BREAKING: Michigan Judge REJECTS Republican lawsuit to prevent certification of Wayne County election results.

Court rules:"Plaintiffs interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible."

Trump and his allies are now 1-14 in court.

President Donald Trump, who has largely vanished from public view since his election defeat, was to emerge Friday for a White House meeting on the Covid-19 vaccine drive.

For 10 days the Republican has been consumed by his pursuit of a conspiracy theory that Democrat Joe Biden won through massive ballot rigging.

Despite his own intelligence officials' declaration Thursday that the November 3 election was "the most secure in American history," Trump and his right-wing media allies show no sign of giving up their crusade.

...

Friday's midday (1700 GMT) work session was marked as an "update" on Operation Warp Speed, the government partnership with pharmaceutical companies to create and distribute a vaccine.

Another day, another promising COVID-19 vaccine? A Russian institute announced today its vaccine candidate has had remarkable success in an efficacy trial, just 2 days after the widely celebrated news from Pfizer and BioNTech that their vaccine had greater than 90% efficacy. The Russian report, however, is being met with raised eyebrows—and some outright guffaws.

In a press release, the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow said an interim analysis of a large-scale trial underway in Russia had found 92% efficacy for its “Sputnik V” vaccine. The release quoted the Russian minister of health saying the results demonstrate that Sputnik V “is an efficient solution to stop the spread of coronavirus infection.” Yet it also noted the review covered just 20 total COVID-19 cases in the vaccinated and placebo groups—far too few for the claim be convincing, experts inside and outside of Russia say.

In contrast, they note, Pfizer and BioNTech analyzed 94 cases to make their efficacy claim, and other vaccinemakers plan to wait for at least 50 or more COVID-19 cases to accumulate in a trial to assess a candidate’s worth. “It’s very difficult to explain [the Gamaleya] announcement,” says Svetlana Zavidova, a Moscow-based lawyer who heads Russia’s Association of Clinical Trials Organizations and closely follows COVID-19 vaccine R&D in the country. “I’m afraid they looked at the results of Pfizer and added 2%.”

The claims don’t pass “the smell test,” adds Wayne Koff, who heads the nonprofit Human Vaccines Project, which is attempting to improve the design of future vaccines. (The Gamaleya media contact on the press release did not reply to Science’s request for an interview.)

Trump campaign attorney says that their theory of the case isn't fraud: "This is not a fraud case."

"It is not a stealing the election case."

He says he's alleging flaws in the system.

Judge Kiley presses the Trump campaign:

Their solicitation of witnesses produced sworn affidavits that his own investigation determined were "clearly false," "spam as you put it."

The ones they could not prove were false, they submitted to the court.

Trump camp: "Correct."

Adam Klasfeld
@KlasfeldReports

Judge Kiley: "This is concerning."

"How is that a reliable process of gathering evidence?"

Adam Klasfeld
@KlasfeldReports

Kory Langhofer

That's the name of the Trump campaign attorney insisting that those form-produced sworn affidavits are somehow reliable even though a subset of them were false.

Because the form had a CAPTCHA.