Trump campaign distances itself from attorney Sidney Powell: Transition updates

Those in and around the Biden camp continue to call on the Trump administration to provide access to critical information and resources so they’re prepared to take on the pandemic ahead of Jan. 20. They argue the Trump administration blocking the transition from moving forward is hurting them, and potentially the American people, on multiple fronts.

Instead of consulting with federal officials and getting access to their trove of information of matters like vaccine distribution and medical equipment shortages, the Biden team must rely on piecemeal data from state and local officials and various public sources. In an unprecedented public rebuke, the heads of the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association and the American Hospitals Association released a letter to Trump on Tuesday warning that more Americans will die if the administration does not help the Biden transition team.

Still, Biden is pressing forward in the ways that he can without the access that must be granted by the General Services Administration. He's holding a virtual roundtable with frontline health care workers from Wilmington, Delaware, Wednesday, one day after receiving a briefing on national security from former government and outside advisers.

Trump, meanwhile, has no public events on his schedule once again, and has canceled a Thanksgiving trip to Mar-a-Lago. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told "Fox and Friends" Wednesday morning he is "hard at work." He continues taking to Twitter to sow doubt in the American election system while holding just a few public events and taking no reporter questions in the two weeks since the election.

Trump is also facing criticism from at least one Senate Republican Wednesday morning after he fired top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, his own appointee, Tuesday night. The expected firing came over Twitter, and in this case, after Krebs spoke out to debunk false claims made by Trump and his allies regarding widespread voter fraud.

On Capitol Hill, more Republicans are inching towards recognizing Biden as the president-elect. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday suggested the election is “driving” toward Biden, and Republican senators were seen fist-bumping Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on the Senate floor.

-ABC News' Shannon Crawford

Biden has yet to make any Cabinet announcements, but he is staffing up for Senate confirmations and will take a different approach to the nomination process.

According to a transition official, Biden’s team is preparing to introduce nominees to the American people and plans to use a different strategy to establish nominees as leaders in the Biden administration, doing away with the “the old playbook dictating that nominees say nothing in public until their hearings.”

The overall nominations team will be led by former Obama administration official Jen Psaki, while Stephanie Valencia, the former deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement will be handling outreach, and Louisa Terrell, who worked for Biden in the Senate and in the Obama White House, will handle congressional affairs for the transition with both teams supporting the nominations arm. 

The confirmations team will expand over the coming days with campaign staff and more volunteers from Capitol Hill but has already filled a few key roles in communications and outreach.

Reema Dodin, floor director for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., will oversee legislative strategy, Jorge Neri, former senior advisor to the campaign will be the deputy outreach director for confirmations, and Olivia Alair Dalton, a former Biden Senate aide who also served in senior Obama administration and campaign roles, will run point on communications.

Andrew Bates, Biden’s rapid response director from the campaign will also serve in a leadership role, as will Saloni Sharma, most recently deputy communications director to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sean Savett, formerly press secretary to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and rapid response director for former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttegieg, will also be key members of team. 

-ABC News' Molly Nagle

From the top down and from the bottom up, the consequences of Trump and his Republican Party continuing to defy reality are making themselves evident.

Trump firing a top Homeland Security official for contradicting his unfounded claims about the election, while local Republican officials in Michigan initially refused to certify results -- these mark new lows that threaten to shake the foundations of the electoral process.

But such actions are going to get more expensive -- whether Rudy Giuliani gets his asking price or not. Real state deadlines and legal rulings are already starting to close out paths to the presidency that Trump might imagine still exists.

The Trump campaign faces a Wednesday deadline to request a recount in Wisconsin -- where the president is trailing by more than 20,000 votes and where initiating a recount carries a price tag of an estimated $7.9 million.

The political costs are perhaps more substantial in Georgia, where the state's hand audit of ballots will wrap up Wednesday. Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, is saying he sees no way that Biden's nearly 14,000-vote margin will be reversed -- and is lashing out at fellow Republicans who are peddling "vitriol and outright lies" in addition to threats.

"I would have thought Republicans were better than that," Raffensperger told ABC News senior congressional correspondent Mary Bruce.

The Trump campaign's legal options are no rosier in Michigan, where Biden leads by nearly 150,000 votes, or Pennsylvania, where Biden leads by more than 70,000 votes. Judges in both states are expected to hand down rulings in the coming days that would effectively end remaining legal avenues for the president.

It may be political self-interest that has so many national Republicans holding their tongues about what Trump needs to do and when he needs to do it. It may also be that, in the words of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, that what senators say about the topic is "frankly irrelevant."

But from here, if the president and his legal team want to hold out, it could get lonely as well as costly. There could be more firings and defiance -- though nothing from official channels that makes it any more likely that Trump will retain the presidency.

-ABC News’ Political Director Rick Klein

Minutes after Trump applauded the decision by the Wayne County board of canvassers to temporarily block the certification of results, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced that the same bipartisan board -- made up of two Republican and two Democrats -- reversed course and decided to unanimously certify the results in a revote.

"The Wayne County Board of canvassers actually reversed their past decision and voted 4-0 to certify the full results, including the city of Detroit, for Wayne County," Benson said on CNN. 

"It appears that the truth won in this scenario, basically the evidence is clear there were no irregularities, there was no evidence of widespread fraud and in fact there were simply minor clerical errors," she said. "That really isn't a valid reason in my view, and apparently ultimately the board, to invalidate and silence the voices of voters in the state's largest county. So I think they did the right thing, they performed their duty and they certified the election for the voters in Wayne County."

The board is also calling on the chief elections official to do a comprehensive audit of the out of balance precincts, but Benson hedged on committing to the undertaking, adding that the county board has not provided any evidence yet to require an audit. 

"We're certainly going to look into that. I mean look, we want everything to be valid, we want everything to be clear and we want voters to have confidence in the process and we're going to continue to do everything we can within my authority to ensure that always," she said. 

-ABC News' Olivia Rubin and Kendall Karson