US Election: officials are stealing the election, says Donald Trump

Donald Trump has launched an attack on the election process, saying he was being cheated out of office by corrupt officials.

Donald Trump arrives to delivers his statement at the White House briefing room on Friday. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on the election process, saying he was being cheated out of office by corrupt officials determined to install Joe Biden as president.

In one of the most remarkable press conferences of his colourful presidency, a furious Mr Trump on Thursday (Friday Australian time) said widespread corruption in the counting of votes was stealing the election from him.

The President accused a “corrupt Democratic machine” of systematically rigging vote counting to ensure a Biden victory.

“If you count the legal votes I easily win. If you count the illegal votes they can try to steal the election from us,” Mr Trump said.

“They are trying to steal an election, they are trying to rig an election and we can’t let that happen. We will not allow the corruption to steal such an important election — we can’t allow anyone to silence our voters.”

Mr Trump cited a litany of allegations about Republican election observers being kept away from the count and mysterious ballot boxes appearing in the dead of night full of Biden votes. He claimed mail-in votes were being counted without postmarks or names attached to them.

His comments came as he faced a likely election loss as mail-in votes in four undecided states heavily favour Mr Biden, eroding the lead the President held on election night.

He said those workers counting votes in Democrat cities like Philadelphia and Detroit were “engineering the outcome of a presidential race”.

He said mail-in voting was a corrupt practice that was initiated by Democrats so that they could manipulate the outcome.

“Mail-in voting has really destroyed our system, it is a corrupt system ... they wait to find out how many votes they need and they find them,” he said.

“Democrat officials never believed they would win this election honestly that’s why they did mail-in ballots.

“We are hearing stories that are horror stories, and we can’t let that happen to the United States.”

Mr Trump complained of how his election night leads in Georgia and Pennsylvania all but vanished as mail-in votes came in.

The President said he would try to save the integrity of the election through the courts.

“There is a lot of litigation, there is a tremendous amount of litigation because of how unfair this process was,’ he said.

“It’s going to end up perhaps in the highest court in the land ... because we can’t have an election stolen like this.”

Mr Trump said that when the courts examined the problems, he would end up winning the election fairly. “We think we will win the election very easily,’ he said.

Earlier Mr Trump’s Democrat opponent Joe Biden called on Americans to keep calm and be patient while the vote count continues, saying “the process if working”.

Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, the former vice-president said he still felt good about where things stand and he was confident that he would win the election.

“In America the vote is sacred – it is how people in this nation express their will,’’ he said.

“Each ballot must be counted and that’s what we are going to see, and that’s how it should be. Democracy is sometimes messy and it sometimes requires a little patience as well.

“We continue to feel very good about where things stand — we have no doubt that when the count is finished Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners.’

‘So I ask everyone to stay calm, the process is working, the count is being completed and we will know very soon,’ he said.

Several major US television networks cut away from live coverage of Mr Trump’s event and there were signs of cracks in Republican support.

Republican representative Will Hurd called Trump’s call to stop vote-counting “dangerous and wrong,” saying it “undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon”.

And the conservative New York Post calling Mr Trump’s fraud allegations “baseless”.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia