Michigan state legislature closes offices due to 'credible threats of violence'

Law enforcement recommended the Michigan legislature close its offices.

President Donald Trump is slated to hand over control of the White House to President-elect Joe Biden in 39 days.


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Trump files motion asking to formally join Texas lawsuit against 4 battleground states

Trump filed a motion with the Supreme Court Wednesday night asking to formally join Texas' lawsuit against four battleground states in a bid to overturn the 2020 election.

"The number of ballots affected by illegal conduct of state elections officials greatly exceeds the current margin between Plaintiff in Intervention (Trump) and his opponent in the election for the Office of President (Biden) in each of the respective Defendant States, and the four Defendant States collectively have a sufficient number of electoral votes to affect the result of the vote in the Electoral College for the Office of President," Trump attorney John Eastman wrote in the filing. "Proposed Plaintiff in Intervention therefore clearly has a stake in the outcome of this litigation."

The accompanying complaint offers a distorted portrayal of Trump's electoral performance, repeating an array of unfounded claims and innuendo.


"It is not necessary for (Trump) to prove that fraud occurred," Eastman argued in the filing, "it is only necessary to demonstrate that the elections in the defendant States materially deviated from the 'manner' of choosing electors established by their respective state Legislatures."

"By failing to follow the rule of law, these officials put our nation's belief in elected self-government at risk," he added.

This is not the first time that Trump has tried to join an election case before the court. In November, he asked the justices to intervene in the Pennsylvania Republican Party's case challenging tabulation of late-arriving mail ballots. The court ignored his request.

-ABC News Senior Washington Reporter Devin Dwyer


Republican House member writes colleagues to support Trump in  SCOTUS filing

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., emailed his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate Wednesday morning, rounding up support for an amicus brief for the Texas attorney general’s attempt to get the Supreme Court to intervene in the presidential election, according to an email obtained by ABC News.

The source who provided the email said he believed it was sent to all congressional Republicans, though that couldn't be confirmed by the text of the email.

Johnson wrote that he spoke to Trump on Tuesday night and that the president asked him to reach out to other members.

“He specifically asked me to contact all Republican Members of the House and Senate today and request that all join on to our brief,” Johnson wrote in large, underlined red letters.

“He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review,” he added.

“The simple objective of our brief is to affirm for the Court (and our constituents back home) our serious concerns with the integrity of our election system,” Johnson wrote in the email. “We are not seeking to independently litigate the particular allegations of fraud in our brief (that is not our place as amici).”

“We will merely state our belief that the broad scope of the various allegations and irregularities in the subject states merits careful, timely review by the Supreme Court,” he added.

The president and his allies have mounted more than four dozen lawsuits in state and federal courts, most of which have been defeated.

-ABC News’ Rick Klein


Cobb County, Georgia, adds two more locations during last week of early voting

Cobb County, Georgia, announced Wednesday it will add two more early voting locations during the last week of advance voting before the Senate runoffs there, bringing the total of open locations open during that time to seven.

The county will also no longer have early voting at the Ward Recreation Center, moving it to the Ron Anderson Community Center in Powder Springs. A spokesperson for the county said they thought this was a better/more accessible location.

The changes follow a letter from several organizations, including Georgia NAACP, Black Voters Matter, All Voting is Local Georgia and ACLU Georgia outlining the importance of maintaining 11 advance voting locations for the January runoff elections.

Stacey Abrams' organization, Fair Fight, joined those organizations' call Monday afternoon. Early voting in Georgia’s runoff elections begins Monday.

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan


Georgia Republicans recruit more than 4,000 early voting poll watchers

While some elections officials in Georgia grapple with difficult logistics surrounding the upcoming Senate runoff races, the state's GOP appears to be in full swing with its poll watcher recruitment efforts.

According to Abigail Sigler, a spokesperson for the Georgia Republican Party, Republicans across the state -- including the Georgia Republican Party, sitting Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee – have over 4,000 volunteers signed up to serve as poll watchers during the early voting period. This number was also confirmed to ABC News by the NRSC.

Sigler said it is "the largest number in Georgia history and many more than during the general election."

The state's Senate runoffs on Jan. 5 will determine which party holds the majority in the incoming Congress' upper chamber.

-ABC News Alisa Wiersema


Georgia recertifies election results, reaffirming Biden's victory

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has recertified the results of the 2020 presidential election following a second audit that entailed counties counting by hand every one of the approximately 5 million ballots cast in the race.

The Trump campaign requested a recount after votes were first certified for Biden on Nov. 20, but the machine recount, as officials said to expect, reaffirmed that Biden won Georgia's 16 electoral votes -- the first Democratic presidential victory in the state since 1992.

In a press release announcing the recertification, Raffensperger also gave a statement about the dismissal of former Trump legal team lawyer Sidney Powell's "Kraken" lawsuit by a Georgia court earlier in the day.

“Today is an important day for election integrity in Georgia and across the country,” Raffensperger said. “The claims in the Kraken lawsuit prove to be as mythological as the creature for which they’re named. Georgians can now move forward knowing that their votes, and only their legal votes, were counted accurately, fairly, and reliably.”

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan