Trump campaign distances itself from attorney Sidney Powell: Transition updates

All of Georgia's 159 counties are on track to finish a full hand-count audit of the approximately 5 million ballots cast in the presidential contest by Wednesday's midnight deadline.

With that effort nearly complete, the state has until Friday at 5 p.m. to certify its results. 

If the margin between Trump and Biden remains within 0.5% once the votes are certified, a campaign can request a recount. 

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said he doesn’t expect the results to change significantly once the audit is complete, telling ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Mary Bruce Tuesday he believes Biden will win the state, "fair and square."

Raffensperger, a Republican, has held his ground while fending off attacks from Trump and members of his own party in the aftermath of the election. Both of the state's GOP senators have called on Raffensperger to resign. Trump, who endorsed Raffensperger in 2018, has pegged the secretary as a "RINO" -- "Republican in name only" -- while attacking the state's election process.

Heading into the hand-count audit, Biden led Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes or .03%. Previously uncounted ballots that were discovered will reduce that margin to about 13,000, said Gabriel Sterling, with the secretary of state’s office.

ABC News projected last Friday that Biden will win Georgia. It's the first time a Democrat will secure Georgia's electoral votes since 1992, which happens to be the last time the vote margin between two candidates was as tight as it is now.

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan

House Democrats reelected California Rep. Nancy Pelosi as the next speaker of the House in an internal vote among the Democratic caucus Wednesday morning.

To be officially reelected as speaker, Pelosi still needs to win a full House floor vote on Jan. 3.

She'll need 218 votes out of 435 to secure the speakership and the margins are especially tight this year as Democrats' majority in the House has narrowed.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is also expected to run for speaker.

-ABC News' Mariam Khan

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