WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump continued this week to attempt to cling to office after voters chose to oust him.
According to accusations being told on his behalf and embraced by him, the U.S. election was manipulated by scheming from a dead Venezuelan strongman, by a computer system capable of flipping Trump votes to Joe Biden ones across the country, and by something weird happening in Germany.
None of this happened. None of it is true.
But Trump and his legal team are making allegations in hopes state Republican legislators will shatter the foundational procedures and traditions of U.S. democracy and nullify the voters' will.
While this plays out, President-elect Biden continues to be denied the briefings and facilities given during presidential transitions. An increasing number of Republican lawmakers say he should be getting that cooperation but they haven't done anything to make that happen.
From the past week:
THE TWEETS
TRUMP: "I WON THE ELECTION! I won the Election! I WON THE ELECTION!" - tweets Sunday, Monday and Wednesday.
THE FACTS: No, Biden won the election.
Biden achieved victory in key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, topping the threshold of 270 electoral votes to clinch the presidency with room to spare.
Biden also won Georgia after a recount by hand this past week. That gives him 306 electoral votes, a total Trump called a "landslide" when states delivered him that number in 2016. (Trump ended up with 304 electoral votes because two electors defected.)
Trump's allegations of massive voting fraud have been dismissed by a succession of judges and refuted by state election officials and an arm of his own administration's Homeland Security Department. Many of his campaign's lawsuits have been thrown out of court.
A coalition of state election officials and the Trump administration's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have declared the election was the most secure in history. Trump responded by firing the head of his agency, Chris Krebs.
NEWS CONFERENCE THURSDAY
SIDNEY POWELL, Trump attorney, on Dominion Voting Systems electoral software used in many states: "One of (the software's) most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden."
THE FACTS: That didn't happen. There's "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised," the federal agency that oversees election security said in the statement joined by state and electoral-industry officials.
Against that, Powell offered the allegation it "probably" did.
POWELL: "The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out."
POWELL: "Smartmatic has been associated with the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez, which is openly hostile to the United States."
THE FACTS: To be clear, Chavez is not leading the Venezuelan government because he is dead. He died in 2013.
As well, Dominion does not have any ties to Venezuela, said Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election technology research and development nonprofit. Dominion was founded in Canada. The company said it is a competitor with Smartmatic, not a partner.
Smartmatic is incorporated in Florida by Venezuelan founders. The company states on its website it's not associated with governments or political parties of any country.
POWELL: "What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States."
THE FACTS: No such communist chicanery has been uncovered. The election security branch of Trump's Homeland Security Department said the election was secure against foreign interference and all forms of mass manipulation.
POWELL, on reports a U.S. voting server is in Germany: "That is true, it's somehow related to this but I do not know whether good guys got it or bad guys got it."
THE FACTS: No, it's not true. Powell is referring to a fictitious story that a server hosting evidence of voting irregularities in the Nov. 3 U.S. election was in Germany.
Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, of Texas, this month circulated the rumor "U.S. Army forces" seized a server from a Frankfurt office, though he acknowledged it was something he saw on Twitter and "I don't know the truth." The Army said the claim was false.
Still, Powell presented the story as fact.