss in the state, an accusation the South Carolina Republican called "ridiculous.

PedeInspector explains how he wrote a script to detail all the instances of votes being lost or switched from Trump to Biden . His data source is the NYT raw data dump feed at the following link He shows what one of the data switches looks like: Explanation: This graphic shows two updates on voting totals.

He told NBC’s Meet the Press Biden ’ s Covid advisory panel remains hamstrung from talking to US government health officials including the White House taskforce led by But with Trump still refusing to concede, as he lies repeatedly on Twitter about a “stolen election”, no such letter has been produced.

In tweets on Monday, two weeks after losing to President-elect Joe Biden, Trump announced that he was letting the General Services Administration (GSA) "do what needs top be done" for Biden to take office in January.

The GSA provides funds and other resources necessary for the transition from one administration to a new one.

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2020

What was conspicuously lacking in the message was an admission of defeat from the president.

According to the Times, maintaining his groundless claim to have won the election was a condition of letting the transition proceed.

According to the report, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Trump's personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, spoke to Trump on Monday to push the process ahead.

Sen. Lindsey Graham faces ethics complaint over call to top election official in Georgia about ballots

Sen. Lindsey Graham was the target of an ethics complaint after his phone call with an election official in Georgia over how the state counts ballots. Your browser does not support this video Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger accused Graham earlier this week of pressuring him to find ways to exclude or invalidate legally cast absentee ballots and reverse Trump’s loss in the state, an accusation the South Carolina Republican called "ridiculous." Graham said he had also spoken with Arizona's Republican Gov.

Only five GOP senators have congratulated president-elect Biden . Last week Sen Wicker said it would be “reasonable” to give Mr Biden security briefings. In response to a question about Mr Trump demanding on Twitter he had won the election Sen Wicker said : “I wouldn' t advise that he put it that

When pressed on whether he and his department are preparing to hand over power to President-elect Biden and his team, Pompeo, who at times grew irritated at the questions, made it clear he didn ’ t see the contest as having concluded. At one point, he referred to the importance of counting “every legal

"He did not need to say the word 'concede,' they told him, according to multiple people briefed on the discussions," reported the Times.

Some advisors reportedly believe that Monday's tweets will be the closest Trump comes to admitting defeat.

In his remarks, Trump went on to repeat unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen from him via mass voter fraud.

They are claims for which he nor his legal team has produced convincing evidence, and which have been rejected in a slew of court cases.

Trump in the tweets pledged to keep fighting the "good fight".

In the past week the Trump campaign's bid to overturn the election result, led by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, descended at times into farce.

Campaign attorney Sidney Powell at a press conference last week alleged a vast communist conspiracy to subvert the election, for which she provided no evidence, while black liquid trickled down Giuliani's face as he outlined his plans to overturn the election.

'That's his first love': Biden has more foreign policy experience than his 4 predecessors

The president-elect already knows many of the players on the world stage – from Vladimir Putin to Angela Merkel to Benjamin Netanyahu.“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” Bush told reporters at a joint news conference, in what turned out to be an embarrassing misconception. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.

Biden calls out Trump ' s refusal to cooperate with transition . "We don' t have to accept those large numbers that are so terrifying," he said . He said he expects governors and mayors to start looking at "very surgical-type of restrictions, which are the function equivalent of a local lockdown."

Klain, a former top aide to Biden when he was vice president, replied to a 2014 Vox headline which read The Democrat’ s years-old post went viral late on Wednesday amid President Donald Trump ’ s continuing claims that massive voter fraud has seemingly caused him to lose the November 3 election.

Trump has reportedly grown exasperated by his legal team and their string of failed lawsuits.

In recent days pressure had been growing on Trump to allow the transition to the new government to proceed.

On Monday, 160 top US executives, many of whom are Republican donors, urged the president in an open letter to allow Biden's team to make the necessary preparations to take power on January 20.