US President Donald Trump has warned his Democratic challenger Joe Biden against "wrongfully" claiming the presidency.
"Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President. I could make that claim also. Legal proceedings are just now beginning!" Trump said in a tweet Friday.
As the counting of votes in key battleground states continued, Trump did not make a public appearance but remained active on Twitter.
As per the latest projections, Biden has 264 electoral college votes and Trump trails behind with 213. Biden, 77, was leading in four of the five key battleground states where counting of ballots was still going on. Trump was trailing behind Biden in Arizona (by 38,455 votes), Georgia (4,224), Nevada (22,657) and Pennsylvania (19,500) but leading in North Carolina with 76,587 votes.
To be declared the winner of the US election, either of the two candidates needs at least 270 of the 538 electoral college votes.
Trump has challenged the authenticity of the elections, alleging massive voters fraud and electoral malpractice. In another tweet, he said his leads in all of these states were significant on election night but suddenly started vanishing. He asserted that the lead would come back once the legal proceedings move forward.
"I had such a big lead in all of these states late into election night, only to see the leads miraculously disappear as the days went by. Perhaps these leads will return as our legal proceedings move forward!" Trump said.
Earlier in the day, he said that "with the attack by the Radical Left Dems on the Republican Senate, the Presidency becomes even more important!".
Biden, who was expected to make an address to the nation in primetime, did not tweet or make a public statement on Friday. There were no public remarks either from his running mate Senator Kamala Harris.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday called Biden president-elect.
"President-Elect Biden has a strong mandate to lead, and he'll have a strong Democratic House with him and many Democrats in the Senate. This has been a life or death fight for the fate of our democracy, as he says, 'the soul of our country.' We did not win every battle in the House, but we did win the war,'" she said.
Pelosi said Biden is a unifier. She said, "He is determined to bring people together because he respects all points of view. And as he has said, 'I ran as a Democrat; I'll govern as President for all of the people, whether they voted for me or not.'"
"It is clear that the Biden-Harris ticket will win the White House. His election is historic, propelled by the biggest vote ever in the history of our country, 73.8 million and counting Americans, the most votes ever received by any presidential ticket in history," Pelosi said.
