Trump campaign distances itself from attorney Sidney Powell: Transition updates

At one point during an at-times emotional and technologically challenged virtual roundtable with workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis on Wednesday afternoon, Biden lamented that the General Services Administration has still not ascertained him as the winner of the election.

He warned that the delay is going to put his administration weeks behind in terms of a vaccine distribution program and other steps he plans to take to combat the spread of the virus.

“I am optimistic, but we should be further along,” Biden told a group, citing a law which says the GSA may recognize the apparent winner. "And we've been unable to get access to the kinds of things we need to know about the depth of the stockpiles. We know there's not much at all. We get to the point where we have a sense of when these vaccines comes out, how they'll be distributed, who will be first in line, what the plan is."

Biden said unless data and information from the federal government are made available to his team soon, they’re going to be “behind by weeks or months,” on the critically important vaccine program.

“So, I just want to tell you that that's the only slow down right now that we have," Biden said.

-ABC News' John Verhovek, Molly Nagle and Beatrice Peterson

While the Trump administration blocks Biden’s transition and subsequent access to federal pandemic plans, Biden is taking matters into his own hands, speaking directly with front-line health care workers in a virtual roundtable as cases surge across the country. 

Joined by a handful of front-line health care workers from different states including a firefighter paramedic from Indiana, a home care worker from Washington and a nurse from Minnesota, Biden opened the roundtable by thanking them for their participation and promising to protect them.

“It's not enough to praise you, we have to protect you. We have to pay you. And you deserve leadership that listens to you and that works as hard for you as you do for the families in your communities,” Biden said from the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware. 

The participants took turns sharing their stories with Biden telling them he’d have more questions for them after everyone spoke. Mary Turner, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association, got choked up when talking about how she’s been on the picket line for months urging the federal government to do more in its response. 

“Unfortunately, the federal government has not been there. As a result, the pandemic is surging and front-line workers are getting sick and die,” she said through tears. “Nurses across the country were so relieved and grateful, Mr. President-elect, when you committed to take your passion that we need to have to get this pandemic under control.”

In the morning news conference from Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, Gabriel Sterling said while he couldn’t give an exact number of counties that were completely finished with the audit, results in 112 counties were either exactly the same as the county originally reported or the count was within single digits of what was originally reported.

Of these counties, 58 had zero deviations and 20 had deviations of just one vote in either direction.

As of about 11 a.m. Wednesday, 4,968,000 ballots had been hand-counted as part of the audit of the approximately 5 million ballots cast in the presidential race, according to Sterling.

He said that it’s likely results of the audit won’t be made public until Thursday, but that he would have more concrete guidance during a 4 p.m. press conference.

Sterling also announced that there was one additional county -- Douglas -- where an uncounted memory card of votes was discovered, raising the total to four counties in Georgia that have found unreported votes during the audit. Douglas County failed to upload results stored on one memory card from an election day precinct. The county realized the error when the hand count came up with more ballots than was reported.

The card revealed 128 votes for Trump, 156 votes for Biden and seven votes for Libertarian Jo Jorgenson.

Heading into the audit, Biden led by a margin of about 14,000 votes, and, with all the previously unreported ballots added, the margin in Biden's favor was 12,781 votes, according to Sterling. 

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan

The Trump campaign has officially requested recounts in just two of Wisconsin's counties: Milwaukee and Dane, home of the state's largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, and the state's two Democratic strongholds.

These two counties both voted overwhelmingly for Biden, with Dane County at 75.5%-22.8% and Milwaukee County 69.1%-29.3%. Milwaukee also has the state's largest Black population, and the campaign's targeting of voters for not supplying voter ID is likely to come down squarely on people of color, who are already the most disenfranchised by Wisconsin's voter ID laws.

In response to the Trump campaign alleging voter fraud in the state, Milwaukee County Election Commission Director Julietta Henry told ABC News Wednesday that, "We will have the recount and we will show that all of the allegations that are here are without warrant."

Wolfe, county clerks and other officials including former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have also repeatedly said the recount is extremely unlikely to change the results of the election -- and that's now all but impossible given its focus on two counties.

The recount will now take place over the next 13 days in time for the state's Dec. 1 certification deadline.

-ABC News' Cheyenne Haslett