US president Donald Trump says he will go to Supreme Court to stop ballot counting in the ongoing US election.
The president while addressing his supporters in the White House has declared a premature victory as votes are still being counted.
CNN reports that President Trump attacked legitimate vote-counting efforts in remarks from the White House early Wednesday, suggesting attempts to tally all ballots amounted to disenfranchising his supporters.
“Millions and millions of people voted for us,” Trump said in the East Room. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.”
His remarks were laced with misleading statements and outright falsehoods and amounted to an assault on the Democratic process. He insisted that states where vote tallies currently show him leading should be called in his favor, despite significant outstanding votes yet to be counted.
He said he was preparing to declare victory earlier in the evening.
“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything. And all of a sudden it was just called off,” he said.
Trump baselessly claimed a fraud was being committed.
“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country,” Trump claimed.
“Frankly we did win this election,” he said, despite millions of votes still outstanding.
Saying he would go to the US Supreme Court, Trump said he wanted “all voting to stop.”
Veteran Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg expressed dismay at President Trump’s attacks on legitimate vote-counting efforts this morning, saying he had never seen a President behave in such a manner.
“It is a distressing moment for me as a long time Republican to see a call to disenfranchise so many people,” said Ginsberg. “…What the President said tonight is not only unprecedented and it not only lacks any basis in the law, it really is a disservice to all the other men and women who are on the ballot as Republicans today.”
When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether he’d ever seen anything like this from a President, he replied, “No. Not even close.”
