Trump campaign distances itself from attorney Sidney Powell: Transition updates

The Trump campaign's new lead attorney, Rudy Giuliani filed court papers to catch up with the unsupported claims he laid out in a U.S. District Court one day earlier, alleging an "illegal scheme to favor Joseph Biden over President Donald J. Trump." 

Giuliani returned to a claim that had been removed from the campaign's election challenge -- alleging that Trump campaign volunteers could not "meaningfully observe" the vote count, which the campaign said violated the Equal Protection clause because in-person voters were subject to greater scrutiny than mail-in voters. Just one day earlier, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued an opinion rejecting outright the claim that observers were deprived of their chance to watch the vote count.

In the newly amended complaint, the Trump campaign asks Judge Matthew Brann to stop Pennsylvania from certifying results from a range of mail-in ballots and instead "compel (the state) to certify the results of the election based solely on the legal votes." Barring that, the Trump campaign wants Judge Brann, to declare the election results "defective," and allow the Republican-led state legislature to choose the state's electors, which is contrary to Pennsylvania's Constitution.

The Trump campaign also asked the court to give them "access to the outside and inside envelopes for the approximately 1.5 million mail ballots at issue" so they can "examine these envelopes to determine the percentage of mail ballots which were illegally counted."

Giuliani submitted multiple versions of the new complaint -- the first one pock-marked by typos and entire sections he struck out an hour later. Both included vitriolic language directed at "Democratic counties" and the Pennsylvania government, mirroring his language in press conferences over the past two weeks.

-ABC News' Alex Hosenball and Olivia Rubin

While no additional counties in Georgia have found uncounted ballots, Gabriel Sterling, the statewide voting systems implementation manager in the Georgia Secretary of State's office, called the errors in Floyd County's process "a lot more dangerous" for the potential of losing votes.

That country, Sterling said Tuesday, "had 2,700 ballots that they just flat out didn't scan and but for this process, we likely may not have been able to find those, and that -- that is a huge problem."

"That is very different than the situation we saw in the other ones where they missed a card, and they just didn't do the reconciliation process," he added. "There wasn't a reconciliation process that was going to catch this thing in Floyd County, which made it a lot more dangerous in terms of losing potential votes."

Officials found uncounted ballots in Floyd, Fayette, Walton and Douglas counties. In Fayette, Walton and Douglas counties, officials found memory cards that were not uploaded properly.

In these four counties, the county boards of election must convene to re-certify their results to account for the uncounted ballots, so those results can then be what the state certifies. Sterling said that his understanding is that all of the county boards have "lined up" to do this, and that he hasn't heard of any issues.

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan

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