A coalition of federal and state officials said the presidential election was the “safest in American history” with no evidence that votes were hacked or altered, presenting the clearest rejection yet of Donald Trump’s false allegations of fraud.

The statement endorsed repeated assurances by experts and government officials that despite the coronavirus pandemic and record numbers of voters, the elections went smoothly without irregularities.

After nearly a week after Democrat Joe Biden Announced his victory, Trump continues to refuse to accept defeat and impede an orderly transfer of power. In a newspaper interview on Friday, he insisted without proof that the election had been stolen from him and his fictitious legal appeals would succeed.

The latest blow to his case is from the Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security, which led efforts to protect the federal election. “While we know that there are many baseless allegations and opportunities to mislead about our election process, we can assure you that we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” she said.

“When you have questions, turn to election officials as trusted votes as they run elections.”

The statement has been tweeted before Chris Krebs, The agency’s director, who just hours earlier was the subject of a media report, said he told his aides that he expected to be fired by Trump.

Krebs has been outspoken on Twitter reassuring Americans time and again that the elections were safe and that their votes would be counted. And he wrote: “America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should too.”

The officials who signed the statement said they had no evidence that any voting system had deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.

They said all states with close results had paper records, allowing each ballot to be recounted, if needed, and “identifying and correcting any errors or errors.”

It was the safest election in American history. At the moment, across the country, election officials are reviewing and verifying the entire electoral process before finalizing the result, ”the statement added.

The letter takes a fresh blow to the credibility of Trump’s unfounded allegations of fraud and widespread problems he insists may tip the election in his favor.

His campaign captured the usual issues of every election: problems of signatures, secret envelopes, and postage on mailed ballots, as well as the possibility of a mistake or the loss of a small number of ballot papers. With Biden leading Trump by wide margins in the battlefield states, none of these will have any bearing on the outcome.

The Trump campaign also launched legal challenges that complain that poll monitors were unable to scrutinize the voting process. Judges dismissed many of these appeals, some within hours of their filing. Once again, none of the complaints showed any evidence that the election outcome was affected.

In another indication that Trump’s “legal strategy” is collapsing, law firm Porter Wright Morris and Arthur said: Withdrawn from a case in Pennsylvania that challenged nearly 2.65 million votes cast by mail, Majority by the Democrats. And she said in a note: “The plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that the plaintiffs will receive the best service if Porter Wright withdraws,” but he did not provide further explanation.

But even with one loss after another in court, the president remains defiant and in denial. The Washington Examiner gave a breakdown of each country on how he thought Biden’s victory could be turned around.

The Examiner reported: “At some point in the conversation, the president seemed to think about the idea of ​​a loss and then quickly dismiss it. He said,“ I’m a man realizing – five days ago, I thought, ‘Maybe,’ just paused for a moment. But now I see evidence, and we have hundreds of testimonies, “referring to the testimonies contained in his lawsuits.”

The president continued to push back the unfounded allegations on Friday. He wrote on Twitter: “For years Democrats have been preaching how unsafe and fraudulent our elections were. And now they are saying what a wonderful job the Trump administration did in making the 2020 election the safest election ever. Actually it is true, except for what. Democrats Act. Forged elections! “

The Trump administration’s unwillingness to comply with the presidential transition has raised national security concerns. Some Republicans Biden has called for covert intelligence briefings, but the majority of Republican officials still refuse to publicly accept the former vice president’s victory.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives, argued Thursday that Biden does not need intelligence briefings because Trump may remain president in the new year. “He is not president now,” he told reporters. “I don’t know if he will be on January 20, but whoever gets the information.”

The resistance is complicating Biden’s efforts to lead a smooth transition to inauguration in January, depriving him of the funding and agency resources normally granted to the incoming administration. Former President Barack Obama, who is promoting new memos, told CBS News’ upcoming “60 Minutes” that he is upset by false allegations about widespread election fraud.

Obama said, “They seem excited – in part – that the president does not like to lose and never admits to losing.” “I’m even more annoyed by the fact that other Republican officials who know better clearly go along with this, laugh at it that way. It’s another step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy in general. That’s a dangerous path.”

Some cracks appear in the Republican wall. George W. Bush, the only surviving former Republican president, admitted Biden’s victory on Sunday. On Thursday, the former chief strategist of the Bush administration, Karl Rove, wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “This election result will not be vetoed.”

“Joe Biden is the president-elect, and I think like most Americans, we doubt he will be sworn in in January,” New Hampshire Governor Chris Sunono, who supported Trump’s re-election, told reporters.

Trump has maintained a lower profile over the past week than he has been at any time during his presidency. He was seen on Veterans Day attending service at Arlington National Cemetery, but he hasn’t spoken publicly except for the Washington Examiner interview and dozens of tweets and tweets.

His critics accuse him of being “drowning” at a critical moment during the coronavirus pandemic as cases climbed to an all-time high. The United States reported 153,496 cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University – the first time that the number of coronavirus infections has exceeded 150,000 in a single day.

Meanwhile, Biden continues to receive congratulatory calls from around the world. He spoke to Pope Francis on Thursday as a Catholic his entire life. His transition team said in a statement that the president-elect thanked Francis for his “blessings and congratulations, and expressed his appreciation.”