Trump accused of ‘gross abuse of office’ by OSCE election observer over call to halt count

The head of an international observer mission to the US elections has accused US President Donald Trump of “gross abuse of office,” after he called for an end to vote counting in key swing states.

“The most disturbing thing was that with presidential fanfare of the White House, that is, with all the insignia of power, the American commander-in-chief called for an end to the count because of his purported victory,” Michael Link, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), told Germany's Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper on Thursday.

“That was a gross abuse of office,” he added, calling Trump’s claims of foul play by Democrats “baseless.”

With votes still being processed, the Trump campaign has sued to stop the count in Michigan and Pennsylvania, until ballots could be screened for fraud. Another Trump lawsuit in Georgia asks the state to scrutinize absentee ballots more carefully, and the campaign has also taken legal action to request a recount in Wisconsin.

When Biden caught up with Trump and passed the president in Wisconsin, Democrats attributed the development to mail-in ballots, while Trump blamed “surprise ballot dumps” for “magically” eroding his lead.

As votes were still being counted in a number of states, Trump claimed victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and accused the Democratic Party of using “fraud” to take the presidency.

In a preliminary report published on Wednesday, the OSCE called Trump’s accusations of fraud “baseless” and praised the “enormous effort made by election workers,” despite what it called “deliberate attempts by the incumbent president to weaken confidence in the election process.”

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