Trump campaign distances itself from attorney Sidney Powell: Transition updates

Gabriel Sterling, the statewide voting systems implementation manager in the Georgia Secretary of State's office, said Tuesday afternoon that the counties have passed the 5 million vote count threshold for the physical hand tallying and only 21 counties are still working on the data entry part of the audit. 

Of those 21 counties, six have single-digit deviations from their original results, so Sterling said it was possible that the counties just haven't hit the "finalize results" button in the audit system, but are basically done. 

Since the morning press conference, no other counties have discovered a batch of uncounted ballots, but Sterling said that it "doesn't mean it can't happen between now and midnight tonight."

But absent that happening, according to Sterling, Biden still leads by 12,781 votes. 

At the end of this press conference, Sterling said that he hopes that when this is through everyone -- regardless of party affiliation -- will "have faith in the outcome." 

"I'm prayerful that we can get through this, and that we can find a way to have everybody at the end of the day -- Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, independent, socialist, whatever -- have faith in the outcome of the election regardless of how it came out," he said.

Sterling said that the goal is to release the results of the audit by noon Thursday. The state plans to upload all the audit results on a website.

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan

Federal career staff, including at the Health and Human Services Department, have been prohibited from talking with Biden's transition team and are required to report any outreach, officials confirmed Wednesday. 

According to the General Services Administration, that policy is in line with past transitions in which an incoming administration doesn't get access to the federal agencies and detailed briefings by staff until the GSA certifies a winner. 

But according to one person familiar with the matter, the prohibition was also part of a deal struck this fall between White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and top Biden aide, Ted Kaufman, which has not been released publicly.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the Trump administration specifically insisted that the Oct. 1 memorandum of understanding include a provision barring any contact between Biden's team and the nation's federal workforce until the GSA "ascertains" a winner.

That certification has been on hold as Trump refuses to concede and his politically appointed chief has agreed not to green light the transition. 

-ABC News' Anne Flaherty

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs called out Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, a close ally of Trump's, in a statement Wednesday afternoon for what she called his "deafening silence" on enforcing the integrity of the election. 

"Now, I am calling on other leaders in this state, including the governor whose deafening silence has contributed to the growing unrest, to stand up for the truth," Hobbs wrote in the statement, which centered around the threats of violence she and her employees received since the election. 

Ducey responded to Hobbs' statement in a press conference Wednesday afternoon by denouncing threats of violence against Hobbs as "completely unacceptable" -- but also making clear he wouldn't accept the results until legal challenges are resolved. 

"I think I've gone out of my way before the election to talk about my confidence in Arizona's election system," Ducey said. "I've also said that we are going to count all the votes in Arizona. We are going to allow whatever legal challenges that come to be swiftly adjudicated inside the state of Arizona, and then I will respect the election results." 

-ABC News' Meg Cunningham

Biden called Pelosi to congratulate her on her election as Democratic nominee for speaker of the House, the Biden transition team said in a statement.

During the call, Biden expressed that “he looks forward to working with her and Democratic leadership in the House on a shared agenda to get COVID-19 under control and build our economy back better,” the statement read. 

House Democrats officially reelected Pelosi as their nominee for Speaker of the House in an internal vote among the caucus Tuesday. The full House will vote for speaker on Jan 3.

-ABC News' Mariam Khan