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Trump Won’t Commit to ‘Peaceful’ Post-Election Transfer of Power

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Trump Won’t Commit to ‘Peaceful’ Post-Election Transfer of Power

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Written by: Michael Crowley
WASHINGTON — President Trump declined an opportunity on Wednesday to endorse a peaceful transfer of power after the November election, renewing his baseless warnings about extensive voting fraud before saying there would be no power transfer at all.

Asked whether he would “commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the November election,” Mr. Trump demurred, passing on a chance to call for a calm and orderly election process.

“We’re going to have to see what happens,” he told a reporter during a news conference at the White House. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”

“I understand that, but people are rioting,” responded the reporter, Brian Karem of Playboy magazine, who repeated the question.

“Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation,” the president said. That was an apparent reference to mail-in ballots, which for months he has railed against, without evidence, as rife with fraud and likely to produce a delayed, tainted or outright illegitimate election result.

Mr. Trump’s refusal — or inability — to endorse perhaps the most fundamental tenet of American democracy, as any president in memory surely would have, was the latest instance in which he has cast grave uncertainty around the November election and its aftermath. Democrats are growing increasingly alarmed as Mr. Trump repeatedly questions the integrity of the vote and suggests that he might not accept the results if he loses.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he needed to swiftly confirm a successor for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because he expected disputes over the election result to be resolved by the Supreme Court, which could split 4-to-4 if a ninth justice is not seated.

“He’s threatening the election process and saying out loud what everyone has assumed he’s been thinking,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of American political history at Princeton University. “The more he makes these arguments, the more he normalizes the fact that this can be part of the conversation.”

“Even if meant to distract, these are powerful words to come from a president,” Mr. Zelizer added. “He’s clearly accelerating his effort to set up a challenge to an outcome that is unfavorable to him.”

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Trump Won’t Commit to ‘Peaceful’ Post-Election Transfer of Power (Published 2020)

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In response to a question, the president complained about mail-in ballots and said: “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

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Trump says he’ll ‘see what happens’ on election results; Biden makes appeal to Black voters in N.C.

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Trump says he’ll ‘see what happens’ on election results; Biden makes appeal to Black voters in N.C.

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Asked on Sept. 23 if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election, President Trump said, "We're going to have to see what happens." (Video: The Washington Post)

Article
The Washington Post is providing this news free to all readers as a public service.

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President Trump held a news conference at the White House in which he responded to a question about whether he would agree to a peaceful transfer of power by saying, "Well, we're going to have to see what happens." Earlier in the day, he predicted the election would end up in the Supreme Court.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made an appeal Wednesday to Black voters in North Carolina, promoting his plans for improving education and housing disparities as he made his first trip to the battleground state since the primaries. Later, he issued a statement urging peaceful protests in response to no officer being charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor.

With 41 days until Election Day ...

Allegations of racism have marked Trump's presidency and become a key issue as the election nears.

Trump appears to have secured a Senate majority for his Supreme Court pick, even before naming one.

A Washington Post-ABC poll finds Trump and Biden in tight races in Florida and Arizona.

Biden leads Trump by eight percentage points nationally, 51 percent to 43 percent, according to a Washington Post average of polls. Biden's margin is the same in Michigan and smaller in other key states: seven points in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, five in Arizona and one in Florida.

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Election 2020: Biden defeats Trump

The latest: Congress affirms Biden's presidential win following riot at U.S. Capitol

Graphic: How members of Congress voted on counting the electoral college vote

Live updates: Trump pledges 'orderly transition' after Biden is declared winner at the end of a violent day

25th Amendment: Senior officials have discussed removing Trump. Here's how that could work.

Election results under attack: Here are the facts

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Trump says he'll 'see what happens' on election results; Biden makes appeal to Black voters in N.C.

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Article The Washington Post is providing this news free to all readers as a public service. Follow this story and more by signing up for national breaking news email alerts. President Trump held a news conference at the White House in which he responded to a question about whether he would agree to a peaceful transfer of power by saying, "Well, we're going to have to see what happens."

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"Republican Inquiry Finds no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden"

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"Republican Inquiry Finds no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden"

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The report delivered on Wednesday appeared to be little more than a rehashing of unproven allegations that echoed a Russian disinformation campaign.

Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who led one of the committees investigating the Bidens, conceded in recent days that the report would contain no "massive smoking guns." Credit... T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

WASHINGTON - An election-year investigation by Senate Republicans into corruption allegations against Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter, involving Ukraine found no evidence of improper influence or wrongdoing by the former vice president, closing out an inquiry its leaders had hoped would tarnish the Democratic presidential nominee.

The investigation found that Hunter Biden had "cashed in" on his father's name to close lucrative business deals around the world. It also concluded that his work for Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company then mired in a corruption scandal, while the former vice president was directing American policy toward Kyiv had given the appearance of a conflict of interest and alarmed some State Department officials.

But an 87-page report summing up the findings, released jointly on Wednesday by the Senate Homeland Security and Finance Committees, contained no evidence that the elder Mr. Biden improperly manipulated American policy toward Ukraine or committed any other misdeed. In fact, investigators heard witness testimony that rebutted those charges.

The homeland security panel's Republican chairman, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, had made little secret of his political ambitions for his report, boasting for weeks that his findings would demonstrate Mr. Biden's "unfitness for office." Instead, the result delivered on Wednesday appeared to be little more than a rehashing six weeks before Election Day of unproven allegations that echo an active Russian disinformation campaign and have been pushed by Mr. Trump.

In the days before its release, Mr. Johnson conceded in an interview that there would be no "massive smoking guns," saying that there was "a misconception on the part of the public that there would be."

The report's primary conclusions, though, were largely the ones Mr. Johnson and his investigative partner, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, had made before they began their work, with some new details from State Department and financial transaction reports.

Hunter Biden's position "hindered the efforts of dedicated career-service individuals who were fighting for anticorruption measures in Ukraine," the Republicans wrote. They did not clarify the nature of that hindrance beyond saying that the situation had been "awkward" for career State Department officials, who "were required to maintain situational awareness of Hunter Biden's association with Burisma."

It was also filled with details that emphasized the unseemly appearance created by the younger Mr. Biden's involvement with Burisma, given his father's position. Section 8 of the report was entitled "HUNTER BIDEN: A SECRET SERVICE PROTECTEE WHILE ON BURISMA'S BOARD."

"What the chairmen discovered during the course of this investigation is that the Obama administration knew that Hunter Biden's position on Burisma's board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine," the report said.

The Trump campaign quickly promoted the "explosive new revelations," zeroing in on financial records obtained by the senators that showed Hunter Biden receiving large sums of money - sometimes as large as seven figures - from foreigners in China, Russia and elsewhere while his father was in office. They amounted to "stunning levels of corruption and breathtaking breaches of America's national security," said Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman.

In their own competing document challenging the report, Democrats accused Republicans of cherry-picking their findings. All 10 witnesses interviewed by investigators, they noted, had testified that neither Mr. Biden nor anyone else had altered American policy because of his son.

"Every witness stated that Hunter Biden and his associates had no role in the formulation of U.S. policy, that Hunter Biden's role did not influence U.S. foreign policy decisions, and that Vice President Biden carried out U.S. foreign policy in the interest of the United States," the Democrats wrote.

The lack of meaningful new information and the overlap with a Russian disinformation campaign that American intelligence officials have said is designed to denigrate Mr. Biden only fed charges by Democrats and Mr. Biden's campaign that Mr. Johnson had abused his Senate powers to aid Mr. Trump's re-election campaign - and in so doing, had aided Moscow.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Mr. Biden's campaign, accused Mr. Johnson of subsidizing "a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars" by promulgating "a long-disproven, hard-core right wing conspiracy theory" about the former vice president.

Mr. Biden has conceded that the optics of Hunter Biden's position were bad, but the former vice president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Though their scope was ultimately broader, Republicans set out to scrutinize a specific claim raised by Mr. Trump: that Mr. Biden had corruptly pushed for the ouster of Ukraine's top prosecutor, who had been investigating Burisma, as a favor to his son. Mr. Trump's pursuit of that charge, including the pressure he tried to put on Ukraine's leader to look into it, is what prompted his impeachment last year.

The senators turned up no evidence to support it. Current and former government officials testified that the decision to remove the prosecutor had not been merely Mr. Biden's position, but that of most Western nations determined through a rigorous policy process.

The report's lead finding - that Hunter Biden's presence on the Burisma board posed a challenge for American diplomats - rested heavily on the testimony of George P. Kent, a State Department official involved in Ukraine policy. Mr. Kent raised concerns in 2015 and 2016, including with Mr. Biden's staff, that the millions of dollars in payments to Hunter Biden by Burisma made it "very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine."

But Mr. Kent's statements are not new. He had a prominent role in the House's impeachment inquiry last fall, when he detailed his concerns about Hunter Biden, but also said he "did not witness any efforts by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny."

"So there was no time, as I've testified, that the U.S. government, the U.S. Embassy ever made a decision" about the owner of Burisma or the firm itself "where we took the presence of a private citizen on the board into account," he told Mr. Johnson's staff. Other former diplomats, including the ambassador to Ukraine at the time, made similar statements.

Neither Mr. Biden's campaign nor Mr. Johnson would say whether he had sought information directly from the former vice president, and a lawyer for Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview last week before the report's release, Mr. Johnson said he was simply conducting the type of oversight with which his committee was tasked, and suggested that the investigation had been thrust upon him because Mr. Biden had opted to challenge Mr. Trump. The senator said that he "never thought Joe Biden should run for president," and hinted that the former vice president had cognitive problems, a baseless attack frequently hurled by Mr. Trump.

Senate Democrats had sought to shut down the inquiry, noting that it was based on claims that Russia has fanned about Mr. Biden and Ukraine.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, noted during one such attempt last week that the United States had just imposed sanctions for election interference on a Ukrainian lawmaker with ties to Russian intelligence, Andriy Derkach, who was peddling edited tapes purporting to show improper acts by Mr. Biden in Ukraine. The tapes were part of a "a covert influence campaign," the Treasury Department said this month, bent on "spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to Election Day" - like the one Mr. Johnson conducted.

Mr. Derkach claimed that he had provided information to Mr. Johnson and Mr. Grassley, though the senators said they never sought or received anything from him. (They have worked with Andrii Telizhenko, another Ukrainian, despite law enforcement officials sharing concerns with the committee that he, too, could be spreading the same Russian misinformation.)

On Wednesday, Mr. Schumer said the report read "as if Putin wrote it, not United States senators."

Mr. Johnson forcefully denied that his report was based on any disinformation. But he also said a claim should not be off limits merely because bad actors were amplifying it.

"If there is somebody in Ukraine and somebody in Russia also publicizing the fact that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden created this massive conflict of interest," Mr. Johnson said, "is that something we are just supposed to take a hands-off attitude toward?"

Democrats were not the only ones taking issue. Last week, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, criticized Mr. Johnson for pursuing what he called a "political exercise."

"It's not the legitimate role of government for Congress or for taxpayer expense to be used in an effort to damage political opponents," Mr. Romney said.

Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.

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Republican Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Biden

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The report delivered on Wednesday appeared to be little more than a rehashing of unproven allegations that echoed a Russian disinformation campaign. WASHINGTON - An election-year investigation by Senate Republicans into corruption allegations against Joseph R. Biden Jr.

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Absentee ballots returned

30.2 million ballots

Outstanding absentee ballots

54.3 million ballots

Total registered voters

209.2 million

70%

Share of registered voters that voted in 2016

More than 42.1 million ballots have already been cast in the 2020 election. 30.2 million absentee ballots have been returned to election officials and 11.9 million people have voted early in person.

84.6 million absentee ballots have been requested or sent to voters in 49 states and the District of Columbia for the general election, an indication that the number of Americans who plan to vote early or by mail will set records. Many states have broadened absentee voting eligibility rules in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and requests for absentee ballots have surpassed total 2016 requests in at least 18 states.

Note: 2016 data is for ballots requested or sent, depending on the available data in each state. States that plan to send a ballot to every voter are not shown.

Polling and ballot request data show that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail in 2020, and that most Republicans are likely to vote in person on Election Day. This trend, when combined with the expected days- to weekslong tabulation of absentee ballots in several battleground states, means that the in-person vote reported on Election Day is more likely to show early Republican leads, and that absentee votes tallied later may show Democrats gaining ground.

Note: Data is from states where ballots must be requested and party registration data is reported. Ballot requests are not the same as actual votes.

Some states send absentee ballots to all registered voters, or all voters who have cast ballots in recent elections. Not all voters who request mail ballots are expected to return them, and some may decide to vote in person instead. Voting rules may still change as a result of new laws and legal challenges, but here's a look at how many absentee ballots have been requested or sent in different states. This page will be updated as more voting data is reported.

Find detailed information about your state

Arizona

3,989,000 were registered to vote as of Aug. 4. (+11% compared with 2016)

Absentee voting

All voters are allowed to vote absentee. Officials started sending out ballots on Oct. 7. In 2016, 61 percent of all votes were cast early.

Note: When Arizonans register to vote, they can sign up to automatically receive an absentee ballot for every election.

Delaware

726,000 were registered to vote as of Aug. 4. (+7% compared with 2016)

Absentee voting

Applications for absentee ballots will be sent to all registered voters. Officials started sending out ballots on Oct. 4. In 2016, 6 percent of all votes were cast early.

Ballot requests by party affiliation

Based on ballot request data as of Sept. 18.

Idaho

907,000 were registered to vote as of June 3. (+12% compared with 2016)

Absentee voting

All voters are allowed to vote absentee. By Oct. 5, officials must send out absentee ballots to all voters who have requested one up to that point. After Oct. 5, absentee ballots are mailed out on a rolling basis, as requests come in. In 2016, 29 percent of all votes were cast early.

Ballot requests by party affiliation

Based on ballot request data as of Oct. 9.

Rhode Island

795,000 were registered to vote as of Sept. 1. (+2% compared with 2016)

Absentee voting

All voters are allowed to vote absentee. Officials started sending out ballots on Oct. 5. In 2016, 9 percent of all votes were cast early.

Ballot requests by party affiliation

Based on ballot request data as of Oct. 9.

Wyoming

239,000 were registered to vote as of Sept. 1. (-8% compared with 2016)

Absentee voting

All voters are allowed to vote absentee. Officials started sending out ballots on Sept. 18. In 2016, 31 percent of all votes were cast early.

Note: In 2016, 100% of registered voters cast a ballot because Wyoming allows all voters to register at the polls on Election Day.

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Tracking Absentee Votes in the 2020 Election

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Absentee ballots returned 30.2 million ballots Outstanding absentee ballots 54.3 million ballots Total registered voters 209.2 million 70% Share of registered voters that voted in 2016 More than 42.1 million ballots have already been cast in the 2020 election. 30.2 million absentee ballots have been returned to election officials and 11.9 million people have voted early in person.

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The latest news about the 2020 election, including updates on the candidates, the polls and the major issues.