Trump Campaign Says Media ‘Falsely Reporting’ Georgia Win for Biden Amid Contested Recount Procedures

Gwinnett County election workers handle ballots as part of the recount for the 2020 presidential election at the Beauty P. Baldwin Voter Registrations and Elections Building in Lawrenceville, Ga., on Nov. 16, 2020. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

The Trump campaign on Nov. 19 accused media outlets of “falsely reporting” a Georgia win for former Vice President Joe Biden amid contested recount procedures in the state.

The largest hand recount of ballots in U.S. history began in Georgia on Nov. 13, ahead of a Nov. 20 deadline to certify state election results. The Trump campaign is challenging the recount process because it did not include signature matching.

On the order of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, Georgia election workers spent days conducting the recount. Four counties reported previously uncounted ballots, which in total cut Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s lead over Trump by around 1,400.

After Georgia election officials released the results of the hand ballot recount, the Associated Press and Fox News on Thursday night projected a win for Biden in the state, which holds 16 electoral votes.

“Headlines are already falsely reporting that Joe Biden is declared the winner in Georgia. Sorry, media, that’s not how it works. The State of Georgia has not certified its results, and it should not,” Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis said in a statement. “This so-called hand recount went exactly as we expected because Georgia simply recounted all of the illegal ballots that had been included in the total.”

“We continue to demand that Georgia conduct an honest recount, which includes signature matching. We intend to pursue all legal options to ensure that only legal ballots are counted,” Ellis added.

In 2016, President Donald Trump won Georgia by about five percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

A number of news outlets have declared Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The Epoch Times won’t declare a winner until all results are certified and any legal challenges are resolved.

While media outlets can make their own projections as to the winner of the election, state electors and the Electoral College are the bodies that are officially tasked with declaring a presidential winner. Each state has different deadlines for when officials must certify their election results, and the Electoral College votes on Dec. 14. Inauguration Day is Jan. 20, 2021.

The president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani told reporters at a press conference Thursday that the Trump campaign will file a major lawsuit in Georgia as soon as Friday.

The lawsuit will include voter fraud allegations, among other charges, Giuliani said.

He claimed that Georgia’s recount didn’t mean much because workers weren’t analyzing the ballots the right way.

“Whatever the count in Georgia today is, is totally ridiculous. They’re counting the same fraudulent ballots one more time,” he said.

Multiple poll observers in sworn affidavits have described significant anomalies in the Georgia recount.

Observers in Fulton, DeKalb, and Cobb Counties—including an election official auditor, an election recount monitor, a credentialed statewide poll watcher, and several recount observers—raised their concerns in sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury, filed as Exhibits in the Georgia lawsuit (pdf) brought by attorney L. Lin Wood Jr.

Zachary Stieber and Jeff Carlson contributed to this report.