Biden filling his cabinet
WASHINGTON: US president- elect Joe Biden will name his first cabinet picks on Tuesday ( local time), his chief of staff said, even as Donald Trump clung to unsubstantiated claims of fraud despite growing dissent from within his own party.
Mr Biden has pushed ahead with preparations to assume the presidency on January 20, regardless of Mr Trump’s bid to undo the results of the November vote.
Several US news organisations, including Bloomberg and The New York Times, reported that the president- elect would nominate seasoned diplomat and long- time aide Antony Blinken as secretary of state.
Mr Biden also said last week he had already decided on who would be treasury secretary.
A growing number of Republicans have either recognised Mr Biden’s victory or at least urged the General Services Administration — the usually low- profile agency that manages the federal bureaucracy — to release federal funds for the Biden transition.
With Mr Trump refusing to acknowledge the election outcome, Mr Biden and his top aides have been denied briefings on sensitive domestic and foreign policy issues — most urgently the coronavirus pandemic battering the country.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who in 2016 advised the Trump transition, said on ABC that the President’s legal team was a “national embarrassment”.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, another prominent Republican, said on CNN that Mr Trump was making the country look like a “banana republic”. He tweeted later that the President should “stop golfing and concede”.
Mr Trump has golfed on every weekend day since the election, although he took part virtually in the conference of the G20 leading economies last weekend.
Representative Liz Cheney, the third- ranked House Republican, said that if Mr Trump’s lawyers couldn’t prove the claims of fraud, the President should be “respecting the sanctity of our electoral process”.
Mr Trump again tweeted on
Sunday about “massive numbers of fraudulent ballots”, a claim dismissed by a long list of judges in several states.
Appearances by Mr Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have drawn mockery, as have claims by another member of his legal team, Sidney Powell.
Ms Powell has alleged baseless conspiracy theories involving a possible hack of the election, earning her widespread derision but also praise from Trump supporters.
Mr Giuliani announced on Sunday that Ms Powell had been dropped from the team. Mr Trump’s latest legal setback came on Saturday, when a Pennsylvania judge threw out fraud claims there in a scathing judgment.
Pennsylvania was a mustwin state this year, and went solidly into Mr Biden’s column after backing Mr Trump in 2016.
Judge Matthew Brann wrote that Mr Trump’s team had presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” in their complaints about mail- in ballots.