CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta claimed on Saturday that Donald Trump’s campaign doesn’t have significant evidence of voter fraud ahead of the team’s planned legislative battles to contest the election on Monday.
“Trump adviser tells me the campaign has ‘nothing concrete’ in terms of voter fraud,” he tweeted .
The reporting echoed The New York Times , which claimed that Trump’s legal battles don’t appear to have a path to shift the outcome of the election. The publication said that the president would instead have to rely on recounts and pressure on state legislatures, which are not likely to significantly shift the race in his favor.
Acosta’s report came just hours before multiple news outlets deemed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden the winner of the election, which was followed by Trump’s defiant response, The Hill reported.
“Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor,” he said in a statement.
The Democrat’s team has expressed readiness to meet any challenge Trump brings to court. However, the team also claimed they are confident that none thus far would change the outcome of the election and take the presidency from Biden.
As reported by CBC , Trump’s legal team is focusing on states where the president began ahead due to in-person ballots before turning blue for his opponent via mail-in votes. But experts allegedly believe that the Supreme Court will remain out of the battle unless the issues are related to the entire outcome of the election.
One such expert, Kim Wehle , a professor of law at the University of Baltimore, noted that elections are determined at the state level and argued that Trump’s lawsuits are an attempt to control the public narrative around the election.
Although George W. Bush won the 2000 election due to Supreme Court intervention and Al Gore ultimately conceded, CBC News noted that Trump would not likely do the same.
“There’s little evidence Trump will be as amenable — during the campaign, he made no clear promise to accept a close election loss.”
The publication pointed to Trump’s “baseless accusations” in 2016 which he said there were millions of illegally cast ballots in favor of Hillary Clinton. Although the president set up a commission to investigate the purported fraud, it was later shut down.