Biden begins transition plans as Trump refuses to concede

Georgia's Lieutenant Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, said today there have been no substantiated cases of voter fraud in the state but pledged to continue to work with local officials to investigate any reports, and ensure every vote counts. 

 "We have not had any sort of substantial instances get to us yet, but there’s still time,” he told CNN's Jake Tapper of potential voting improprieties or voter fraud in the state.

"I'm going to continue to work hard to make sure that every voter in Georgia has confidence that our elections are fair and legal," he added.

Duncan would not say whether he'd felt pressure to say there was fraud or wrongdoing in the state's elections, even as the state’s incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have called for the resignation of the state's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger alleging, without evidence, that the state's election process was faulty. Both senators appear to be headed for runoff elections in January.

"Just because the person I voted for isn't in the lead right now doesn't mean my job description changes," Duncan told Tapper today.

Top attorneys for the Biden campaign called the onslaught of recent court cases and accusations of voting fraud from President Trump and Republicans "theater," during a phone briefing on Tuesday.

They reiterated that Biden had won the election, the vote margins couldn't be overcome by court cases or recounts, and that the Biden campaign is full steam ahead toward Inauguration Day.

The court fight that Trump has touted is "noise, not really law. Theatrics, not really lawsuits," Biden campaign senior adviser Bob Bauer said.

Bauer and campaign general counsel Dana Remus described how Republican allegations of fraud in court have repeatedly been found to be unmerited, and the recent spate of cases have offered no proof of supposed fraud. 

Bauer also noted that if the Trump campaign did prompt recounts to happen in one or more states, election recounts since 2000 have on average found changes in vote counts of about 400 votes on average or around 270 at the median.

"These margins cannot be overcome in recounts," Bauer said of Biden's battleground wins by several thousand votes.

When asked about the General Service Administration's refusal to certify Biden as the winner of the election, Bauer said the Biden team was continuing with its transition.

Some of the court cases, he noted, may be aimed particularly at slowing down or putting obstacles in the way of the "smooth functioning of the process."

He did not answer a question about legal options for the Biden campaign that are possible in response to GSA. "They will not be able to stop this process," Remus added.

President-elect Joe Biden is set to announce who will serve in top roles in his administration in the coming days and weeks.

Each of his Cabinet nominees will need to be confirmed by the US Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans. Two runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 could determine which party controls the chamber and impact the Cabinet confirmation process.

The Cabinet includes the vice president and the heads of 15 executive departments: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

Several key positions also have Cabinet-level rank: White House chief of staff, Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Office of Management & Budget director, United States Trade Representative ambassador, Council of Economic Advisers chairman and Small Business Administration administrator.

Read below to see who has been mentioned in conversations about potential top roles in the Biden administration:

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Here's who could serve in top roles in the Biden administration

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris underwent PCR testing for Covid-19 today and Covid-19 was not detected, according to a Harris aide.

The President-elect's office via the protective pool also informed reporters earlier this afternoon that Joe Biden tested negative for Covid-19 today.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, on Tuesday criticized President Trump for stalling the presidential transition process during Covid-19, calling the President’s election claims “baseless.”

“I’m dismayed to hear the baseless claims coming from the president, from his team, and many other elected Republican officials in Washington,” Baker said. “I’ve been a Republican for 40 years…What this president is doing at this point in time is not in the best interest of this country.”

The Pentagon’s top intelligence official is leaving his post, becoming the latest in a series of high profile departures from the Defense Department.

Retired Navy Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan, the defense department’s Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence has left his position according to a defense official. It not immediately clear if Kernan resigned or was fired.

Another official said Kernan had plan to leave the administration sometime after the election but his departure has been accelerated.

Kernan sent the following message to his colleagues upon his resignation:

Kernan has been in the post since 2017 following an unanimous Senate confirmation.

Trump announced on Twitter Monday that he had fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and that Christopher Miller, who serves as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will become acting secretary "effective immediately."

Following a turbulent few years under President Trump's policies, farmers across the US are trying to figure out what a Biden administration means for their futures.

Phil Ramsey, a fourth-generation farmer from Shelbyville, Indiana, supported President Trump in both 2016 and the most recent election. So now, he's worried about his place under a Joe Biden presidency.

Farmers have been at the political forefront of President Trump’s administration. He has called them the “backbone of our country,” promising to make things better, but what ensued in the four years of his administration were trade policies that often hurt — not helped — US farmers. 

The President launched a trade war with China that cut into farmers’ incomes in the form of Chinese tariffs on US agricultural exports. The Trump administration provided Market Facilitation Program payments to help offset their losses in revenue, but the funds often benefitted larger farms rather than family farmers.

Meanwhile, the spread of the coronavirus this year shut down meat packing facilities — forcing farmers to kill their livestock — and closed ethanol plants across the country, leaving farmers nowhere to sell the corn used in production.

Still, Trump’s supporters stuck by him in the rural parts of states, adding to his more than 71 million votes.

“I had confidence in his business experience,” said Ramsey, who believes China has held up their end of the Phase 1 US-China Trade agreement the President negotiated earlier this year. 

After nearly three years, a partial agreement was reached between the US and China in mid-January, right before the pandemic struck. The two countries agreed China would buy $50 billion in agricultural products in the first two years in exchange for the US reducing some tariffs. 

As of August, China was on pace to purchase less than half of what it had agreed to, according to an analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 

Ramsey, like many farmers, is concerned President-elect Biden will undo many of the Trump policies popular with those in agriculture, such as the USMCA and Phase 1 of US-China Trade deal. However, Biden has not said he would undo either of those policies.

President-elect Joe Biden tested negative for coronavirus today.

“Vice President Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected," according to the President-elect's office via the protective pool.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended Democrats campaign efforts in the 2020 election, despite potentially losing the Senate majority, at his policy news conference on Tuesday.

Schumer argued Democrats are “happy” because “we won the most important election.”

CNN’s Manu Raju asked Schumer about his efforts with Democratic groups to try to take back the Senate and whether he personally miscalculated the effort spent in red states where Senate Democrats lost.

Asked his reaction to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden's victory, saying Tuesday that "there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration," Schumer replied shouting into the mic: “Secretary Pompeo, Joe Biden has won, he’s won the election, now move on.”

Schumer also criticized the many Senate Republicans who continue to back President Trump’s “patently ridiculous lawsuits,” despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

“It never ceases to amaze me, how afraid just about… close to every Republican senator is just so afraid of Donald Trump that they’re willing to tie themselves in legal pretzels to not offend him,” Schumer also said.

"This is not one state where there is a 597 vote difference," Schumer said of the presidential race. "These are many states where there are tens of thousands of votes different. The Republicans have no legal case. They are politically distraught. But that's not going to create any success for them in the courts."