WASHINGTON • As US President-elect Joe Biden prepares to name his first Cabinet appointees, more Republicans are starting to push for the transition to officially begin and calling on their colleagues to openly acknowledge his victory.
Republican Chris Christie, New Jersey's former governor, called the conduct of President Donald Trump's legal team, which has indulged in a web of conspiracy theories about voter fraud, "a national embarrassment", given the blistering dismissals of their lawsuits in court and their failure to produce evidence of widespread fraud.
"They allege fraud outside the courtroom, but when they go inside the courtroom, they don't plead fraud and they don't argue fraud," Mr Christie, a longtime Trump ally, said on ABC's This Week on Sunday.
"Elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn't happen."
The Trump campaign on Sunday disavowed Ms Sidney Powell, one of the lawyers who had floated many baseless claims, even though she had appeared at a news conference alongside Mr Trump's lawyers and campaign officials and been embraced by allies.
Pennsylvania's Senator Patrick Toomey last Saturday congratulated Mr Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory, saying Mr Trump had "exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge" the state's result after a federal judge dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit challenging the election outcome there.
Many of the strongest denunciations of Mr Trump's refusal to concede have come from Republicans who are no longer in office or have announced their retirement.
But as Mr Trump keeps denying the results of the election in an unflinching assault on the democratic process, a few more sitting lawmakers have urged him to at least begin the transition process.
Ms Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, last Friday became the most senior Republican to urge Mr Trump to begin "respecting the sanctity of our electoral process" should the nation's courts continue to reject his legal team's challenges to the outcome.
Still, most Republican lawmakers have not challenged Mr Trump, in part because they fear that a public acknowledgement of Mr Biden's victory could undercut support from their conservative base before two critical Senate run-off elections in Georgia in January.
The few Republicans who made their own ascertainment in the 15 days since Mr Biden won the vote have grown more blunt.
Senator Lisa Murkowski released a statement condemning Mr Trump's pressure campaign on state legislatures as "not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process".
Mr Trump's time is running out, as states including Michigan and Pennsylvania prepared to certify their election results as soon as yesterday, sealing Mr Biden's victory.
The Trump campaign filed notice that it was appealing the dismissal of a federal lawsuit that aimed to block Pennsylvania from certifying its election results unless the state invalidated tens of thousands of mail-in ballots.
Suits filed by the campaign and its GOP allies have failed in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona as judges declined to toss out millions of votes based on claims tied to a vast and implausible conspiracy theory about corrupt Democratic election workers.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump is mounting a less high-profile but similarly audacious bid to keep control of the Republican National Committee even after he leaves office.
Ms Ronna McDaniel, his hand-picked chair, has secured the President's support for her re-election to another term in January, when the party is expected to gather for its winter meeting.
But her intention to run with Mr Trump's blessing has incited a behind-the-scenes proxy battle, dividing Republicans between those who believe the national party should not be a political subsidiary of the outgoing president and others happy for Mr Trump to remain in control of it.
NYTIMES, BLOOMBERG
