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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s camp hit out at President Donald Trump’s calls for vote counting to stop and threats to go to the Supreme Court.
Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
President Donald Trump falsely claimed to have already won the election early on Wednesday, with millions of votes in key battleground states yet to be counted in a tight race.
Trump also vowed to take the election battle to the Supreme Court in a White House speech that immediately sent U.S. stock futures YM00, -0.08% ES00, +0.58% NQ00, +2.52% lower, before recovering. The president called for “all voting to stop” as he described the vote tabulation as a “major fraud in this country.”
Biden’s camp reacted strongly to Trump’s statement, with the Democratic challenger’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon branding his calls to stop counting “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect.” She added that the Biden’s camp legal team stood ready to deploy if the president makes good on his threat to go to court.
Read: Stock-market hope for ‘blue wave’ Election Day outcome washes out
As of 6 a.m. Eastern, around three hours after Trump’s address, both candidates remained short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Biden had 238 electoral votes compared with Trump’s 213, according to the Associated Press.
A number of critical battleground states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are yet to be called, while another, Arizona, has gone to Biden.
However, that didn’t stop Trump declaring victory and saying “we want all voting to stop.”
Watch: Trump speaks on election night as vote count continues
“This is a fraud on the American public, this is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly we did win this election,” he said. The president didn’t specify what legal action he was threatening to take to the Supreme Court.
Earlier in the evening, former Vice President Joe Biden called for patience, however, telling supporters in Delaware the election “ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
He added: “It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won this election. That’s the decision of the American people.” He said he was confident of victory.
His campaign manager O’Malley Dillon echoed those sentiments later on in the night in the aftermath of Trump’s comments. “The counting will not stop. It will continue until every duly cast vote is counted. Because that is what our laws — the laws that protect every Americans’ constitutional right to vote — require,” she said.
