Trump announces ‘path to victory’ news conference by election legal team

‘Pieces are very nicely falling into place,’ says president

Donald Trump has announced that the lawyers handling his challenges to election results in key battleground states will hold a press briefing to outline their strategy.

In one post in a stream of tweets, he said the legal team will give an “important news conference today” and that they will explain their plans for a “very clear and viable path to victory”.

“Pieces are very nicely falling into place,” the president tweeted.

The news conference will take place at the Republican National Committee at 12pm ET. The former New York City Mayor and the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is leading the Trump legal team.

By one count, Trump campaign legal efforts to overturn election results or force recounts have been successful just once and suffered 26 defeats.

Many challenges at best could be described as long-shots and the president’s legal team has so far failed to gain any traction in court with no evidence of widespread fraud.

Nevertheless, they have pressed forward with cases aimed at blocking of delaying the certification of election results.

It is widely agreed that Mr Trump has almost no chance of reversing the election; however, his repeated baseless claims that the race was rigged is undermining public confidence in the election system.

It also instills in his supporters the idea that Biden will be an illegitimate president, something evident in his other tweets.

In another election-related tweet this morning, Mr Trump cited a New York Times article about how he had increased his own turnout by 10 million votes since 2016 claiming that with such numbers, “by far the highest for a sitting president, there was no way the Dems could have won".

Calling the election “rigged” yet again, he neglected to note that the Democrats increased their total too and Joe Biden now leads him by some 6 million votes.

The tweet has been flagged by Twitter as disputed, as was another in which he claimed that voter fraud in Detroit is “rampant” and has been for many years.

Turning his attention to Georgia and tagging Governor Brian Kemp, the president claimed that thousands of uncounted votes had been discovered in the state.

“When the much more important signature match take place, the state will flip Republican, and very quickly. Get it done!” he wrote.

“Almost ZERO ballots rejected in Georgia this election. In years past, close to 4%. Not possible. Must have signature check on envelopes now. Very easy to do," he added. “Dems fighting because they got caught. Far more votes than needed for flip. Republicans must get tough!”

Mr Biden currently leads in Georgia by approximately 13,000 votes. The leading election official Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has already faced the ire of Trump supporters for projecting a Biden victory, said the outgoing president’s unsubstantiated claims about the vulnerability of mail-in voting likely suppressed about 24,500 Republicans from casting their ballots.

Were the result in Georgia to be overturned — which given the Trump legal team’s track record to date, seems unlikely — its 16 electoral college votes would not be enough to swing the election in Mr Trump’s favour.

At present the Associated Press has Mr Biden on 290 votes, more than the 270 needed, and Mr Trump on 232. 

Other networks and press agencies have already definitively called Georgia for Mr Biden giving him a total 306 electoral college votes.