Presidential Transition: Trump Fires Official Who Disputed Baseless Claims of Election Fraud

This briefing has ended. Follow our latest coverage of the presidential transition.

Trump fires Christopher Krebs, official who disputed his election fraud claims.

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Christopher Krebs was fired by President Trump as head of the cybersecurity agency known as CISA after contradicting the president’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud.Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

President Trump on Tuesday night fired his administration’s most senior cybersecurity official responsible for securing the presidential election, Christopher Krebs, who had systematically disputed Mr. Trump’s false declarations that the presidency was stolen from him through fraudulent ballots and software glitches that changed millions of votes.

The announcement came via Twitter, the same way Mr. Trump fired his defense secretary last week and has dismissed other officials throughout his presidency. Mr. Trump seemed set off by a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security late last week, the product of a broad committee overseeing the elections, that declared the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate,” Mr. Trump wrote a little after 7 p.m., “in that there were massive improprieties and fraud — including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, ‘glitches’ in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more.”

He said Mr. Krebs “has been terminated” as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a post to which Mr. Trump himself had appointed him.

Mr. Krebs, 43, a former Microsoft executive, has been hailed in recent days for his two years preparing states for the challenges of the vote, hardening systems against Russian interference and setting up a “rumor control” website to guard against disinformation. The foreign interference so many feared never materialized; instead, the disinformation ultimately came from the White House.

Only two weeks ago, on Election Day, Mr. Krebs’s boss, Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, had praised Mr. Krebs’s work. But behind-the-scenes efforts by Mr. Wolf and others to keep Mr. Trump from firing Mr. Krebs apparently failed.

Mr. Krebs did not immediately respond to questions for comment. But after his termination, he tweeted from his personal account: “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow. #Protect2020”

President Trump fired his defense secretary last week (not two weeks ago, as an earlier post said).

A Michigan county certifies its election results, with Republicans changing course after accusations of partisanship.

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Election workers in Detroit counted ballots the day after Election Day.Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

DETROIT — Republican members of a key elections board in Michigan refused on Tuesday to certify a county’s election results in a nakedly partisan effort to hold up President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over President Trump — only to reverse themselves after an outcry from state officials and Detroit voters.

The initial deadlock and turnaround on the elections board in Wayne County, Mich., was among the starkest examples of how previously routine aspects of the nation’s voting system have been tainted by Mr. Trump’s effort to challenge his defeat, though its reversal also showed the limits of what is, in essence, an attempt to disenfranchise large numbers of American voters.

The Republican board members certified the results only came after several hours of angry comments by citizens, many from Detroit, who accused the Republicans of trying to steal their votes.

The two Republicans on the county elections board said they had voted against certifying the results because many precincts were out of balance, even though the disparities mostly involved a small number of votes. The board deadlocked, with Michigan Democrats denouncing the opposition as a blatantly political intrusion into the process and criticizing the move by Republicans as because one board member had singled out Detroit, a predominantly Black city.

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Biden’s Covid advisers say that by blocking the transition, Trump may hold up vaccine distribution.

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President-elet Joseph R. Biden Jr. has said that “more people may die” from the virus as a result of President Trump’s refusal to allow an organized transition.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Top health advisers to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. warned on Tuesday that planning for the distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine and other attempts to fight the coronavirus were being frustrated by President Trump’s refusal to allow an organized transition to begin.

The leaders of Mr. Biden’s Covid Advisory Board said they were being prevented from working with government officials who are in charge of distributing the vaccines. And they said that they did not have access to any government data on case counts, deaths or hospitalization, relying instead on media and private reports.

“There’s no time to waste. We don't have a day to waste,” said Dr. David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. “Vaccine distribution is difficult and daunting under any circumstance.”

The grim warnings from the health officials come as a political appointee of Mr. Trump’s at the General Services Administration has refused to formally recognize that Mr. Biden is the winner, a move that would allow current government health officials to work with the Biden transition team.

Mr. Biden on Monday said that “more people may die” from the virus as a result.

His health advisers offered more specifics on Tuesday, saying that the incoming team needs access to information about medical supply chains, data on testing, specifics about therapeutic efforts, and other data that will be critical once the Biden administration is in charge of responding to the pandemic.

“There is valuable information inside the information that is held by career officials,” said Vivek Murthy, a co-chair of Mr. Biden’s advisory board and a former surgeon general. “We need to talk to those individuals. We need to work together with them.”

Former national security officials brief Biden as Trump continues to block access to classified intelligence.

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President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. held a national security meeting with 13 former military, diplomatic and intelligence officials on Tuesday.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Several former national security officials briefed President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday, calling new attention to President Trump’s refusal to authorize a transition of power that would allow Mr. Biden to receive classified intelligence briefings.

The virtual meeting, which Mr. Biden held from Wilmington, Del., was attended by 13 former military, diplomatic and intelligence officials who served with him during the Obama administration, including some who are likely to be in line for senior positions on the incoming national security team.

Collectively, the group offered Mr. Biden hundreds of years of experience and intellectual firepower, but all have been out of government for several years and are no longer privy to the new, secret information that the president-elect would receive during a normal presidential transition.

The officials included Antony J. Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state and Mr. Biden’s longtime senior foreign policy aide, and Avril Haines, a former C.I.A. deputy and the director of foreign policy on the transition team. Also in attendance were four retired military generals, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, whom President Barack Obama fired in 2010, and the former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power.

Mr. Biden reminded the group that he had been denied the daily briefings from federal intelligence officials customarily provided to a president-elect.

“I am unable to get the briefings that ordinarily would come by now,” he said, “and so I just wanted to get your input on what you see ahead.”

Mr. Biden offered few other details about the conversation with the group, which included several top names from the national security establishment, including:

  • Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired general and the first African-American to lead the military’s Central Command

  • Carmen Middleton, formerly the No. 4 official at the C.I.A., who was the highest-ranking Latina in the intelligence community when she retired in 2017

  • Vincent Stewart, a retired Marine lieutenant general, a Jamaican-American and the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

  • Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a retired career diplomat who is among the Foreign Service’s most accomplished Black members

  • Nicholas Burns, a retired career Foreign Service officer who served in senior posts under Democrats and Republicans

  • David S. Cohen, a former deputy C.I.A. director

  • Kathleen H. Hicks, who has held senior Pentagon policy and planning posts

  • Robert O. Work, a former deputy secretary of defense

  • William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral and the former commander of the United States Special Operations Command

Notably absent from the group were some heavyweight figures in Mr. Biden’s orbit who might be in line for cabinet posts: Susan Rice, a former national security adviser who is in the running for Secretary of State, and Michèle Flournoy, who was the Pentagon’s top policy official under Mr. Obama and is a natural contender for secretary of defense.

Mr. Biden also spoke on Tuesday with five more international leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, bringing the number of major leaders with whom he has spoken this week to 13.

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The payment Giuliani is said to have requested from Trump could make him one of the most highly paid lawyers anywhere.

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Rudolph W. Giuliani has encouraged President Trump to believe a number of conspiracy theories about voting machine irregularities.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has helped oversee a string of failed court challenges to President Trump’s defeat in the election, asked the president’s campaign to pay him $20,000 a day for his legal work, multiple people briefed on the matter said.

The request stirred opposition from some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers, who appear to have ruled out paying that much, and it is unclear how much Mr. Giuliani will ultimately be compensated.

Since Mr. Giuliani took over management of the legal effort, Mr. Trump has suffered a series of defeats in court and lawyers handling some of the remaining cases have dropped out.

A $20,000-a-day rate would have made Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer for several years, among the most highly compensated lawyers anywhere.

Reached by phone, Mr. Giuliani strenuously denied requesting that much.

“I never asked for $20,000,” said Mr. Giuliani, saying the president volunteered to make sure he was paid after the cases concluded. “The arrangement is, we’ll work it out at the end.”

He added that whoever had said he made the $20,000-a-day request “is a liar, a complete liar.”

There is little to no prospect of any of the remaining legal cases being overseen by Mr. Giuliani altering the outcome in any of the states where Mr. Trump is still fighting in court, much less of overturning President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College and popular vote victory. Some Trump allies fear that Mr. Giuliani is encouraging the president to continue a spurious legal fight because he sees financial advantage for himself in it.

The Trump campaign has set up a legal-defense fund and is said to be raising significant sums to continue legal challenges in places like Pennsylvania and Georgia.

A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Giuliani had sought compensation for his work dating back to the day after Election Day, when Mr. Trump began publicly claiming that he won despite the results, according to people familiar with the request, who asked for anonymity to speak about sensitive discussions.

At $20,000 a day, Mr. Giuliani’s rate would be above the top-of-the-line lawyers in Washington and New York who can charge as much as $15,000 a day if they are spending all their time working for a client.

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court handed the Trump legal team another loss as they were arguing a separate case.

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Rudolph W. Giuliani, the head of the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election, has asked to appear before a federal judge in Pennsylvania today.Credit...Mark Makela/Reuters

Pursuing one of their most legally fraught election cases filed so far, lawyers for the Trump campaign appeared in court again this afternoon to ask a federal judge to stop certification of the vote in Pennsylvania.

President Trump’s legal team for this case — his third set of lawyers on it since it was filed last week — was expected to tell Judge Matthew W. Brann of the U.S. District Court in Williamsport that Pennsylvania election officials mismanaged the widespread use of absentee and mail-in ballots in the state.

The campaign seeks to effectively invalidate the results of the statewide count and deny Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Lawyers for the state and for the Democratic Party have argued in court papers that the campaign’s arguments are untimely, far too general to succeed and cannot overturn enough votes in Pennsylvania to overcome Mr. Biden’s lead, which now stands at about 73,000 votes.

“To effectuate the will of the millions of Pennsylvanians who voted in this election, the court should bring this litigation to a close expeditiously, dismiss plaintiffs’ evidence-free claims, and allow the Commonwealth to complete the electoral process,” the lawyers argued in a brief filed on Monday.

In the middle of the federal hearing, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a decision saying that election officials in Philadelphia had acted properly by keeping observers a safe distance from the vote counting in Philadelphia’s convention center. The ruling by the Supreme Court reversed one of the Trump campaign’s only legal victories so far.

On Election Day, the campaign filed a lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas arguing that rules keeping observers at least 10 feet from the counting of the vote were improper, even though they were put in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

After the campaign lost its suit, it appealed to the Commonwealth Court, which ruled that observers could move to within six feet of the count. The Supreme Court decision on Tuesday found that Philadelphia election officials had not broken the law because the election code does not specify “a minimum distance” that observers must stand from the counting.

Since Election Day, the Trump campaign and other Republican plaintiffs have lost more than 20 court actions challenging the integrity of the presidential race, including four federal lawsuits — in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that were voluntarily withdrawn on Monday by the man who oversaw them, the conservative lawyer James Bopp Jr.

Also on Monday, a court in Michigan denied an appeal to reverse a lower court’s decision that tossed out a suit aimed at stopping the certification of the vote in Wayne County, home of Detroit. The plaintiffs in that case, two Republican poll workers, appealed again on Tuesday to the Michigan Supreme Court.

This list of legal losses notwithstanding, the federal case in Pennsylvania has been especially beset by problems.

Last Friday, the law firm Porter Wright, which filed the initial lawsuit, withdrew from the case after The New York Times published an article describing how some lawyers at the firm were concerned that its work for Mr. Trump was eroding faith in the democratic process.

Over the weekend, a Trump campaign lawyer filed a revised version of the suit that dropped the formal claim that Republican poll observers have not been given adequate and equal access to the vote counting process.

And on Monday night, the legal team that had taken over for Porter Wright withdrew and was replaced by yet another set of lawyers. The Trump campaign’s new lead lawyer in the case, Marc A. Scaringi, immediately tried to delay today’s hearing but Judge Brann denied his request.

“Counsel for the parties are expected to be prepared for argument and questioning,” the judge wrote in a terse order issued Monday night.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the decision to switch legal teams on the eve of today’s hearing was made by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, who has taken charge of the postelection courtroom strategy.

Mr. Giuliani asked Judge Brann on Tuesday morning for permission to appear in the case.

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Biden announces key aides, saying he’s ‘building an administration that looks like America.’

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President-elect Joseph R Biden Jr. named Representative Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana, right, to a senior position on Tuesday.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced several appointments to his White House senior staff on Tuesday, filling out his incoming administration as President Trump continues to refuse to acknowledge his election victory.

Mr. Biden announced that Mike Donilon, the chief strategist for his campaign and a decades-long friend and adviser, will serve as a White House senior adviser and will be especially involved in speechwriting and messaging. Mr. Donilon also served as counselor when Mr. Biden was vice president under President Barack Obama.

His White House counsel will be Dana Remus, who served as general counsel to the Biden-Harris campaign and previously was general counsel of the Obama Foundation. She is a former law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Mr. Biden also confirmed three other West Wing appointments first reported Monday night: Representative Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana will oversee public outreach; Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, will become a deputy chief of staff; and Mr. Biden’s longtime confidant Steve Ricchetti will be counselor.

All three will most likely have offices down the hall from the Oval Office, making them among the most senior aides in the West Wing.

Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon will be chief of staff to the first lady, Jill Biden. A partner at the law firm of Winston & Strawn, she is a former U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay. Dr. Biden’s senior adviser will be Anthony Bernal, who was her campaign chief of staff and Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a former national political director for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, will run the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Annie Tomasini, now Mr. Biden’s traveling chief of staff, will be director of Oval Office operations.

In a statement, the Biden-Harris transition team said the selections “demonstrate President-elect Biden’s commitment to building an administration that looks like America, has deep expertise governing, and will be ready to help the president-elect deliver results for working families on Day 1.”

Decisions about cabinet secretaries most likely remain some time away, according to people close to Mr. Biden, who has spent recent days in closed-door discussions with advisers about the challenge of winning confirmation fights if the Senate remains in the hands of Republicans next year. Senate control will be determined by the results of two runoff races in Georgia.

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Fauci Stresses the Importance of Presidential Transitions

I have been now dealing with six administrations in my 35 years as director. I’ve been through five transitions. I can say that transitions are extremely important to the smooth continuity of whatever you’re doing. Right now, we are in a very difficult public health situation. If you want to have good continuity, which will mean maximal attack on infections, hospitalizations, deaths, you want to have the continuity I’ve used the metaphor. It’s like passing a baton in a race: you don’t want somebody to stop, give it to somebody, and then have them start running. You want everything to be smooth from one to the other. That is what we would like to do.

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CreditCredit...Evan Vucci/Associated Press

Mr. Biden’s picks came as Mr. Trump continued to refuse to cooperate with the transition of power, a position Mr. Biden suggested on Monday could cost lives when it came to the national coronavirus response.

“More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” Mr. Biden said.

On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, made a carefully calibrated call for Mr. Trump to allow Mr. Biden’s transition team access to the virus response plans.

While insisting he wanted to “stay out of the political stuff,” and avoiding mention of Mr. Trump, Dr. Fauci said at The Times’s DealBook Summit, “We need to transition to the team that will be doing this, similar to how we’re doing it.”

Separately on Tuesday, leaders of three major medical associations urged the Trump administration to “work closely with the Biden transition team” in order to stem a surging virus as the United States enters the holiday season.

In a letter to Mr. Trump, leaders with the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association said the administration should share information on the current plans for distributing a vaccine, as well as data on medical equipment inventory and hospital bed capacity.

Biden’s initial White House appointments prompt mixed reactions from progressives.

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Progressive lawmakers were generally pleased with President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s decision last week to name Ron Klain, a veteran Democratic operative and longtime confidant, as the White House chief of staff.Credit...Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s initial appointments to his White House senior staff have prompted mixed reactions from the Democratic Party’s left flank, which has been aggressively trying to influence his personnel selections.

Progressive lawmakers such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were generally pleased with Mr. Biden’s decision last week to name Ron Klain, a veteran Democratic operative and longtime confidant, as the White House chief of staff despite his corporate ties, viewing him as a potential ally.

But after Mr. Biden named several White House aides on Tuesday, the response from the left — which has urged the president-elect not to name lobbyists and corporate executives to key positions in his administration — was somewhat less enthusiastic. Their disappointment centered on two people in particular: Steve Ricchetti, a close adviser to Mr. Biden, who will be a counselor to the president; and Representative Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana, who will oversee public outreach.

Progressives were unhappy with Mr. Ricchetti because he is a former pharmaceutical industry lobbyist.

“Steve Ricchetti is a figure so paradigmatically swampy that the writers of ‘House of Cards’ might reject his biography as overly stereotypical,” Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a progressive group, said in an email. The group has compiled a blacklist of potential Biden appointees it views as problematic.

Some were unenthusiastic about Mr. Biden’s selection of Mr. Richmond, who has represented his district since 2011, because he has received donations from oil and gas companies. The Sunrise Movement, a group of young climate organizers, was especially public with its displeasure.

“Today feels like a betrayal, because one of President-elect Biden’s very first hires for his new administration has taken more donations from the fossil fuel industry during his congressional career than nearly any other Democrat, cozied up to big oil and gas, and stayed silent and ignored meeting with organizations in his own community while they suffered from toxic pollution and sea-level rise,” Varshini Prakash, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement.

“That’s a mistake, and it’s an affront to young people who made President-elect Biden’s victory possible,” she added. “President-elect Biden assured our movement he understands the urgency of this crisis; now it’s time for him to act like it.”

The frustration from some progressives came as the Democratic Party’s left wing continues to implore Mr. Biden to limit corporate influence in his administration, part of a broader campaign to exert pressure over personnel and the administration’s agenda.

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A congressman from New Orleans informed his constituents he was joining the Biden administration.

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Representative Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana plans to leave the House to become an adviser to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS — Most new White House aides do not hold news conferences to announce their positions. But then most incoming West Wing staffers are not members of Congress.

As most of President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s roster of senior advisers became public through a news release on Tuesday, Representative Cedric L. Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, summoned the news media and some of his longtime supporters to the Art Deco terminal of New Orleans’s Lakefront Airport to reveal that he would leave the House to run the White House Office of Public Engagement.

“When you talk about the needs of Louisiana, you want someone in the West Wing,” said Mr. Richmond, highlighting his state’s dismal health and education outcomes.

Mr. Richmond, who joined Congress in 2011, said he had already told his friend and neighboring lawmaker, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking House Republican.

Few states have been as adversely impacted by the pandemic as Louisiana, which suffered from a devastating early coronavirus outbreak and, with its tourist-dependent economy, has endured substantial job losses.

Mr. Richmond said he hoped the lame duck session of Congress would pass additional relief, but indicated that he stood ready to help push through such legislation next year if lawmakers did not agree to a compromise before Mr. Biden was sworn in.

Nobody in the all-masked audience may have been happier to hear that than the mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell.

“A stimulus package is what’s needed right now, yes, big time” said Ms. Cantrell, a Democrat, rattling off her city’s roster of needs.

Yet for all the interest in considering what Mr. Richmond’s new job might mean for New Orleans, many of the attendees were as interested in gaming out who would emerge as his successor in the House.

A number of would-be candidates made a point to come to the news conference — with one city councilor, Helena Moreno, posing for pictures for the local media with Mr. Richmond.

In his remarks, Mr. Richmond promised to play an “active role” in the special election to replace him next year. . In a brief interview after his news conference, he went further, saying he would “probably” make an endorsement after the holidays.

The race in a safely Democratic district in a city that relishes its politics nearly as much as its gumbo is expected to be a sprawling affair, one that will shine a spotlight on the rivalries and alliances Mr. Richmond has navigated since his first campaign for state representative 20 years ago.

“It’ll be a battle,” he predicted.

Judy Shelton’s confirmation to the Fed fails to advance to a final vote.

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Judy Shelton on Capitol Hill in February.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The nomination of Judy Shelton to fill one of two remaining open seats on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors failed to advance to a final vote on Tuesday afternoon.

While 47 senators voted to limit debate on Ms. Shelton’s nomination — a procedural step necessary to move it along toward a confirmation vote — 50 senators voted against the motion.

Ms. Shelton’s nomination could still be resuscitated. Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, took steps on Tuesday afternoon that will allow him to bring up the nomination again. Still, the decision afternoon is a significant setback to a Fed nomination that has been plagued by ups and downs. Ms. Shelton was nominated 16 months ago, but has been repeatedly delayed by lawmaker skepticism over her views.

While she appeared to be finally on the brink of confirmation, the coronavirus complicated Republicans’ last-minute attempt to place Ms. Shelton — a loyal fan of President Trump’s and a longtime proponent of some sort of gold standard — in a role at the nerve center of the American economy.

Democrats uniformly opposed moving Ms. Shelton’s nomination to the final stage, and two Republican senators — Mitt Romney and Susan Collins — voted “no.” While Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, also announced his opposition to Ms. Shelton’s nomination, he was not present for the vote because of what a spokesman said were family matters. Two senators, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who said Tuesday evening on Twitter that he had tested positive for coronavirus, and Rick Scott of Florida, were in quarantine.

That deprived Ms. Shelton of the votes she needed to move on to a final approval that could have secured her a spot on the central bank’s powerful board.

If confirmed, Ms. Shelton, 66, would take one of seven seats on the Washington-based board. With her addition, five of the six filled seats would contain Mr. Trump’s appointees. The president has nominated Christopher Waller, a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis research official, to fill the remaining open seat. It is unclear when his less contested nomination could come to a vote.

Senators are rushing Ms. Shelton’s nomination through in a brief window before Mark Kelly, the Democratic senator-elect from Arizona, can be seated at the end of the month. Her offbeat views and loyalty to the White House have stirred concern among even some key Republicans, leaving her such a narrow margin of support that flipping that one seat could cost her confirmation.

Ms. Shelton has long favored backing the U.S. currency with gold or some other peg, which would undermine the very function of the Fed. She advised Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, and while Fed appointees often have political pasts, she has written glowing articles praising Mr. Trump and has at times appeared to question the value of central bank independence. She once favored higher interest rates, but abruptly changed that position to mirror Mr. Trump’s preference for low interest rates once she was in the running for a nomination to the Fed.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory may have helped Ms. Shelton’s chances. Installing Republican nominees at the Fed before the new administration takes office will curb Mr. Biden’s ability to appoint his own central bank picks. Governors have 14-year terms, but Ms. Shelton is filling an unexpired seat and would need to be reappointed in 2024.

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On the Senate floor, Republicans who haven’t publicly acknowledged Trump’s loss congratulate Harris.

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Vice President-elect Kamala Harris leaving the Capitol on Tuesday after voting on President Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Republicans might be unwilling to publicly acknowledge that President Trump lost the election, but many of them lined up on Tuesday to congratulate Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on her victory during her first appearance in the Senate since Election Day.

As Ms. Harris arrived to help vote down Mr. Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, several of her fellow senators were seen warmly paying their respects, including some who have refused to recognize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win — and at least one who has baselessly claimed that the election result was fraudulent.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has encouraged Mr. Trump to keep fighting the election results while promoting groundless conspiracy theories of balloting crimes, offered Ms. Harris a fist bump.

Senators Tim Scott of South Carolina, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota, all Republicans, also greeted Ms. Harris and offered congratulations.

Mr. Rounds gave Ms. Harris an elbow bump, the pandemic-era equivalent of a handshake; Mr. Scott offered a fist bump.

Their greetings stood out as elected Republicans have largely refrained from the customary statements of congratulations to the president-elect. They were also the latest examples of how, even as they avoid such public recognition of the election results, Republicans are quietly preparing for life in a Biden administration.

Mr. Graham later told reporters that his congratulations had been conditional.

“If it works out, congratulations,” the Republican said he had told Ms. Harris.

Mr. Lankford suggested he was just being polite.

“The election’s not settled,” he said. “You can spin it however you want to, but if someone walks right up to you, you say, ‘Hello, congratulations.’”

Ms. Harris returned to Washington on Tuesday to provide a pivotal vote in blocking the nomination of Judy Shelton, Mr. Trump’s controversial choice to join the Federal Reserve Board.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said no one had needed to reach out to Ms. Harris to ask her to travel back to Washington to weigh in on the nomination.

“Senator Harris knows this is an important vote, and she’s here for it,” Mr. Schumer told reporters. “She didn’t need contacting.”

Mr. Schumer also criticized Republicans for continuing to endorse Mr. Trump’s fictional narrative that the election was stolen from him, singling out Mr. Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who has recently contacted officials in multiple states to make inquiries about how ballots are being validated.

“Senate Republicans have continued denying the election results, and they are holding America back,” Mr. Schumer said. “The classic example today was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee calling around to states to try and interfere with the process. That was reckless and inappropriate.”

Lindsey Graham says he raised election integrity concerns with officials in Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.

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Senator Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill Monday night that it was “ridiculous” to suggest that he wanted to throw out legal ballots.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

A day after Georgia’s secretary of state said he felt pressured to invalidate mail-in votes by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has questioned the legitimacy of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over President Trump, Mr. Graham told reporters on Tuesday that he had also reached out to state officials in Nevada and Arizona to ask how the states were validating signatures on mailed ballots.

Mr. Graham, echoing baseless claims Mr. Trump has made about voting fraud, said he was asking about elections in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada “as a United States senator who is worried about the integrity of the election process nationally, when it comes to vote by mail.” Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that he spoke to Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona, and that he could not remember who he spoke to in Nevada.

Mr. Biden won all three states, flipping Arizona and Georgia from Mr. Trump’s column. He won by a wide-enough margin that he would still be the president-elect even without the electoral votes from those three states.

The Trump campaign and the state’s Republican Party demanded a hand recount in Georgia after claiming that ineligible and dead people had voted in the presidential election. Georgia is more than 90 percent done with its audit, which has to be completed by Wednesday evening. Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s statewide voting system implementation manager, said on Tuesday that the recount may take every minute until then but the results of the election were unlikely to change.

On Monday, elections officials in Floyd County, a Trump stronghold near Georgia’s northwest corner, turned up an extra 2,600 ballots. The error was caused by county election officials neglecting to upload the results of a set of ballots, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said. The discovered ballots would cut Mr. Biden’s lead by 1,000 votes, but even so he would remain 13,000 votes ahead of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, said on Monday that the senator had asked him if it was possible to invalidate all mail ballots in counties with high rates of mismatched signatures, which Mr. Graham has denied.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Raffensperger said Mr. Graham had asked him whether poll workers might have accepted ballots with mismatched signatures because of political bias. The message he said he heard from Mr. Graham was: “Look hard and see how many ballots you can throw out,” Mr. Raffensperger told CNN on Monday evening.

Mr. Sterling, who was on part of the call with Mr. Graham and Mr. Raffensperger, said the conversation was focused on process.

Mr. Graham said Tuesday he had wanted to learn more about how the election process worked in Georgia ahead of the two Senate runoff elections there in January. Those races will determine the balance of power in the Senate.

Mr. Graham has joined other Republicans questioning the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump.

“If Republicans don’t challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,” Mr. Graham said last week on Fox News. “President Trump should not concede.”

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Trump says Wreaths Across America is back on, after it was canceled because of the virus.

President Trump announced on Tuesday that he had “reversed” plans to cancel the annual “Wreaths Across America” event at Arlington National Cemetery because of the coronavirus pandemic — about 90 minutes after the Secretary of the Army said that he, himself, had done so.

“I have reversed the ridiculous decision to cancel Wreaths Across America at Arlington National Cemetery,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “It will now go on!”

The Secretary of the Army, Ryan D. McCarthy, had tweeted earlier in the afternoon that he had “directed Arlington National Cemetery to safely host Wreaths Across America.”

“We appreciate the families and visitors who take time to honor and remember those who are laid to rest at our nation’s most hallowed ground,” Mr. McCarthy added.

The cemetery had announced on Monday that it was canceling the annual ceremony, during which volunteers lay wreaths on tombstones to honor veterans. The event had been scheduled for Dec. 19, but the cemetery said it could not safely host such a large event.

Cases of the virus are surging in the Washington area, as they are across most of the country. Over the past week, there have been an average of 140 cases per day in Washington, an increase of 56 percent from two weeks earlier.

Mr. Trump attended a silent wreath-laying ceremony at the cemetery last week for Veterans Day. His tweet on Tuesday taking credit for the restoration of the wreath-laying event came on a day when he had no public events on his schedule, and during a week when most of his statements on Twitter were about his own efforts to contest the election results.

The reversal came after some backlash over the event’s cancellation. The nonprofit organization Wreaths Across America had said in a statement that it was “devastated” by the decision.

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, had urged Army leaders to reconsider.

“Thousands of people have marched in DC streets the past couple weekends for Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” Mr. Cotton wrote on Twitter. “Surely volunteers can responsibly place wreaths on the graves of our fallen heroes at Arlington.”

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