Trump and Xi to summit in cyberspace

Kuala Lumpur | US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will attend a virtual summit of Asia Pacific leaders to discuss the coronavirus and global economic recovery, with lingering trade differences likely to cloud the meeting.

The pair will be at a meeting of the leaders of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum hosted virtually by Malaysia just two weeks after Trump lost his re-election bid.

Asia Pacific leaders have called for more open and multilateral trade to support the economic recovery, and warned against protectionist trade policies.

At the last APEC summit in 2018, member countries failed to agree on a joint communique for the first time in the bloc's history as the United States and China disagreed on trade and investments.

In the run up to the meeting, several APEC leaders warned against protectionism as the world grapples with the coronavirus.

"As we confront this generation's biggest economic challenge, we must not repeat the mistakes of history by retreating into protectionism," New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

Xi on Thursday said "mounting unilateralism, protectionism and bullying as well as backlash against economic globalisation" had added to risks and uncertainties in the world economy.

He said China will remain committed to multilateralism, openness and cooperation.

Other Asia Pacific leaders have expressed hope that a Joe Biden administration would engage more and support multilateral trade.

Reuters

Two separate New York state fraud investigations into President Donald Trump and his businesses, one criminal and one civil, have expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to Ivanka Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The inquiries — a criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R Vance jnr, and a civil one by state Attorney General Letitia James — are being conducted independently. But both offices issued subpoenas to the Trump Organisation in recent weeks for records related to the fees, the people said.

The subpoenas were the latest steps in the two investigations of the Trump Organisation, and underscore the legal challenges awaiting the president when he leaves office in January.

There is no indication that his daughter is a focus of either inquiry, which the Trump Organisation has derided as politically motivated.

The development follows a recent New York Times examination of more than two decades of Donald Trump's tax records, which found that he had paid little or no federal income taxes in most years, largely because of his chronic business losses.

The New York Times

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has condemned Donald Trump's for pressuring election officials to overturn Joe Biden’s victories in several closely contested states.

Senator Romney, who has been one of the GOP's most vocal critics of Trump, tweeted Thursday (Friday AEDT): “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.”

Romney accused Trump on resorting to “overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election”.

Donald Trump will join in the annual summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, a senior administration official said.

The address at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, being held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic, would mark a rare recent public appearance for Trump, who has mostly stayed out of public view since Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has refused to concede and has been preoccupied with his team's mostly fruitless legal challenges designed to overturn his defeat.

The summit brings together the leaders of Pacific Rim countries including China, Japan, Indonesia, Canada and Australia.

Bloomberg

The Washington Post has fact-checked what it called "the craziest press conference of the Trump presidency". Here are some excerpts:

This is just a snippet of a truly bonkers presentation made by attorneys for the Trump campaign alleging massive fraud in the US voting system.

Powell described a convoluted scheme under which an "algorithm" manipulated by Democrats switched votes from President Donald Trump to Joe Biden. But she claimed it broke down because support was so strong for Trump, so Democrats were forced to use a "back door" method to manipulate the vote with mail-in ballots slipped in during the dark of night.

If this sounds crazy, that's because it is.

There is no evidence to support any of these conspiracy theories. It would require election workers across many states to be engaged in a massive fraud scheme that won Biden the presidency nevertheless failed to flip the Senate and lost the Democrats seats in the House.

Trump's lead disappeared because absentee and early votes largely could not be counted until election night because of rules set by the GOP-controlled legislatures in those states. So in-person votes, which leaned Republican, were reported first. Just in Pennsylvania, more than 1.4 million votes still needed to be counted after midnight. Because these votes were overwhelmingly for Biden, Trump's lead was wiped out as the hours ticked by.

The opposite nearly happened in Arizona. On election night, Biden had a lead of more than 130,000 votes, with 750,000 to be counted. But in this case, the remaining votes leaned Republican, so by the time all of the votes were counted, Biden's lead had fallen to just 10,000.

But Giuliani is arguing all of those mail-in ballots should be tossed out in Pennsylvania and Michigan, giving the victory to Trump.

This is false. Giuliani is referring to a bit of manipulated video that originally started with a tweet from a Republican National Committee official and then was quickly spread by Eric Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and others. It was blocked on Facebook, and Twitter also labelled it as misleading.

Judges in Pennsylvania and Michigan have rejected this claim. Trump's own lawyers have attested in court that his campaign was granted access and observed the process, both in Philadelphia and in other cities, and has found no evidence of fraud.

They swear to you that at four thirty in the morning, a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were kept counting ballots. The people thought it was food, so they all ran to the truck. [It] wasn't food. It was thousands and thousands of ballots.

- Giuliani

This claim largely stems from a single affidavit that was filed by an alleged witness, Melissa Carone. But Carone, who made a number of voter-fraud claims, does not even leap to the conclusions that Giuliani makes.

In her affidavit, Carone simply says that food was brought in on two vans, but "I never saw any food coming out of the vans, coincidentally it was announced on the news that Michigan had found over 100,000 more ballots - not even two hours after the last van left." Kenny also concluded that Carone's "allegations are simply not credible".

It's not true. Votes in US elections are not counted in Germany and Spain.

This is how Powell slips in a Chinese connection but it's ridiculously weak, especially given the non-existent connection between Venezuela and Dominion Voting Systems, a Canadian company that makes software that local governments use to help run their elections.

False. Trump lost the electoral college vote, 306-232. That's exactly his margin in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton – which he constantly called a landslide. Biden has also received more than 6 million more votes.

An Arizona judge dismissed a Republican lawsuit seeking to force the state's biggest county to re-do a hand recount of some ballots despite having no evidence of voter fraud or software errors.

The suit was thrown out on Thursday (Friday AEDT) by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah, who expressed scepticism about the case. Democrats had accused the GOP of intentionally trying to make the county miss the state's November 30 deadline for certifying election results.

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, favoured President-elect Joe Biden in the election, helping deliver his narrow margin of victory in the state over President Donald Trump.

The Nov. 12 lawsuit argued the county's state-mandated hand count of a sample of ballots -- to audit voting machine accuracy -- must be repeated because officials sampled votes from 2 per cent of polling places, called vote centres, instead of 2 per cent of precincts.

Hannah suggested at the Wednesday hearing that the GOP could have challenged the audit rules before the election but failed to do so. He said he was "having a hard time" understanding why Republicans waited so long, given that they had a representative involved with the process more than two weeks before the election, during early voting.

Bloomberg

The Associated Press has formally called Georgia for Joe Biden.

The national news agency, which compiled detailed data and analysis on the elections, had resisted making a call on the state despite other major news outlets doing so, saying the result was too close and it would wait for an official recount.

Georgia's 16 electoral college votes have now been awarded to Biden in the AP tally, which The Australian Financial Review has relied on during its coverage.

Biden now has 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.

The win pads Biden's electoral college margin of victory over Donald Trump. Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election on November 7 after flipping Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Georgia hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Harry S Truman set in train the traditions that have come to define the sedate and polite transfer of power between presidents when he handed over to Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. It included an invitation to the White House so senior officials could try out the office chairs.

"Grandpa wanted Ike to be able to hit the ground running," writes Clifton Truman Daniel, the former president's grandson.

His account of the transition of power is a stark contrast to what is happening in the United States today. Read the full story here.

The hand recount of votes in Georgia has affirmed Joe Biden's victory in the state.

Gabriel Sterling, a top Georgia elections official said on Thursday (Friday AEDT) a hand tally of the presidential race in Georgia is complete.

The recount of nearly 5 million votes stemmed from an audit required by a new state law and was not in response to any suspected problems with the state’s results or an official recount request.

The state has until Friday to certify the results and submitted by the counties. Once the results are certified, the losing campaign can request a recount.

AP

As the United States struggles with surging coronavirus cases and hospitalisations, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday (Friday AEDT) urged Americans not to travel during the Thanksgiving holiday and to consider cancelling plans to spend time with relatives outside their households.

The new guidance, which contrasted sharply with recent White House efforts to downplay the threat, states clearly that "the safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to celebrate at home with the people you live with", and that gathering with friends and even family members who do not live with you increases the chances of becoming infected with the virus or the flu, or transmitting the virus.

Officials said they were strengthening their recommendations against travel because of a startling surge in infections in just the past week.

Recent numbers of hospitalisations — more than 79,000 reported on Wednesday — and new daily cases keep shattering US records.

As of Wednesday, the seven-day average of new cases across the country had surpassed more than 162,000, an increase of 77 per cent from the average two weeks earlier.

"Amid this critical phase, the CDC is recommending against travel during the Thanksgiving period," Dr Henry Walke, COVID-19 incident manager at the agency, said during a news briefing.

"We're alarmed," he added, citing an exponential increase in cases, hospitalisations and deaths. "What we're concerned about is not only the actual mode of travel — whether it's an airplane or bus or car, but also the transportation hubs."

"When people are in line" to get on a bus or plane, social distancing becomes far more difficult and viral transmission becomes more likely, he said.