Trump's campaign, meanwhile, was quiet - a dramatic difference from the day before, when it held a morning conference call projecting confidence and held a flurry of hastily arranged press conferences announcing litigation in key states.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from IL, tweeted that the president's claims of fraud were "getting insane".

Several major US TV networks cut away from their live feeds to the 74-year-old president's rant, anxious about the accuracy of his claims, as he blasted "big media, big money and big tech" for trying to steal the result for Mr Biden. STOP Spreading debunked misinformation. "They're trying to rig an election".

"We can't allow the ballot counters to be intimidated", said retired social worker Bob Posuney, a 70-year-old Biden supporter wearing a "count every vote" T-shirt as Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" filled the air. "And America will accept that".

Amongst some of his other dubious claims were that Republican observers were denied access to counting in Detroit in the state of MI and that the election apparatus in the state of Georgia "is run by Democrats", when, in fact, it's overseen by the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican.

Aside from Georgia and Pennsylvania, votes were still being counted in Nevada, where he widened his lead overnight, and Arizona.

"No election or person is more important than our Democracy", Hogan said on Twitter.

As it stands, Biden has 264 electoral college votes and Trump has 214 - leaving Biden six electoral college votes away from the 270 needed to win.

"Really, can't we be responsible adults here and reach an agreement?" an exasperated U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond said during an emergency hearing Thursday evening. "So, I ask everyone to stay calm - all people to stay calm".

"Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake". It's a corrupt system and it makes people corrupt even if they aren't, by nature.

As the tortuous USA presidential election appeared headed to a conclusion, Donald Trump addressed the nation Thursday and claimed without evidence that he was being robbed of a second term.

Late on Thursday, Philadelphia police said they were investigating an alleged plot to attack the city's Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes were being counted. Both types of voting are legal.

President Donald Trump is often criticized for psychological projection, where his guilty conscience accuses his opponents of committing his own schemes.

Trump leads in North Carolina by more than 75,000 votes, with an estimated 95% reported.

"A note from a Bucks County official yesterday was that they've been tracking the mail-in ballots that are coming in". That includes 29,000 ballots that can't be counted until Friday at 5 p.m. ET because of a court order. He left without taking questions. Clark County said Thursday it did not expect to complete counting the bulk of its mail votes until this weekend.

Trump once held close to a 400,000 vote lead in Georgia when election officials began transitioning from counting Election Day ballots to mail-in votes.

Mr Trump's diatribe was criticised by TV commentators.

Representative Will Hurd, a Texas Republican who did not seek re-election, called Trump's comments about corruption "dangerous" and "wrong". "We're up by 2.5 percent, or 117,000 (votes) with only 7% (of the vote) left" to count, Trump said during an early morning appearance at the White House.

Joe Biden maintained his Electoral College lead over President Donald Trump, overtaking the president in Georgia and Pennsylvania. In response to the idea that Trump might not concede, Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement on Friday, "The United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House".

Providing no evidence and taking no questions afterward from reporters, Trump spent almost 17 minutes making the kind of incendiary statements about the country's democratic process that have never been heard before from a U.S. president. Trump's son Eric tweeted.