Arizona and Wisconsin certify Biden as winner

Washington DC: Two battleground states of Arizona and Wisconsin on Monday formally certified Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as the winner.

Incumbent Donald Trump had won both the states in 2016.

In Wisconsin, Biden won by 20,700 votes against Trump, who has refused to concede the election results so far. He alleges that there were massive voters' fraud and electoral malpractice.

Certifying the result, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said, Today, I carried out my duty to certify the November 3rd election, and as required by state and federal law, I've signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

The formal certification from Wisconsin came a day after the state completed the recounting of votes in two of its counties as requested by Trump.

Earlier in the day, Arizona, which traditionally has been a Republican stronghold, also certified Biden as the winner with more than 10,000 votes.

Arizona has 11 members in the Electoral College. Biden now has 306 Electoral College votes against Trump's 232.

Every Arizona voter has my thanks and should know that they can stand proud that this election was conducted with transparency, accuracy and fairness in accordance with Arizona's laws and elections procedures despite numerous unfounded claims to the contrary," Arizona Governor Dough Hobbs said.

At the brief signing event to certify the election results, Hobbs said the system is strong. And that is why I have bragged on it so much.

Arizona certification came at the same time when Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani made a plea before several Republican State legislature that the lawmakers could and should throw out the election results.

They are certifying a false statement to the United States of America, Giuliani told the Republican lawmakers.

Trump has five days to challenge the certification of election results. Such total corruption. So sad for our country! Trump said in a tweet as the Arizona hearings were going on.

In another tweet, Trump said he is fighting on behalf of 74 million people who voted for him.

I'm not fighting for me, I'm fighting for the 74,000,000 million (sic) people (not including the many Trump ballots that were tossed ), a record for a sitting President, who voted for me! he said in a tweet.

Earlier, Joe Biden on Monday got his first look as president-elect at the President's Daily Brief, a top secret summary of US intelligence and world events a document former first lady Michelle Obama has called The Death, Destruction, and Horrible Things Book."

Biden has already had eyes on different iterations of the so-called PDB, which is tailored to the way each president likes to absorb information.

More than a decade ago, Biden read President George W Bush's PDB during Biden's transition into the vice presidency.

After that, he read President Barack Obama's PDB for eight years.

Now, after a four-year break, he's reading President Donald Trump's PDB.

The briefers almost certainly will be asking Biden what he prefers in terms of format and style, said David Priess, author of The President's Book of Secrets, a history of the PDB.

At a minimum, they're seeing what seems to resonate most with him so that when they make the book his book, they can tailor it to him.

Obama's PDB was a 10- to 15-page document tucked in a leather binder, which he found waiting for him on the breakfast table.

Later in his presidency, he liked reading the ultra-secret intelligence brief on a secured iPad.

Michelle called it The Death, Destruction, and Horrible Things Book, Obama wrote in his recently released book, A Promised Land."

On a given day, I might read about terrorist cells in Somalia or unrest in Iraq or the fact that the Chinese or Russians were developing new weapons systems," Obama wrote.

"Nearly always, there was mention of potential terrorist plots, no matter how vague, thinly sourced, or unactionable a form of due diligence on the part of the intelligence community, meant to avoid the kind of second-guessing that had transpired after 9/11.

From now until Inauguration Day, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be reading the PDB crafted for Trump, who had delayed giving Biden and Harris access to it as he contests the outcome of the election.

Trump, who prefers absorbing information in visual ways, likes short texts and graphics.

Trump himself said during his campaign and during the transition in 2016 that he did not like reading long documents that he preferred bullet points, said Priess, who has not seen any of Trump's PDBs.

It probably has charts, tables, graphs things like that.

Not the parody that people make that it's like a cartoon book ... but something that is more visual. But we don't know for sure.

The written brief, which Trump doesn't always read, often is followed by a verbal briefing with an intelligence official, although those oral briefings stopped at least for a time in October.

Priess said he didn't know why they stopped or if they had resumed, but that they stopped at a time when Trump was spending much of his time on the campaign trail.

Before Trump authorized Biden to get the PDB as president-elect, Biden was given some intelligence background briefings as a candidate.