US President Donald Trump still claims ‘massive fraud’ while speaking to reporters today. Video / Fox
Mere hours after finally conceding the election to Joe Biden if the democrat won the Electoral College vote, Donald Trump has now flipped back to his previous stance and refused to acknowledge he has lost.
Taking to Twitter, Trump said US president-elect Biden could now only get into the White House "if he can prove that his ridiculous '80,000,000 votes' were not fraudulently or illegally obtained".
"When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he's got a big unsolvable problem," said Trump, who lost the election.
Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!
President-elect Biden is currently projected to have received 306 electoral votes and a total of 80,026,721 public votes, while Trump received 232 electoral votes with a total of 73,890,295 public votes.
Despite the numbers and the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud, Trump continues to make baseless accusations.
Trump speaks during a videoconference with members of military in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington. Photo / Getty Images
Biden will take his oath of office on January 20, in a public ceremony on the West Front of the US Capitol Building in Washington DC.
It is customary for the losing candidate to concede but it is not necessary that Trump does so in order for Biden to move into the White House.
Meanwhile Trump's legal team has suffered yet another defeat in court as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign's latest effort to challenge the state's election results.
Trump's lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judges' assessment that the "campaign's claims have no merit."
"Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here," 3rd Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the three-judge panel.
The case had been argued last week in a lower court by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who insisted during five hours of oral arguments that the 2020 presidential election had been marred by widespread fraud in Pennsylvania. However, Giuliani failed to offer any tangible proof of that in court.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann had said the campaign's error-filled complaint, "like Frankenstein's Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together" and denied Giuliani the right to amend it for a second time.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called that decision justified. The three judges on the panel were all appointed by Republican presidents. including Bibas, a former University of Pennsylvania law professor appointed by Trump. Trump's sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, sat on the court for 20 years, retiring in 2019.
"Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections," Bibas said in the opinion, which also denied the campaign's request to stop the state from certifying its results, a demand he called "breathtaking."
In fact, Pennsylvania officials had certified their vote count Monday for President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump by more than 80,000 votes in the state. Nationally, Biden and running mate Kamala Harris garnered nearly 80 million votes, a record in U.S. presidential elections.
