Biden Team Prepares for Legal Battles

The counting of votes has almost finished in most states—but with Joe Biden closing in on 270 Electoral College votes, the legal battles may just be beginning. Republican lawyers filed a barrage of lawsuits in closely contested states including Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania Wednesday seeking to challenge Democratic votes, the New York Times reports. The Biden campaign, however, says it is ready to "successfully repel" legal action. Both parties asked for donations Wednesday to fund legal action. More:

• Biden team prepares for legal battle. Biden legal adviser Bob Bauer, a former Obama White House counsel, says the team plans to aggressively counter Trump lawsuits every step of the way, Politico reports. "As far as our own planning, we're winning the election. We've won the election," he said Wednesday. "And we're going to defend that election, so we don't have to do anything but protect the rights of voters, and to stand up for the democratic process.”

• Wisconsin. Trump's campaign says it plans to demand a recount in Wisconsin, which was called for Biden Wednesday afternoon. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a recount can only happen after results are certified Dec. 1. Trump can demand a recount if the final margin is less than 1 percentage point—but if the difference is bigger than a quarter of a point, his campaign will have to pay for the recount.
• Georgia. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump campaign and state Republicans filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a judge to ensure ballots that arrived after the Election Day deadline were not counted. The suit said a Republican poll watcher in Chatham County suspected late ballots were being mixed with ones that arrived on time.
• Michigan. In Michigan, which was called for Biden Wednesday, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit to halt counting, though the Detroit Free Press notes that the "vast majority" of ballots had already been unofficially reported by county clerks at the time. The lawsuit alleged that campaign observers had not been given "meaningful access to numerous counting locations."
• Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign also filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania seeking to halt the count over an alleged lack of transparency, the AP reports. Tom Wolf, the state's Democratic attorney general, rejected the accusation. "There is transparency in this process. The counting has been going on," he said. "There are observers observing this counting, and the counting will continue." In another Pennsylvania legal challenge, Republican lawyers asked a federal judge to block the counting of mail-in ballots in a Philadelphia-area district, the Journal reports. Trump campaign lawyers are also seeking to intervene in a pending Supreme Court case over the state's mail-in ballot deadline.
• Trump's demands are "not how it works." Trump has repeatedly alleged election fraud. Early Wednesday, he claimed victory and said: "We'll be going to the US Supreme Court. But "that’s not how it works," Boston College law professor Kent Greenfield tells NBC Boston. "The Supreme Court is an appellate court and he will have to sue in Federal Court in Pennsylvania or Michigan and then it will have to go up through several levels of appellate review before it would get to the Supreme Court," he says. In a tweet that Politico calls "puzzling," Trump said Wednesday that his campaign has claimed "for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania … the State of Georgia and the State of North Carolina."

(More Election 2020 stories.)