‘The election is over, we do have a new president’: Lawyer who successfully argued Bush v Gore says Trump should accept defeat

Ted Olson said the constitution ‘works pretty well at the end of the day’ because it means ‘flawed individuals’ will get voted out

The lawyer who successfully argued the Bush v Gore case and went on to become George W. Bush's solicitor general has said Joe Biden won the election and will be the next president.

Ted Olson, 80, told a panel at the deeply-conservative Federalist Society that he rejected Donald Trump’s wild accusations that the election was stolen from him, and to his mind the 2020 election has been decided.

“I do believe the election is over, we do have a new president,” said Mr Olson.

Mr Olson joins a growing list of respected Republicans - among them Karl Rove, John Bolton, George W. Bush and his brother Jeb - who have concluded that Mr Trump must leave the White House in January.

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"The Framers, they separated the powers because they knew that individuals would be flawed. They put in lots of checks, and we just experienced one, an election.

"To the extent that the citizens of this country did not like the manner in which President Trump spoke, or the manner in which he threatened people or the manner in which he executed the laws, they exercised their franchise.

"And we have — I do believe the election is over — we do have a new president," he said.

Mr Olson said "a large number of people expressed disapproval, whether one agrees with that or not, of the manner, style and techniques of this president".

He said "we have a constitution that works pretty well at the end of the day," because there will be "flawed individuals" who will be president, but the citizens have the means of voting them out.

Twenty years ago Mr Olson took up Mr Bush's case before the Supreme Court and successfully convinced the judges to end the Florida recount, which meant the presidency was handed to the Republicans.

Mr Trump's aims to overturn the election focus on allegations of voter fraud, but the Trump campaign has so far not been able to provide evidence of widespread voting issues that would impact the outcome of the race in Trump's favour.

Mr Olson supported Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s lawyer, during his 2007 presidential bid, but split from Mr Giuliani when he threw his lot in with Mr Trump. Mr Olson declined an invitation to join the president’s legal team during the Mueller investigation, saying the situation around Mr Trump was “turmoil, it’s chaos, it’s confusion, it’s not good for anything … beyond normal.”

Mr Olson is not the only Bush lawyer who has doubted Mr Trump's attempts to win his legal arguments.

"I have read everything. I have looked at all the claims. None of them raise anything," said Barry Richard, another of Mr Bush's lawyers.

"None of them have any credible evidence. It has to affect enough votes to change the result of the election."

A key difference between Mr Trump's lawsuits and Bush v Gore is the margin of votes, which was much closer in the 2000 election.  

"In 2000, Florida was the only state that was contested and neither candidate had 270 (electoral votes) without Florida," said Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor who has written about the 2000 recount.

"This time around Biden is over the 270 threshold and Trump would need to see a change in results in multiple states to claim victory."