After losing election and legal challenges, Trump still insists, ‘It’s not over’

USA TODAY’s coverage of the 2020 election and President-elect Joe Biden’s transition continues this week as he rolls out more of his picks for top jobs in his administration. With the final vote counts certified, the Electoral College will meet in statehouses across the U.S. Monday where the 538 electors will cast the ballots making Biden’s victory official. 

© Jose Luis Magana, AFP via Getty Images
Supporters of President Donald Trump rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington, Dec. 12, 2020, to protest the 2020 election.

President Donald Trump has cleared the way for Biden’s team to use federal resources and get briefings during the transition, although Trump has yet to formally concede the race.

Be sure to refresh this page often to get the latest information on the election and the transition.

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Trump says Biden would be ‘illegitimate’ president

President Donald Trump still won’t say whether he will attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said in an interview broadcast Sunday on “Fox & Friends.”

Trump instead focused on his protests against the election in the brief interview taped Saturday in West Point, New York, right before the Army-Navy football game.

While reciting baseless claims of organized voter fraud, Trump suggested that Biden would not be a legitimate president. “I worry about the country having an illegitimate president, that’s what I worry about,” he said.

The president also attacked the Supreme Court and other judges for rejecting his team’s claims of voter fraud. He criticized Attorney General William Barr for not announcing before the election that Biden’s son Hunter is under investigation for tax issues. He protested media coverage of the election.

“It’s not over,” Trump told Fox. “We keep going. And we’re going to continue to go forward.”

Meanwhile, members of the Electoral College meet Monday to certify Biden’s win. Trump told Fox he doesn’t know how that vote will affect his protests.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re going to speed it up as much as we can.”

“Were this any other human being, it would be incredible,” tweeted attorney George Conway, co-founder of an anti-Trump organization called the Lincoln Project. “But it’s not. It’s classic @realDonaldTrump, the worst narcissistic psychopath the country’s political life has ever seen, but who we’ve gotten to know all too well.”

– David Jackson

At least two dozen arrests around US amid pro-Trump protests

Washington, D.C., police say they arrested 23 people in connection with violent clashes between Trump supporters who gathered near the White House Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s election defeat and counter-protesters.

And another person was arrested in Olympia, Washington, following a shooting at demonstrations near the state Capitol that included a group that wanted COVID-19 restrictions lifted, another protesting Trump’s loss in the presidential election last month, and a Black Lives Matter counter-protest. 

Lt. Paul Lower of the Olympia Police Department said the opposing groups were “heavily armed,” including firearms.

“They were fighting amongst themselves, two factions with opposing political beliefs,” Lower said. 

Saturday’s rally in Washington’s Freedom Plaza was smaller than a similar election protest that was held on Nov. 14 in the nation’s capital, but it also drew a larger contingent of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group known to incite street violence. 

After the rallies ended, downtown Washington quickly devolved into crowds of hundreds of Proud Boys and combined forces of antifa and local Black activists — both sides seeking a confrontation in an area flooded with police officers. As dusk fell, they faced off on opposite sides of a street, with multiple lines of city police and federal Park Police, some in riot gear, keeping them separated.

– William Cummings 

Contributing: The Associated Press 

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Live politics updates: After losing election and legal challenges, Trump still insists, ‘It’s not over’