JUDY WOODRUFF: It's been five weeks since Election Day, but President Trump and many
of his allies continue to question state election results, despite there being zero evidence
of widespread voter fraud or irregularities.
William Brangham reports on another milestone day in the 2020 election.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Judy, on next Monday, members of the Electoral College will meet in state
capitals across the country to cast their votes officially for president.
Most of those electors, and how they will vote, are already known to us, because today
is what's called the safe harbor deadline for those appointments.
To look at where we are in the transition right now, as well as the president's continued
resistance to it, I'm joined by Trevor Potter. He is the president of the Campaign Legal
Center. He served as general counsel for John McCain's presidential campaign. And he was
also the chair of the Federal Election Commission.
Trevor Potter, great to have you back on the "NewsHour."
Before we get to these calendar issues that I was describing before, we still are seeing
continued legal efforts by the Trump campaign to stop different states from certifying their
votes. We saw one. The Supreme Court knocked one down just today from Pennsylvania. There
was a new one filed also by the attorney general in Texas.
What do you make of these remaining lawsuits?
TREVOR POTTER, President, Campaign Legal Center: Well, truthfully, they're increasingly bizarre,
in the sense that they have no chance of stopping the Electoral College from voting, and I think
from Congress accepting those results.
So, they're best described as P.R. messages, maybe heartfelt by the filing them, but I
don't expect them to have any legal effect.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, as I mentioned, today is the safe harbor deadline.
Again, just remind us what that means in the process of moving from the election to a new
president being sworn in.
TREVOR POTTER: It's a date set by Congress that says, if states get their electors in
by that date, if they certify them by that date, then, presumptively, Congress will accept
them. It is not a guarantee, but it is part of the timeline leading up to the voting by
the electors on the 14th, next Monday.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, is it your sense that there is anything that could legitimately
interrupt this process from this week to next week to January?
TREVOR POTTER: In terms of the outcome, no, there is nothing that would legitimately interrupt
that process.
The states have already certified their electors. And the electors will meet next Monday, the
14th, and vote, and Congress will receive those votes on January 6.
Now, having said that, that doesn't mean there won't be noise in the process. I just mean
the end result is now very clear. Some of the noise is the filing of these lawsuits,
trying to get the Supreme Court to intervene and tell states not to designate electors,
or telling Congress somehow not to count them, which is something the courts can't do, but
what this is trying to do.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Pulling back a little bit and looking more broadly, what do you make
of this effort that the president is undertaking to declare that the election was a fraud,
that votes were stolen from him, that he, in fact, won, not Joe Biden winning this pretty
decisive electoral victory?
Is it your sense that this is just a man who doesn't want to concede, and we're seeing
the sort of tail end of that spasm, or is this something more substantive going on?
TREVOR POTTER: Well, I think what's going on has changed over the course of the last
month since the election.
Originally, it was a question of, are the votes being counted correctly, are the votes
that are being counted legitimate, have they been examined, are the machines reporting
the right tally? That was then followed by a series of lawsuits that were, I think, increasingly
farfetched, alleging that somehow the system the states had used was wrong and that a court
ought to step in and say that, for instance, absentee ballots shouldn't be counted in Pennsylvania.
But all of that is now resolved. Those court cases are almost all over. The Trump campaign
lost in every case.
So, the question becomes, what is President Trump doing still saying that the election
was somehow being stolen, that it was fraudulent? And I think, at that stage, you have to say
either he's being incredibly reckless in terms of refusing to accept that this is how people
voted, this is what the Electoral College vote is, or something more dangerous, which
is, he's refusing to accept the result of the election personally and politically because
it helps him to be seen to keep fighting, to raise money for his new political committee.
At some stage, it becomes just an attempt to undermine the president-elect and to make
Americans think that the result of this election is somehow not legitimate. And that's really
dangerous for our democracy.
This year, it's not particularly close. There's a big Biden lead in the Electoral College
and the popular vote. But, next time, it might be really close and come down to one state.
And in those circumstances, the idea that state legislatures should step in and ignore
what the voters did and decide they're going to produce a different result because they
don't like what the voters did is incredibly anti-democratic.
It is not how a democracy elects its leaders.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Trevor Potter of the Campaign Legal Center, thanks very
much for being here.
TREVOR POTTER: Thank you. I appreciate it.