Trump-Biden transition updates: Trump continues to tout he won election at Ga. rally

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that his office has launched an investigation into Florida attorney Bill Price after he attempted to register to vote "fraudulently" in the state of Georgia ahead of Senate runoffs.

"Those who move to Georgia just to vote in the Senate runoffs with no intention of staying are committing a felony that is punishable with jailtime and hefty fines. They will be found, they will be investigated, and they will be punished," Raffensperger said in a statement Thursday.

ABC's Atlanta affiliate WSB reported Wednesday night on the Florida attorney giving a speech earlier this month before members of the Bay County Republican Party. He said he would be moving to his brother's address in Hiram, Georgia, register to vote and then encouraged other Republicans to try to game the system as well, including by registering at his brother's address too.

The speech was recorded in a now-deleted Facebook Live video, but WSB reporter Nicole Carr recorded the stream shortly before it was deleted. According to WSB, the speech was given about a half an hour after the election was called by the networks for Biden on Nov. 7.

Raffensperger had previously launched investigations into several voting rights groups -- the most prominent being the New Georgia Project -- asserting they've been trying to register ineligible voters to vote in Georgia for the runoff. 

He, and other state Republican officials, have repeatedly warned that it's a felony to register to vote in Georgia if the voter is not intending to establish residency, threatening investigations and prosecutions for anyone who attempts to break the law to register to vote in the runoff. 

Monday is the deadline to register to vote in Georgia for the Jan. 5. runoff -- races which will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.

-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan

White House communications director Alyssa Farah resigned from her role Thursday.

Her last day is Friday, ABC News has confirmed. 

Farah had previously served as press secretary for both the vice president and the secretary of defense before her current position. The Washington Post was the first to report the news.

The White House released a statement Thursday evening from Farah who said she is leaving "to pursue new opportunities." The statement makes no mention of the presidential election.

-ABC News' John Santucci and Benjamin Siegel

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday against hearing the Trump campaign’s recount appeal on procedural grounds, ruling that the campaign needed to first try to resolve its dispute with election officials in circuit court.

The court voted 4-3 against the campaign’s request, with a more moderate justice siding with three more liberal members of the court and three conservative justices dissenting. The majority agreed with the argument presented by the Democrats that Wisconsin law clearly requires any recount appeal go through the lower court first.

The Trump campaign sought and received a recount in two Wisconsin counties after losing the Nov. 3 election to Biden by over 20,000 votes. After paying $3 million for the recounting process, Biden's lead wound up growing by 87 votes.

In one of the dissenting opinions, Justice Rebecca Bradley said by declining to intervene, the court was “undermining the public's confidence in the integrity of Wisconsin's electoral processes not only during this election, but in every future election.”

Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, called the ruling a "good decision," adding that he was "amazed that it was not unanimous."

-ABC News' Cheyenne Haslett and Soo Rin Kim

Trump and his legal team, as part of a continued effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, are ramping up their apparent pressure campaign on Republican-controlled legislatures in key states to try to appoint pro-Trump electors to overturn election results.

At the end of a more than four-hour bipartisan hearing on the election in Michigan on Wednesday, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani directly pleaded with state lawmakers to intervene and appoint Trump electors based on mostly debunked claims of fraud offered without evidence.

“I would never certify an election or have my name associated with anything that was false. Now it is your responsibility to do that. Not the governor, not the secretary of state. You were given that responsibility by our Founding Fathers,” he said, pushing the lawmakers to subvert the popular vote. “You can take that power back any time you want to -- anytime -- you can take it back tonight.”

Giuliani is at the Georgia State Capitol Thursday where the Republican-dominated Senate is holding two hearings on the election, the latest in a string of hearings requested by the Trump team and its allies before state lawmakers -- but not in courtrooms, where witnesses might face penalties for lying under oath.

Trump’s latest lawsuit, too, takes a similar approach -- breaking from those used in nearly three-dozen previous cases filed by Trump's campaign and his supporters, most of which have been rebuffed by judges because they failed to sufficiently document claims of fraud and never actually allege that fraud occurred in the state.

A federal lawsuit filed late Wednesday in Wisconsin says only that the risk of fraud was elevated by measures state officials took due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, such as expanding the use of drop boxes and mail-in ballots. The proposed remedy: throwing the outcome of the state's contest to the Republican-controlled state legislature.

Prior to this case, officials in the state told ABC News that they saw no way the legislature could overturn or invalidate the results of the election without a court ruling.

Only two weeks ago, Trump invited Michigan lawmakers to the White House ahead of the state’s certification deadline.

In Michigan, the legislature is not involved at all in the electoral process, and state law does not allow it to intervene at any point to circumvent the process and appoint their own slate of electors, regardless of the popular vote, but it could seek to intervene under Article II of the Constitution. This unprecedented move is also one that top state lawmakers have not embraced. Instead, they've said they will follow the law and the "normal process."

Anthony Michael Kreis, professor of constitutional law at Georgia State University, said Georgia lawmakers could "theoretically" try to appoint electors through legislation but that it would require calling a special session -- an idea which GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and top lawmakers in the state have previously shot down.

"I think the real goal is to try to delay certification so that the electoral votes don’t count at all, but I don’t think there’s any legal theory to support that. It is all smoke and mirrors," Kreis told ABC News.

-ABC News' Matthew Mosk, Olivia Rubin, Kendall Karson, Quinn Scanlan and Cheyenne Haslett