Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects Trump campaign election claim

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Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects Trump campaign election claim

Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas has the latest on 'Your World'

Nov. 17, 2020 – This is a rush transcript from “Your World with Neil Cavuto” November 17, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR:  All right, thank you, Billy, very much.

FOX on top of three big developments right now, the new restrictions on businesses everywhere from Seattle to Philadelphia. We have got the latest.

And a lot of folks in those cities better get the notion that it's going to be a small Thanksgiving.

Then, Senator Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, are here to talk about those violent clashes that we saw in D.C. If it was a case of deja vu, don't blame them for having it.

And then the Georgia secretary of state presser. Of course, they have to have all those hand-counted ballots in late tomorrow night. Will they be able to achieve that, amid some of the criticism the secretary of state is getting increasingly from Republicans? The guy can't win.

Let's get sort of a preview of coming attractions there in Georgia, what we could expect to hear, from Matt Finn joining us now in Atlanta.

Hi, Matt.

MATT FINN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT:  Hi, Neil.

Well, in the announcement of the 4:00 p.m. press conference today Georgia's secretary of state says the election process here is considered a gold standard nationwide. And for days now, Georgia's secretary of state has been defending the election process here against all types of allegations online and even coming from the president.

Of course, one of the big topics is signatures. Georgia's secretary of state says it has a multistep-process to verify someone's signature before they vote here in this state. And also, for days now, Georgia's secretary of state has been emphasizing here that the elections are safe and secure.

He says that is a part of the ongoing audit here. All of the election machines were checked in this state, and no fraud was found.

Now, in Floyd County, Georgia, there were about 2,500 ballots that were not initially tallied. The president gained about 800 votes from that new tally, reducing Joe Biden's statewide lead from the initial count of about

15,000 votes.

Georgia's secretary of state offices those 2,500 uncounted ballots were an amazing blunder, and the Floyd County elections director did not upload the votes from a memory card.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R), GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE:  The county election official, he was out. And he assigned a person that was inexperienced for a very critical role. And they messed up. It was human error. It wasn't the machine.

And we have asked for his resignation, and so have the county commissioners, as I understand it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FINN:  Georgia is continuing its audit or a recount here. All counties must submit their new numbers by tomorrow.

And Georgia's secretary of state's office says that most counties have had near zero deviation from their original numbers, aside from that blunder of about 2,500 ballots in Floyd County, which is considered human error, not necessarily fraud or software -- Neil.

CAVUTO:  All right, we're only about a minute away from Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, talking to the press.

Do we know whether he would have even a likely count now? Or that will all wait until tomorrow night?

FINN:  They're all due at midnight tomorrow night. And we're not sure if he is going to give us a new number of the counties that have finished their tallies or if he would allow someone else within his office, which he has been doing over the past couple days, Neil.

CAVUTO:  All right, Matt Finn, thank you very much.

Again, the secretary of state will be coming to the microphone very, very soon.

I'd love to squeeze in John Roberts, our White House correspondent, on how the White House's responding to all of these fast-moving developments.

Hey, John.

JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT:  Neil, good afternoon to you.

The White House was really sort of buoyed by the news yesterday that they found 2,600 votes that hadn't been counted, thinking that, well, if it's a problem with Floyd County, which leans heavily toward President Trump, maybe it's a problem in other counties as well. But they have not found anything else since, though the Trump campaign in a statement did say -- quote -- "The Trump campaign will continue to fight in the state of Georgia until every instance of voter fraud is rooted out and all previously uncounted ballots are tallied."

What's interesting about the findings in Georgia, historically speaking, Neil, is that if you remember back to the year 2000 election, Bush v. Gore, it was 537 votes that separated the two candidates in the state of Florida.

If they had found what they found in Georgia, 800 votes going to President Trump, that would have been enough to turn the 2000 election.

However, the vote margin for Joe Biden was about 14,000 there in Georgia.

So, the 800 votes reduces it somewhat, but only to about 13,000 and a little bit. So that means that President Trump would still have to find a whole lot of votes that aren't necessarily out there anyway, as this vote canvass continues.

It was significant to find 2,600 votes, but, unfortunately for the Trump campaign, that's all they have been able to find so far.

Trey Gowdy, though, the former congressman from South Carolina, saying this morning that this vote count does need to go. Here's the reason why. Listen here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TREY GOWDY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR:  I mean, we should have zero margin for error in something as important as our presidential election.

So, true, 2,600 votes would not be sufficient to change the outcome in Georgia. But my interest is not just in changing outcomes. It is making sure the next election, this one and the next one, we can all have confidence in it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS:  A couple of other developments going on at this hour.

There was a recess called in the Florida district -- in the Florida -- in the federal district court hearing in Pennsylvania where Rudy Giuliani was arguing on behalf of the Trump campaign against a motion to dismiss a Trump campaign lawsuit.

The recess was caused because of a technical error. We don't know when that's going to restart or how long it's going to take before that hearing is over. If the judge grants the state's motion to dismiss, that will be a big blow for the Trump campaign.

But if it goes to trial, that could put some wind in the president sails.

And then there is the Clark County, Nevada, case where a county commissioner's race is going to have to be run again because of discrepancies in ballots.

The Trump campaign arguing, the Clark County officials don't have confidence in their own ballots, maybe they should rerun the presidential election in that district, which is District C of Clark County. So, still a lot of arguments left to be made, Neil.

I'm being told that there's no rush to get this over with on the part of the Trump campaign, that they think that the hard deadline is December the 14th. They want to wait and see when a lot of these state certifications come in. California is doesn't come into December the 11th.

So we could be here for a while yet -- Neil.

CAVUTO:  Yes, for quite a while yet.

Thank you. John Roberts, at the White House.

Reid Wilson right now, The Hill correspondent, following all of this very quickly.

I believe right now, Bill (sic) Sterling, the implementation manager in Atlanta, is going through sort of the administrative process here and how this is done, ahead of the secretary of state.

But, Reid, we have ever had five million votes are being hand-counted. They do, by and large, jibe with the machine count that we had earlier in the state that led us to this. I'm just wondering, tomorrow night at midnight, when all the votes are in, is it your understanding that there won't be a dramatic shift here?

REID WILSON, THE HILL:  Yes, it's very unlikely.

When we're talking about recounts, even of so many ballots, recounts change a few dozen votes, maybe 100 votes. They don't change thousands of votes.

It's not as if these machines were counting so many votes inaccurately.

And, as a matter of fact, as your reporter talked about there, the early audit of those machines found that everything, the machines themselves worked. So it doesn't appear that there's some big well of votes that's suddenly going to come to President Trump's aid. They just don't exist.

CAVUTO:  All right, Reid, I'm rudely interrupting you because the press conference has started. I want to go there now.

Let's see what...

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA VOTING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER:  We were looking at a margin of 13,378. The net gain for the president on this memory card is 449 for a new total of 12,929. So, that is where we stand right now.

The situation is, because of the audit, we found this. We saw some potentials on this. And, again, this is where the county had a couple places where they should have been able to see it, one, the absentee voter file reconciliation. They obviously didn't do that.

Two, the check-ins. They didn't check that. And then, three, the tabulator screen on the election management system has a box that's checked or unchecked, depending on whether the card has been uploaded or accounted for. So, there were several spots where the human beings who were running just didn't follow the procedure. And that's why this happens.

But this is why you have the audit, to discover these things. Now, let me frame this up with a couple of other items. The -- we have 57 counties that are flat out at zero deviations from the ballot counts that they started with. That's 57. We have 21 other counties that are either plus one or minus one off of the original count that they had.

So, that's 78 that are basically spot on. We have another 32 counties that are in single digits that they're off. So, they're finalizing that, looking, did they miscalculate something? Did they switch data entry, things along those lines?

But single digits is not that much to be concerned about on these things, but we're trying to get it as right as we can, but to prove the outcomes are proper and correct.

Now, again, I want to frame up how the audit works. We saw that Fulton was done with the audit and DeKalb was done with the audit. They were done with the first phase of the audit, which is the hand counting.

Then you have to go to the data entry side, where we have a lot of quality control measures. Did you put the numbers in properly? Did you get every batch? Did you transpose any numbers? Did you forget to put a number from the tally sheet into the data entry?

Now, for larger counties, there's more pieces of paper. It's going to take more time. And, again, as we have been saying repeatedly, the human beings that are part of this are the weakest link in the whole system. But that's why there's these checks and double-checks and triple-checks that we do before we finalize the audit phase of this.

And that's why this...

CAVUTO:  All right, we're going to continue monitoring this.

I believe this is Bill (sic) Sterling, the implementation manager, going through the mechanics of how this count has produced some variation from the machine count here, but not by enough to close the gap. In other words, there was about a 14,000 gap in total votes there that has narrowed, according to him, to about 12,929. I think I got that correct here that.

Whether that is going to change as the count goes on is anyone's guess here. He didn't seem to intimate that was a possibility.

But back to Reid Wilson, The Hill correspondent.

Reid, I'm sorry for interrupting you for that.

But it doesn't look, to your earlier point, like this is changing the overall math. Now, it could, and they're counting this fairly rapidly. But if it turns out that Georgia has indeed gone to Joe Biden, how does this set up other actions being taken in other states, because this was supposed to be a leaping board to other potential counts, legal arguments, et cetera?

WILSON:  Yes, President Trump's legal team is rapidly running out of options. In the main states where they are challenging election results or alleging that something is wrong, they have yet to prove anything in a court of law.

And, in fact, several of the Trump campaign's lawyers have said to the effect, we are not alleging fraud in some of these cases that are -- that are being argued. And, in fact, in Pennsylvania, they have had to go through a couple of different legal teams.

Now, as I think John Roberts said, we have got Rudy Giuliani, who's stepped in to take over for other legal teams that have quit the case. So, President Trump's legal options here were always going to be narrow. They are closing off very rapidly as we get towards those certifications that, as you say, are coming in the next days and weeks.

CAVUTO:  There's also that Senate run-off race going on here. There's no count of those votes, I should stress here.

But I'm wondering what the spillover will be on those races, given the president's insistence -- and he's absolutely within his legal rights to get the count in and all of that -- but to claim fraud and some of the other things he has, is it hurting them, or could it hurt them? What's your sense of how things are going there?

WILSON:  Well, it certainly could.

And one thing that the secretary of state in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, said earlier today was that there were about 24,000 Republican voters who voted by absentee in the primary, and then did not vote in the general election, when absentee rules were tighter in November.

And those 24,000 voters, that is the difference between Joe Biden carrying the state by, what did you say, 12,900 and President Trump carrying the state.

CAVUTO:  Right.

WILSON:  So, if Republican voters are going to sit on the sidelines, either because they're depressed that President Trump has lost or they didn't show

-- they don't vote by absentee, and then something comes up on Election Day itself, well, then those two Republican senators are going to have a problem in Georgia.

On the Democratic side, I mean, Democrats don't do typically as well in run-off elections as they do in general elections. Back in 2008, there was a run-off after President Obama won, a Republican and a Democrat pretty closely matched together in November, and the Republican went on to win by

17 points.

So, Democrats have their own challenge in getting their own voters back to the polls even after they have won the presidency, which will take a little that sort of immediacy away from the urge to vote.

CAVUTO:  All right, Reid Wilson, The Hill correspondent.

Thank you, Reid, for that update and weighing in on this. It is a mess, but they hope to resolve it all by midnight tomorrow. We will keep you posted on that.

In the meantime, I'm very happy to be joined by Rand Paul and Kelley Paul.

They know a thing or two about some of the violence that we have seen at some rallies, particularly this latest rally on behalf of the president on let the count go on in Washington that, by nighttime, it turned into something that probably looked eerily familiar to them.

Senator and Mrs. Paul, thank you for joining us. I hope you're doing OK.

When you saw what was going on in Washington over the weekend, it did look eerily familiar to what you encountered leaving the White House after the big event and the president's speech there, where you just were knee-deep in protesters. It got pretty scary.

Did this seem similar to that, Senator?

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY):  Yes, absolutely.

I think it seems very similar. But I guess what's even more disturbing is that you would have both right and left calling the other side fake news.

Many of us say, well, Associated Press, certainly, that's objective news.

But the AP reported this story yesterday. And I wrote the -- I read the Associated Press story. I have no idea who's attacking who and for what reason. They wouldn't describe that these were people attacking Trump people there supporting the president. They just made it sound like, oh, it was just random violence caused by the Trump protests -- by the Trump rally.

This is the same thing that happened to us when we were there. And Kelley can recount it well. The way the AP reported our story was a abominable and just completely biased.

CAVUTO:  What I noticed, Mrs. Paul, on that, to your husband's point, was how protesters with divergent views, those pro-Trump let the count on, those protesting what they were talking about were actually mingling with one another. They were in the same space.

That was exactly what you had encountered with a lot more of the protesters opposed to Donald Trump, opposed to Republicans, conservatives. So, it's happened again.

KELLEY PAUL, WIFE OF SENATOR RAND PAUL:  Yes.

I think what's important to realize -- and there are a multitude of videos on the Internet of this happening just to innocent, ordinary people. These folks are not agitating. After -- after the rally, they were in restaurants. They were walking back to their hotels, and they were being mobbed and assaulted by crowds of Antifa and Black Lives Matter shouting horrible things at them, the same thing that they were doing to us.

And, again, these aren't folks that were trying to agitate or do anything.

They were trying to get back to their hotels.

What caused me to tweet out at the AP was the scene of that young girl and her parents. Her big brother had his arm around her. She's like 10 or 11 years old. She's in tears. And she's being screamed at, horrible stuff, by grown men with megaphones.

And the whole family looked absolutely terrorized. And I know exactly what that felt like. And it just -- it broke my heart looking at that. And then I saw people sitting in restaurants, and a Black Lives Matter supporter threw a commercial-grade firecracker at them.

I mean, what's it going to take for the mainstream media to really report on this? Is somebody going to have to get horribly burned or assaulted?

It's just outrageous. These thugs are just roaming the streets and just accosting people who are doing nothing more than trying to get back to their hotels.

CAVUTO:  This seemed to accelerate as soon as it turned to night, I guess.

And, Senator, one of the things we learned, that the Department of Homeland Security had warned violence on both sides and concerns that, earlier on -- this is before this latest dust-up this past weekend -- that white supremacists were the most persistent threat to our homeland.

But that's not so. It's not just white supremacists. I mean, there -- there are these Antifa and other groups that have anarchy on mind. So, if there's such a thing as spreading the blame here, there's enough to spread around.

R. PAUL:  Well, here's the thing.

If you read the Associated Press story from last night, you can't tell who the people are that are arrested. Everybody arrested were the people attacking the Trump supporters. There was a mother with her child in a stroller being attacked. These were the anti-Trump people creating the violence entirely.

And yet you read AP, and it doesn't even describe who these people are.

They say the Trump demonstrations lead to violence.

Do you know, when the mob attacked us, and they nearly toppled a policeman, and I helped to stabilize him, the AP reported that, oh, the policeman was jostled? That's not the truth.

Whatever happened to the Associated Press, which was supposed to be an objective beacon of truth? So, we complain that there's right and left in our country. But what if the center, what if those who say they are objective are no longer objective? Where will people find their news?

CAVUTO:  Mrs. Paul, one of the things I did notice -- and we touched on it in the beginning with your husband as well -- this notion that the protesters of extreme views can be in the same place at the same time.

There's got to be a way to avoid that. Passions run deep. They turn violent. There's got to be a way of separating crowds when this sort of happens, because it's happened enough here.

And I think it's fair to say, in looking at this, that those who were marching on behalf of Donald Trump and letting the count go on were being very, very well-behaved, and then those, of course, when it turned nightfall, much as we have seen in other incidents, erupted into violence, but that they were seen together.

Much as when you guys came out of the White House at the time of the RNC Convention, when the president wrapped up his remarks, they had sort of intermingled and were on top of each other. Unfortunately for you, the guys who didn't share your views were the overwhelming majority.

There's got to be a better way to handle this. What do you think?

R. PAUL:  Well, I think one of the things, when you look at this...

K. PAUL:  Are you...

R. PAUL:  Go ahead. Go ahead, Kelley.

K. PAUL:  Well, I think that one of the big problems -- and I put this on Mayor Bowser in D.C. I love D.C.

And what happened to us and what is happening to that city is that they are actually blocking off streets. And these folks that were attacked, Neil, going to their hotels, were just like us. They weren't actively demonstrating or doing anything. They were just trying to get home, to get to their cars, to sit in restaurants.

And these groups are now coming after anybody that they perceive is a Trump

-- Trump supporter. And it bothers me so much that Antifa, which is a group that professes to be anti-fascism, but, basically, they want to terrorize, bully, intimidate, and shout down anyone who disagrees with them.

And that is the definition and the essence of fascism itself. And they don't care if, as I said, you're a young family with kids. I saw an elderly lady trying to get to her hotel, and she had an American flag. And they're ripping it out of her hands and getting up in her face and flipping her off.

These people are thugs. And they need to be denounced. And there need to be more police out in D.C. protecting people who want to eat in restaurants and stay in hotels and come and enjoy D.C., whether they're for a protest or not.

I have to say, the last time I was in D.C., I was getting ready to go for a run. And I was afraid. I grabbed a T-shirt out of my drawer, and I was afraid to put it on because it had an American flag on it, just a simple American flag, but I was afraid to wear it in D.C. today.

CAVUTO:  Incredible.

Senator, I do remember vividly watching the video of you and your wife leaving at the time. There were no police around. I mean, there were a couple guys who were trying to help you out. But they were overwhelmed here.

Here, there were plenty of police around, but it seemed like they were caught off-guard by this and overwhelmed by this. What do you do?

R. PAUL:  Well, you said, how do we separate the peaceful from the non- peaceful?

I think that's actually pretty easy. There have been many peaceful Trump demonstrations, and there have been some peaceful demonstrations for racial justice. There have been. I won't say there haven't been.

But, as soon as they become not peaceful, arrest the people and put them in jail. One of the people that assaulted my wife and I bloodied a police officer. He required stitches. But you know what the D.C. judicial system did? They released him on his own recognizance.

The thing is, there are violent people in these mobs. And they have to be arrested every time, and they have to be punished. And it's not very hard to separate out violent from nonviolent. And peaceful protests can go on.

But when they're not peaceful, you have got to arrest people.

But, like in Portland, they just weren't arresting anybody. So it gets worse. Arrest them and put them in jail if they're committing a crime.

CAVUTO:  You know, we still have this unresolved election, Senator and Mrs.

Paul.

And I'm wondering, Senator, your point, there is this recount going on in Georgia that should be resolved by tomorrow night. Do you think that, should that vote come in as it has, and that there's still a difference of

12,000 or more votes, that the president should give up the fight?

R. PAUL:  You know, I think the recall itself is unlikely to change the vote. Recalls rarely change the vote.

What I think we need to do is examine the validity of the votes. So, for example, usually less than 1 percent of people vote absentee. And so it's never been much to change anything except for a very close election.

But now you have about a third of the vote in Georgia came in by mail. And we should verify it. So, what I have advocated for is do a random sampling of about 2,000 people from Fulton County, and actually ask them, did you vote? Check on the signature. Check each ballot in a way in which you were contesting whether they're valid or not.

And, if out of 2,000, you get two or three, that's not enough to overturn the election. But if you do a random sample of 2,000, and you find 100 bad ballots, you multiply that out, that is plenty to change the election.

But I think the best way to figure this out and the best way to give Republicans assurance that it was legitimate is, let's do some real random sampling, not just counting the votes, but actually seeing if these people actually voted and if it was them.

CAVUTO:  So, Senator, do you see Joe Biden as the next president of the United States?

R. PAUL:  I think that we need to explore all the legal avenues, come to a conclusion.

Look, this isn't new in our country. In 1976, my dad lost by 200 votes out of 200,000. We found 13 people voting from the same household. We found people voting from vacant lots, post office boxes. We found one entire precinct of 2,000 people all the same signature to be signing in. And every vote was for the Democrat.

So, this happens in our country. But what we have to do is, you have to either prove it or not prove it. And it is difficult to overturn elections.

That's why the best chance of stopping fraud is stopping it before it happens.

And I don't know that it did or didn't happen. But I think the best way to know if it happened in Philadelphia and in Atlanta is to do a random sampling large enough that you can apply that conclusion to the whole to see if the election could have been changed.

CAVUTO:  Mrs. Paul, if I could end with you on this.

Of course, you and your husband caught in that melee back in August, I think it obviously seared you, and knowing how dangerous that was, but it's probably indicative of the times in which we live.

Are you confident, should Joe Biden take office on January 20, that he can calm things down, that he can kind of detach this polarization going on, or is this just a sign of our times, and, sadly, we're going to see more of it, and, sadly, we're going to see opportunities where you want to go out in the streets of Washington, and you're anxious to?

K. PAUL:  I am not confident at all, because I think that, if he were really trying to call for unity, as he says that he is, he would have called out by name the groups that were responsible for the attacks on Trump supporters Saturday night, and he did not.

He's continuing to kind of buy into this whole polarization thing. And I blame the media as well. As Rand said, after we were assaulted in the most horrific and terrifying night of my life, the AP claimed, again, that our claim was without evidence, and said that the police officer who was literally having to hold a bike out as a barricade was only jostled, as if he were inadvertently bumped on a subway car or something, instead of a violent mob that he was desperately trying to hold back and help us get into our hotel, because we could not move at all as they were screaming things.

Everyone needs to really report fairly on what is going on. And I think that Joe Biden needs to also call out these groups by name.

CAVUTO:  On that point -- I had said the last question would be to you, Mrs. Paul. Actually, I -- you mentioned something that I do want to raise with your husband.

Senator, I believe Joe Biden's remarks after this is, there's -- you know, people have got to cool it on both sides. I'm paraphrasing here. There -- everyone's got to calm down on both sides.

Now, no one second-guessed those remarks, as they did the president when he said essentially the same thing. What did you make of that?

R. PAUL:  Well, that's been misreported since the very beginning, because Trump was never referring to the people that committed violence and killed someone in Charlottesville.

He was referring to the people debating over whether statues should come down, that there was a reasonable argument on both sides. And that has been so misreported. And, see, even AP and, see, so-called objective sources of news misreported that.

So, yes, we do need to be honest. And I don't know if things will calm down or not. I want them to. I think, to my colleagues in the Senate, I say, yes, let's calm down, and let's actually talk.

When President Obama was president, I was civil. I went to the White House.

When President Trump became president, most of the Democrats would not go to the White House. They hated him so much that I think many of them incited the violence.

And if you look at the preponderance of violence, it's been anti-Trump. It hasn't been Trump protesters. You have got grandma out there waving a flag, and you have got thugs hitting grandma in the face with a two-by-four. This is not the right committing violence. This is the left committing violence to peaceful people in the streets.

And they need to be arrested. If there's anybody on the right that's doing it, arrest them too. Arrest anybody committing violence.

CAVUTO:  All right, final word, Senator Paul.

Mrs. Paul, thank you both very much. Be safe.

R. PAUL:  Thank you.

CAVUTO:  Be well.

I think you reminded us all that everyone's got to dial it back a lot, and fast.

We will have more after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO:  The president-elect starts picking his Cabinet, that the -- well, the intraparty fights start, but now he's just been naming key staff figures, and it's already starting.

The progressive progress -- after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO:  All right, picking a Cabinet is one thing. Getting your key staff together is another thing.

But then all the back-and-forth over the campaign legal teams and who sticks with what, it is a mess.

Bryan Llenas with the latest right now from Philadelphia -- Bryan.

BRYAN LLENAS, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT:  Neil, good afternoon.

The Trump campaign has lost yet another legal challenge here in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in a 5-2 opinion that the Philadelphia Board of Elections did not break the law in keeping poll watchers from both parties a certain distance away from the mail-in ballot counting because the election code does not actually specify a minimum distance that these poll watchers need to be at.

This is a blow to the Trump campaign, which has been arguing that Republican poll watchers were illegally not given meaningful access to the mail-in ballot counting, and so, therefore, more than 700,000 ballots in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh should be tossed out.

In fact, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is currently inside a federal courtroom in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, arguing that the commonwealth's mail-in voting system is unconstitutional, in large part because they claim that poll watchers were kept from meaningful access to watch the mail-in ballot counting.

He claimed in court today that up to 1.5 million ballots could be invalidated because observers didn't get access statewide. He said, in court, he has 300 affidavits and photos of observers being kept too far away from the counting.

The secretary of state is arguing in that case that this is all speculative and that this case should be dismissed. We're expecting a federal judge to make a decision on whether or not he will dismiss that case. There's been a technical difficulty issue in court.

So that has been delayed right now. But the bottom line is, is that the Trump campaign in this federal lawsuit is trying to block the certification of the final results here in Pennsylvania. That deadline is November 23.

And here in Philadelphia, Neil, the final results of the mail-in ballot count will be announced tonight at 10:00 p.m., which will officially start the clock for certification -- Neil.

CAVUTO:  All right, Bryan Llenas, thank you very, very much.

And remember that warning we were hearing from Democratic leaders in the House that don't any of you entertain joining the Biden administration.

Unfortunately, the president-elect took a jump on them. And that prompted this exchange between our Chad Pergram and a certain representative.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHAD PERGRAM, FOX NEWS CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT:  Any reaction to Justice Democrats slamming the Biden appointments of Cedric Richmond and Steve Ricchetti?

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY):  No.

PERGRAM:  That just came out. Why not?

Is that a problem? Does this create division?

JEFFRIES:  Cedric Richmond is a great member of Congress. And Steve he has worked closely with the vice president. Both of them, I believe, will be phenomenal additions to a Biden presidency and administration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAVUTO:  All right, but they're joining the president-elect. And that leaves the House vulnerable, at least its leadership says, with a not-big lead there.

The implications for everyone and how this affects the race going forward here, as people sort of cement their positions, with Eliza Collins of The Wall Street Journal.

Eliza, leaders, we were told, were very leery of something like this. And they didn't think they would be in that position. But, while Democrats held on to the House, they didn't hold on to it by much.

So, I'm wondering, they got to be privately seething, that is, House leadership.

ELIZA COLLINS, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  Well, it depends who goes over, right?

Cedric Richmond is someone who is from a likely seat that will remain Democratic. If there are in the Senate, where it is even tighter, if people go over, and the -- it is a Democratic governor, and they can replace someone right away, I think there's a little bit more leniency there.

But, absolutely, these margins are very tight. And if Biden is to get anything done, if Democrats are going to get anything done, those first 100 days are sort of the sweet spot to do it. And having empty spots in Congress and tight margins and potentially not even having the majority in the Senate makes it very difficult.

CAVUTO:  And you raise a good point about they're in states with Democratic governors who would likely pave the way for a Democratic replacement.

There's not much wiggle room, certainly, in the Senate right now. Is it your sense that, because of that, and because the Georgia run-off races are making it such we won't know how the final outcome will be, that Joe Biden will be probably loath to pick a Democratic senator for a position in his Cabinet, as things stand now?

COLLINS:  Well, that's certainly part of the conversation.

The Biden transition team says they will pick the best person for the job.

But I think that has to play into it, right? I mean, you want enough people to pass your agenda. And as they don't even know if they will have the majority, they're waiting on these Georgia recounts, but even if they win both of those seats, we're talking a 50/50 split, and they would need the vice president to vote with Democrats to approve their agenda.

So it is really tight. I mean, it is possible, with some Democrats, if there was -- they were able to nominate someone to replace a Democratic senator very quickly, and it was a Democrat, it might be worth it for Biden, if it was someone he could really put in his Cabinet.

But Biden is someone who's been in the government for a very long time.

He's got lots of people who want jobs, lots of qualified people, so he doesn't necessarily have to pick a senator.

CAVUTO:  All right, Eliza, great catching up with you again. I appreciate it, Eliza Collins of The Wall Street Journal, much, much more.

All right, in the meantime, it was time to fricassee some tech titans today. Only, this time, Republicans and Democrats were both going for the jugular.

We will explain -- after this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX):  You put a warning on it that says, well, the Democratic Party position right now is voter fraud doesn't exist?

JACK DORSEY, CEO, TWITTER:  I don't think it's useful to get into hypotheticals, but I don't believe so.

CRUZ:  You don't believe so?

DORSEY:  Well, we're going to test that, because I'm going to tweet that and we will see what you put on it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC):  If you're not a newspaper at Twitter or Facebook, then why do you have editorial control over The New York Post?

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT):  Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Dorsey, you have built terrifying tools of persuasion and manipulation.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, FACEBOOK:  We will make some mistakes.

SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT):  Those mistakes sure happen a whole lot more on one side of the political spectrum than the other.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN):  So, are saying a human being reviews every ad?

It's just really yes or no or I don't know.

That's...

ZUCKERBERG:  I -- Senator, I don't know.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO):  It is time we took action against these modern- day robber barons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAVUTO:  All right, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. We had certainly Jack Dorsey of Twitter. They're both getting grilled on both sides, Democrats saying they're not doing enough to stamp out hate speech and the like, Republicans saying they're doing way too much to stamp out conservative thought, and they want to put an end to it.

The read on all of this with Seth Berenzweig, the business and technology law attorney, much, much more.

But, Seth, man, this was a sort of fair and balanced beating for these guys. How did they hold up?

SETH BERENZWEIG, ATTORNEY:  They're pinatas that keep getting dragged up again on video feed in Capitol Hill. And they keep taking right and left hooks by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Look, this is the latest chapter in an ongoing war between D.C. and big tech. And, really, although the Democrats and the Republicans temporarily diverge in terms of what their basic substantive complaints are, they really are in rare unison together in terms of the bottom line that Chairman Lindsey Graham was talking about.

It's the so-called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And just throwing it out of the legal weeds and boiling it down, it's basically a law that's over 25 years old. Mark Zuckerberg was 12 years old when it was created -- obviously, social media and the world has changed since then -- that provides this unique lane of liability protection, with the presumption that they are not publishers, but rather just public billboards.

That's coming into hot focus right now. And that was on full display in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

CAVUTO:  Obviously, they don't like having the role or being in the role of policing content because of the controversy that it ensues, but they're the ones policing it.

And conservatives are saying, you more often than not take down conservative thought here. And it does pan out mathematically that that is the case. Democrats, meanwhile, saying, no, no, you're not doing enough to really aggressively go after this stuff and just kick people off for using it.

I'm just wondering where all of this goes, Seth. Under a President Biden, in that event, would there be more of a push to even go so far as breaking these guys up?

BERENZWEIG:  Well, it's a great question.

And Senator Sasse actually was talking about the irony of timing today, because he said, we're talking gleefully about coming after these guys with new regulation. But there's going to be a new sheriff in town in January, apparently. And I do agree with you that I think the Democrats, including the DOJ, under a Biden administration, is going to walk more down the Democratic traditional route of antitrust, as opposed to complaints something on the right of political censorship.

But, at the end of the day, I think that you're still going to end up with a big push to try to change this odd law, Section 230, that provides this immunity. I think that both Republicans and Democrats alike are very correct that it's time to really change this.

And the thing that's amazing is that Dorsey and Zuckerberg continue to look like just last deers in the headlights taking all of these beatings, when they don't even to this day have a voluntary program of trying to initiate a fair, level, transparent program that would at least show that they're able to regulate themselves.

They continue to be clueless. And then we will have to wait and see what happens in January.

CAVUTO:  Yes, they're begging for Washington to do something, even though they don't want them to do something, but they haven't done anything themselves.

BERENZWEIG:  That's right.

CAVUTO:  Seth, thank you very, very much. Good catching up with you on all of this.

In the meantime, Joe Biden got his security briefing today. Let's just say it wasn't a crowded affair.

I will explain -- after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO:  All right, better late than never. Joe Biden did get his national security briefing today. It's not that he had a crowd with him, but it is a start.

Jacqui Heinrich with more from Wilmington.

Hey, Jacqui.

JACQUI HEINRICH, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT:  Hey, Neil.

U.S. government officials were not part of president-elect Joe Biden's briefing on U.S. national security, because the delayed ascertainment has blocked them from engaging with the incoming administration.

Biden's team had to bring in outside experts to discuss the country's readiness to respond to threats without access to real-time information. It highlights vulnerabilities as a result of the White House refusal to coordinate.

Democrats and Republicans have said Biden should be getting access to the briefings, with lawmakers on both sides citing the 9/11 Commission report, which stated that the delayed transition between Presidents Bush -- or Clinton and Bush left officials less prepared than they could have been for the September 11 terror attacks.

And, yesterday, Biden said he's been managing without the briefings because vice president-elect Kamala Harris is still receiving intelligence briefings as a member of the Senate Intel Committee. She was on Capitol Hill today.

But Biden's team said, every day that goes by, the risks grow.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT:  I'm not being critical. I'm just stating the obvious.

You know that I have been unable to get the briefings that ordinarily would have come by now. And so I just want to get your input on what you see ahead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEINRICH:  Biden met with 13 experts in diplomacy, intelligence and defense, including two generals, three ambassadors, and one man being considered for secretary of state, Tony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state.

Now, just last hour, some officials at the Pentagon said they would be willing to meet with Biden's team off-site if the delay extends into December, because waiting until January is too late -- Neil.

CAVUTO:  Jacqui, thank you very much for that.

All right, we told you already about all these cities and states imposing new lockdowns. Now the read from businesses saying, that's it. We're down permanently.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO:  All right, eight states now joining a crowded list of those reimposing restrictions.

In New York and New Jersey, they're limited private gatherings to no more than 10 people, in Michigan, some of the strictest restrictions we have seen since the pandemic's height. And, in California, 75 percent of its counties, representing some 37 million people, are looking at the most stringent lockdown measures they have experienced again since the height of the pandemic.

And businesses aren't too happy about this. Protests were happening sporadically and nationwide in places as diverse as Providence, Rhode Island, and all the way to San Diego, California.

Charles Payne looking at all of this.

Charles, looking at it, you got to wonder, this is a death blow to some of them, huh?

CHARLES PAYNE, HOST, "MAKING MONEY":  Yes, it really is, Neil. And a lot of those -- most of those places you named already have pretty strict restrictions, compared to the other -- the rest of the country.

So, to go from 25 percent capacity to less than that, or just complete the bans or early shutdowns, these small businesses have suffered so much this year. And those that have hung on have hung on, obviously, by a thread, by a fingernail.

And these protests, you're right that people are -- people are fed up. And it's not just in those cities that you named. We're seeing in Canada. Just moments ago, Germany actually banned protesters, people from protesting the lockdowns.

Canada, you see it. Spain, you see it. In Italy, it was so bad, they blamed the mafia for stoking them. So, it really is the common person saying, listen, let us operate our lives. We will be safe. But we want to also live. We want to live. Just being alive also means sending our kids to college, paying our rent, achieving something, because this business I have worked and saved for, for the last decade, it's just -- I can't bear watching it go down the tubes.

And then, if you remember San Diego, the spike in suicides. We saw the amount of people who have mental disorders. The list goes on and on. It's pretty devastating.

CAVUTO:  Yes. And it'd be one thing if it was the dining and the small business establishments that were the source of the flare-ups, but they're not. But it is what it is.

I'm just wondering what the economic impact will be. Of course, the markets have been racing, today, a bit of a comeback notwithstanding -- or comedown

-- on the notion that we got two vaccines that look like they're ready to be unleashed, maybe more down the pike, that that will be offset, the fears of things shutting down.

What do you think of that?

PAYNE:  Well, remember back. The market hit a bottom of March 23.

That was in the throes of all of this. And we still didn't know where this was going. I remember coming home from the supermarket and wiping down fruits, like, taking out -- my wife, she wouldn't eat anything. Everything was wiped down. Everything, we wore loves.

We -- as a world, we just didn't know where this was going. And that was the bottom of the market. And, for two months, everyone kept scratching their head, saying, what does the market see that no one else sees?

We're in a similar situation right now, where the market is looking past this dark winter that Joe Biden talked about to a spring, to renewal of life in the summertime.

CAVUTO:  Right.

PAYNE:  In the meantime, it's going to be suffering on Main Street.

CAVUTO:  Yes, it's happening now, my friend, Charles Payne, star of FOX Business Network.

PAYNE:  Yes.

CAVUTO:  By the way, we're learning right now, in Georgia, no sign of rampant voter fraud in the state. The final count tomorrow night will not interrupt what we're told was a Joe Biden win.

Here comes "THE FIVE."

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