170 business leaders call on Trump to accept election result

Graeme Massie
<p>170 business leaders call on Trump to accept election result</p> (Getty Images)

170 business leaders call on Trump to accept election result

(Getty Images)

More than 170 prominent US business leaders have urged Donald Trump to finally accept the result of the presidential election.

The outgoing president has refused to concede the election to Joe Biden and Congress is set to certify the electoral college results on Wednesday.

But supporters of Mr Trump in the House and Senate have said they will refuse to certify Mr Biden’s win and the president is still trying to reverse his defeat.

Mr Biden’s victory has been ratified in courtrooms and states across the country and the president’s false claims of voter fraud have repeatedly been debunked.

Now the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group, published a letter urging Congress to quickly certify Mr Biden’s victory.

Signatories to the public letter include Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO David Solomon, Microsoft president Brad Smith, BlackRock’s Laurence Fink, and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

"This presidential election has been decided and it is time for the country to move forward," said the letter.

"President-elect Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris have won the electoral college and the courts have rejected challenges to the electoral process.”

And they added that "attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy.”

The letter came after Mr Trump was caught on tape pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to help him “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to overturn Mr Biden’s win there.

A dozen senators, including Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, have said they will refuse to certify the results, and up to 140 House representatives may do the same.

But Republicans almost certainly do not have the votes in either chamber to prevent Mr Biden’s win being formally accepted and vice president Mike Pence’s role is largely ceremonial.

Mt Biden won the election with 306 electoral college votes, comfortably more than the 270 needed to take the White House.

He also won 81 million votes to Mr Trump’s 74 million and flipped five battleground states, including Georgia, to punctuate his win.

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