Murkowski calls on Trump to begin transition process, decries ‘pressure campaign on state legislators’

GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) called on President Trump to begin the transition process to a Joe Biden administration and decried what she called a “pressure campaign” mounted on state legislators by allies of the president to stop the results from being certified.

In a statement Sunday evening that came minutes after members of the Trump campaign announced the departure of Sidney Powell from the legal team, Murkowski said that the president’s claims had been found by multiple judges to be “without merit.”

“A pressure campaign on state legislators to influence the electoral outcome is not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process,” Murkowski said in the statement released through Twitter.

“It is time to begin the full and formal transition process,” the Alaska senator concluded.

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— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) November 22, 2020

Murkowski is among a handful of national GOP elected officials who have acknowledged Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The vast majority of Republican senators and members of Congress have either avoided taking a position on the election outcome, sided with the president or suggested that the outcome was still in question in recent weeks.

The president has launched legal efforts in Pennsylvania and several other states in the days since the election and has raised evidence-free claims of widespread election fraud in the media. So far, the campaign’s legal efforts have failed to gain any traction.

Earlier Sunday, the president took aim at another GOP elected official who has called upon him to concede the election, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), by sharing a Breitbart story on Twitter that claimed the COVID-19 tests Hogan secured in a deal with South Korean officials were “flawed” and unusable by state officials.

Report: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Anti-Trump Hero, Paid for Flawed Coronavirus Tests from South Korea https://t.co/PHV7euutVb via @BreitbartNews. This RINO will never make the grade. Hogan is just as bad as the flawed tests he paid big money for!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2020