Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump plans to assemble investigative teams at the Department of Justice to search for evidence in battleground states that fraud tainted the 2020 election, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing sources.

Trump, who won the 2024 election but lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, has falsely claimed that he lost the 2020 election due to extensive voter fraud, a view shared by millions of his supporters.

Trump was indicted last year on federal charges for his attempts to overturn the election. The charges stemmed from an investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Asked about Trump’s plans to fire prosecutors on Smith’s team, Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “President Trump campaigned on firing rogue bureaucrats who have engaged in the illegal weaponisation of our American justice system, and the American people can expect he will deliver on that promise.

In a separate legal case, a judge confirmed on Friday that Trump won’t be sentenced this month in his hush money case, instead setting a schedule for prosecutors and his lawyers to expand on their ideas about what to do next.

Trump’s lawyers want the case to be dismissed outright, and immediately.

As the start of Trump’s second term nears, he is expected to pick prominent investor Scott Bessent for US Treasury secretary, sources told Reuters on Friday, putting him at the helm of a cabinet position with vast influence over economic, regulatory and international affairs.

While Bessent has long favoured laissez-faire policies popular in the pre-Trump Republican Party, he has also spoken highly of Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool. He has praised the president-elect’s economic philosophy, which rests on a scepticism of both regulation and international trade.