Trump news - live: President posts ‘most important’ 46-minute speech filled with false voter fraud claims

The Independent’s Josh Marcus is going deeper on the Trump’s campaign’s new lawsuit in Georgia asking a state court to “order a new election to be conducted in the presidential race,” citing “tens of thousands of illegal votes”.

Follow with Josh as this breaking news develops.

The campaign announced it had filed a new lawsuit in Georgia late Friday in an effort to overturn the election result.

This latest lawsuit comes from the official campaign’s legal challenge and is separate from the ones being filed from releaser of the so-called Kraken, Sidney Powell, how was been working “independently”.

They’re alleging “tens of thousands of illegal votes”

None of the lawsuits filed thus far have given the Trump campaign any major wins. 

A judge hearing President Donald Trump’s federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Wisconsin said Friday that the president’s request to “remand” the case to the GOP-controlled Legislature to pick new electors was “bizarre.”

The federal case is one of two Trump has in Wisconsin making similar arguments. He filed another one in state court, which the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday refused to hear before it first goes through lower courts.

Trump, who argues that hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots cast in accordance with state guidelines were illegal, wants a judge to give the Republican-controlled Legislature the power to determine who won the election.

“It’s a request for pretty remarkable declaratory relief,” said U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig during a conference call to set deadlines and a hearing date. Ludwig, who said it was “an unusual case, obviously,” also cast doubt on whether a federal court should be considering it at all.

“I have a very, very hard time seeing how this is justiciable in the federal court,” Ludwig, a Trump appointee, said. “The request to remand this case to the Legislature almost strikes me as bizarre.” 

The judge questioned why Trump wasn’t going directly to the Legislature if he wants lawmakers to get involved with naming electors. Bock said Trump needed the court to rule that the election was “invalid” so the Legislature could get involved. He also said that the term “remand,” which is typically used to describe when one court sends a case to a lower court, was “inartful.” - AP

Donald Trump has ordered that nearly all US troops are to leave Somalia by early next year.

Around 700 troops have been stationed in the country for the last 13 years fighting local al Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabaab.

Now the outgoing president has told the Pentagon to pull them out of the African country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The troops will be relocated to bases in Kenya and Djibouti and go back into Somalia to conduct operations against al-Shabaab and other Islamic State militants.

The Independent’s Graeme Massie is following the story as it unfolds.

“The president wants to exhaust all of his legal avenues, as he has made clear many times. His team is doing that, and that is his right,” Conway said in an interview with The 19th.

She is the latest from Donald Trump’s inner circle to make public moves away from the president’s narrative that the election is still far from over.

She continued: “If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail. I assume the electors will certify that and it will be official. We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do.”

Ms Conway voiced a commitment to the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy, “no matter whose administration goes into whose administration”.

The Independent’s Oliver O’Connell has more.

Well this is awkward.

Mike Pence kept a poker face as the crowd at a Georgia rally changed “four more years… four more years”.

The vice president kept deafly silent in an apparent rebuke to Donald Trump’s Hail Mary legal challenges to stay in the White House.

At previous rallies, Pence has struck a middle-ground tone to stay in lock-step with Trump saying they would “count all legal” votes.

Calling the November jobs report “grim” and “deeply troubling,” President-elect Joe Biden warned of a wave of holiday season evictions unless Congress and Donald Trump strike a Covid-19 relief deal soon.

Without more help from Washington, he said, the country will be in a “dire, dire, dire” economic situation. “We’re looking at hundreds of billions of dollars” of total additional stimulus as Congress moves towards a bipartisan $900m measure it could pass as early as next week – but probably closer to Christmas.

“We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again,” Mr Biden said in remarks from Wilmington, Delaware.

John T Bennett is following the story as it unfolds.

Joe Biden has often sounded in one moment like an old pro deftly navigating dangerous waters and borderline naive about the country’s tribal politics in the next, writes Washington Bureau Chief John T. Bennett  

Ivanka Trump was indignant this week when it emerged she had been deposed in a lawsuit brought against one of her father’s hotels for allegedly overcharging his presidential inauguration committee when it reserved event space in January 2017.

The case, which has been brought by authorities in the District of Columbia, specifically accuses the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee – created to arrange events around Donald Trump’s swearing-in – of illegally wasting nonprofit funds by “grossly overpaying” the Trump hotel and organisation for event space.

The Independent’s Andrew Naughtie has more.

‘I’ll call him honey’: Kamala Harris says of her husband.

In an interview on Thursday, Ms Harris said that Doug Emhoff will take the title of “second gentleman” clearing up speculation as to what he would be known as, being the first male to be the spouse of the vice president.

Previous spouses have been known as “second lady”.

Oliver O’Connell has the story.