Will Donald Trump Concede To Joe Biden? Advisor Details Plan To Expose, Investigate Fraud

Some of President Donald Trump’s closest advisors say it’s unlikely he’ll concede to Joe Biden anytime soon. Jason Miller, a senior advisor for Trump’s reelection bid, said Monday on Fox News that conceding was largely out of the question at this point.

“That word is not even in our vocabulary right now,” Miller said.

In a separate interview on Fox News, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said the general belief on his team was that the incumbent will serve another term in office.

“We have high confidence that as the president pursues his lines of legal recourse — including the recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin, at least — we do feel like there is a runway for the president to win this and win reelection,” he said.

Biden has 279 electoral votes — well above the 270 needed to win the presidency — and some news services have Biden at 290 electoral votes, with Arizona called. The Associated Press, which has Biden at 290, has yet to call Georgia, citing Biden's razor-thin 0.2% lead. State law dictates that a candidate can request a recount if the margin is less than 0.5%.

The AP has yet to call North Carolina, noting the race there is close and election officials in the state have until Thursday to finish tallying the vote. Biden’s edge in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, is likely beyond the threshold for a recount.

In Wisconsin, vote tabulators have until Nov. 17 to finish their work. As of Monday evening, the AP reported Trump was about 0.6% behind Biden, within the margin necessary to ask for a recount. If Trump wants a recount, he would need to pay for it.

Miller suggested Pennsylvania and Michigan could also be the target of legal challenges in the coming days, suggested the lawsuits were about the sanctity of the election.

“If we can’t get this right, why would we think that we’re ever going to be able to have confidence in these elections going forward?” he said.

Trump’s campaign team has filed several challenges to state results, pointing to unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. On Monday, Attorney General William Barr sent a memo to U.S. attorneys saying they could continue to mount challenges before vote counts are finished, breaking a 40-year-old policy of non-intervention.

The top election officer in the Justice Department, Richard Pilger, resigned in response to Barr’s memo.

Some within the Trump campaign have reportedly admitted that it is time to accept defeat. First lady Melania Trump, former wife Ivana and son-in-law Jared Kushner have all called on President Trump to concede.

Even if Trump edges ahead of Biden in some contested states, he might still be short of the votes in the Electoral College needed to declare victory. State electors meet Dec. 14 to cast their votes.