Trump agrees Biden transition but continues to contest election results

US President Donald Trump has conceded that a formal transition should begin for President-elect Joe Biden to take office, even though he is still contesting the outcome of the keenly contested U.S. presidential elections.

According to the BBC on Tuesday morning, President Trump said the federal agency overseeing the handover must “do what needs to be done”, even as he vowed to keep contesting the election results.

The BBC reported that the General Services Administration (GSA) said it was acknowledging Mr Biden as the “apparent winner”, meaning that the president-elect will now have access to top security briefings, office space and government officials.

Biden’s transition website has now changed to a US government domain. He will begin announcing the people he wants in the top jobs in his cabinet on Tuesday, the BBC report said.

Voting in the US election ended on November 3 with Mr Biden crossing the mandatory 270 electoral votes out of the 538-member electoral college required to win the presidential polls.

Mr Trump challenged the election results in various states including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona. He had demanded a recount in Wisconsin.

Most of the lawsuits he has launched in key states, largely with no evidence to back his claims of fraud, have so far been unsuccessful.

The mainstream media, including the BCC and the CNN, has projected Mr Biden to beat President Trump by 306 votes to 232 in the US electoral college when the formal winner will be confirmed on 14 December.

Mr Biden’s victory in the state of Michigan, which was officially certified over the weekend, also dealt a major blow to Mr Trump.

According to the BBC, former New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, called the president’s legal team a “national embarrassment”, and urged the 74-year-old president to drop his legal efforts to overturn the election outcome.

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President Trump is also facing criticism for refusing to permit potentially life-saving transition talks between health officials and President-elect Biden’s team amid an escalating rise in coronavirus infections as deaths to the disease in the U.S. surpass 250,000.

Some analysts interviewed by CNN last Wednesday believe the president is obsessed with returning to office for a second-term at the cost of American lives.

The pandemic, which is showing no sign of slowing down as the holiday season looms, has infected nearly 60 million people around the world, claiming over 1.4 million lives.