Trump has reportedly given up on overturning battleground defeats and is trying to delay a final vote count in a desperate bid to throw Biden's victory into doubt

• President Donald Trump's team now accepts that it cannot disqualify enough mail-in ballots to change the outcome of the election, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
• Trump has decided to focus on delaying final vote counts for long enough that President-elect Joe Biden is unable to claim a clear victory, The Post's report said.
• Trump's campaign has failed to prove in court that there was widespread voter fraud.
• The president reportedly thinks the strategy could ease his path to a comeback victory in 2024.

President Donald Trump has reportedly abandoned hopes of disqualifying enough mail-in ballots to overturn the election result and is now attempting to delay final vote counts for long enough to throw President-elect Joe Biden's victory into doubt.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Trump team was pinning its hopes on a bid to delay vote certification in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania.

Two senior Republicans told The Post that Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer leading Trump's team, has said he wants to delay the vote certification so that Trump's campaign could pressure Republican lawmakers to pick the electors who will meet in December to officially vote for the next president.

The campaign has paid $3 million for a recount in only two Wisconsin counties, and Giuliani has asked a federal judge to allow the Pennsylvania Legislature to select the state's electors, The Post reported.

The president's efforts appear almost certain to fail, The Post reported, because elected officials in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin do not choose electors, and other states have not indicated they would agree to pursue such a plan.

White House advisors have told Trump that it is hopeless to contest the election result, CBS News reported. But the president believes that doing so will energize his base and bolster his chance of winning in 2024, a Trump advisor told The Post on Monday.

Insider and Decision Desk HQ, along with other major media outlets, projected Biden to win the election earlier in November, but Trump refused to concede, falsely claiming victory while he and his allies alleged that there was widespread voter fraud and that the election was "rigged."

Biden will not officially be the president-elect until states certify their vote counts — a process that's at different stages in different states — and the Electoral College meets in mid-December to confirm the next president.

The Trump campaign and Republicans filed multiple lawsuits seeking to contest the election result. But so far almost all have failed, and those pending could have little effect on the outcome. His campaign's focus on delaying vote certification appears to represent a pivot to a new strategy.