GOP Tip-Toes Around Acknowledging Biden Win, Timidly Backs Trump Election Conspiracy

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other high-ranking Republicans have thus far not broken with President Trump on his unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.





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As of Monday evening, only four Republican senators had broken party ranks to congratulate Biden on his win. Those were: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, all of whom have been critical of Trump in the past and have previously publicly broken with the president on legislative matters.

Speaking to NPR on Monday, Collins said she does not think Trump’s pursuit of legal remedies will impact Biden’s win.

«The president has legal options that he wants to pursue, and he has every right to do so. For my part, I think it’s unlikely to change the outcome and I had congratulated President-elect Biden.

William Barr, the nation’s attorney general and a Trump ally, on Monday wrote a memo authorizing federal prosecutors to pursue any «substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities. He specified that such reviews can be conducted only if there are «clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potential impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.

Investigations into more minor claims that, if true, would not affect the outcome of a state’s results, Barr wrote, should be deferred until after the election certification process is completed in mid-December.

In his memo, Barr cautioned that the authorization should not be taken as an indication that the Justice Department has found any voting irregularities that would impact the outcome of the election, but instead had been put in place to ensure that all Americans could have «full confidence in the results of our elections.