Concerned that President Trump’s refusal to accept the election results is hurting the country, more than 100 chief executives plan to ask the administration on Monday to immediately acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the president-elect and begin the transition to a new administration.

Even one of Mr. Trump’s stalwart supporters, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone, the private equity firm, said in a statement that “the outcome is very certain today and the country should move on.” While he did not sign a letter to the administration prepared by the other executives, he said he was “now ready to help President-elect Biden and his team.”

Signatories to the letter will include Jon Gray, Blackstone’s president; Henry R. Kravis, the co-chief executive of KKR, another private equity giant; Julie Sweet, chief executive of Accenture; and George H. Walker, the chief executive of the money manager Neuberger Berman and a second cousin to President George W. Bush.

As a way of gaining leverage over the G.O.P., some of the executives have also discussed withholding campaign donations from the two Republican Senate candidates in Georgia unless party leaders agree to push for a presidential transition, according to four people who participated in a conference call Friday in which the notion was discussed. The two runoff elections in Georgia, which will take place in early January, will determine the balance of power in the United States Senate.

Source: New York Times

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