Pelosi elected to 4th term as House speaker

She’s the third speaker in the last 25 years to win with less than 218 votes.

President Donald Trump is slated to hand over control of the White House to President-elect Joe Biden in 17 days.


Trump asks Georgia secretary of state to 'find' enough votes to win state

In a stunning hour-long phone call, President Donald Trump ranted about the election and asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" exactly enough votes to win the Peach State.

The call, originally published by the Washington Post, starts with the president spending about 12 minutes uninterrupted decrying his electoral loss, which he claimed multiple times during the call was “impossible,” and spewing election conspiracy theories that the secretary of state’s office and local election officials have repeatedly disputed and debunked.

"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state and flipping the state is a great testament to our country ..." Trump reportedly told Raffensperger during the call.

In an extraordinary exchange, the president tells Raffensperger there would be “nothing wrong” if the secretary “recalculated” the results of the election, leading to Raffensperger pushing back.

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.” Raffensperger said.

"It's just not possible to have lost Georgia. When I heard it was close, I said there's no way," Trump stated on the call.

Despite the president’s persistence, the secretary maintained the reported vote count was accurate.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also spoke at times during the call, and Ryan Germany, the general counsel in Raffensperger’s office, did as well.

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan


Pelosi re-elected House speaker

The House of Representatives has narrowly reelected Nancy Pelosi as speaker, after the California Democrat won the support of 216 members. The result was announced with fanfare at 4:49 p.m. by House Clerk Cheryl Johnson, who declared Pelosi “duly elected” speaker at 4:50 p.m.

Pelosi stood at the Democratic leadership desk as her colleagues applauded her historic achievement.

There were 427 members who participated in the vote.

At 4:25 p.m., California Democrat Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who has battled health problems for the past several years and nearly died from pneumonia after a fall last spring, cast the 216th vote for Pelosi –- with Democrats in the chamber erupting in applause.

Pelosi, whose caucus ranks have dwindled to just 222 voting members in the 117th Congress, lost the support of five members.

Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, voted for Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Penn., voted for Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries. Three other Democratic women -- Reps. Abigail Spanberger, Elissa Slotkin and Mikie Sherrill -- all voted present. If they had voted for any person on the planet, it would have increased the threshold Pelosi needed to secure the speaker’s gavel.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, won unanimous support from the Republican conference -- garnering 209 votes on the floor.

This will be Pelosi’s 4th (non-consecutive) term as speaker. She’s also the third speaker in the last 25 years to win with less than 218 votes, next to Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan.

Pelosi will speak from the speaker’s chair shortly, after McCarthy hands her the gavel.

-ABC News' John Parkinson, Mariam Khan and Benjamin Siegel


In rare statement, Paul Ryan says 'Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate'

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan has emerged from retirement with a rare statement to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the certification of the electoral college votes this week, emphasizing that “voters determine the president” while warning “this self-governance cannot sustain itself if the whims of Congress replace the will of the people.”

“Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory strike at the foundation of our republic,” Ryan noted. “It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans.”

Ryan added that the Trump campaign had “ample opportunity” to challenge the results but failed “from lack of evidence.”

"The legal process was exhausted, and the results were decisively confirmed. The Department of Justice, too, found no basis for overturning the result. If states wish to reform their processes for future elections, that is their prerogative. But Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate.”

-ABC News' John Parkinson



Bipartisan group of senators: 'It is time to move forward'

From the bipartisan group who hammered out the COVID relief compromise, an appeal to senators to accept the Electoral College results, writing in a statement, " It is time to move forward."

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Susan Collins, R-Maine, Mark Warner, D-Va., Bill Cassidy, R-La., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Angus King, I-Maine, Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., issued the following statement on the upcoming Congressional certification of the 2020 Presidential election results:

"The 2020 election is over. All challenges through recounts and appeals have been exhausted. At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans' confidence in the already determined election results. The voters have spoken, and Congress must now fulfill its responsibility to certify the election results. In two weeks, we will begin working with our colleagues and the new Administration on bipartisan, common sense solutions to the enormous challenges facing our country. It is time to move forward."

-ABC News' Trish Turner


Gohmert says 140 House members will object to election

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is continuing his push to reverse the results of the presidential election by trying to legally force Vice President Mike Pence to override the electors when votes are finalized by Congress on Jan 6.

In a legal brief filed this morning, attorneys for Gohmert responded to Pence's argument that they should have sued the House and the Senate, not the vice president in his presiding role.

Gohmert's attorneys wrote that there are 140 House members who are expected to object to the congressional certification of the Electoral College vote on Wednesday.

"On January 6th, a joint session of Congress will convene to formally elect the President. The defendant, Vice-President Pence, will preside. Under the Constitution, he has the authority to conduct that proceeding as he sees fit," they wrote.

"He may count elector votes certified by a state's executive, or he can prefer a competing slate of duly qualified electors. He may ignore all electors from a certain state. That is the power bestowed upon him by the Constitution."

Gohmert's attorneys say Gohmert and the "over 140" House members will object on Wednesday due to "mounting and convincing evidence of voter fraud."

"For over a century, the counting of elector votes and proclaiming the winner was a formality to which the prying eye of the media and those outside the halls of the government paid no attention. But not this time," they wrote.

"This country is deeply divided along political lines," the filing adds. "This division is compounded by a broad and strongly held mistrust of the election processes employed and their putative result by a very large segment of the American population."

A small group of Michigan's GOP would-be electors also intervened in the case, and a Biden elector from Colorado did the same in support of Pence.

-ABC News' Meg Cunningham