WASHINGTON — Mon­day seemed like the end of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s relent­less chal­lenges to the elec­tion, after the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment acknowl­edged Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden was the “appar­ent win­ner” and Trump cleared the way for coop­er­a­tion on a tran­si­tion of power.

But his base­less claims have a way of com­ing back. And back. And back.

By Wednes­day, Trump was phon­ing into a local Penn­syl­va­nia Repub­li­can law­mak­ers’ meet­ing that had been orches­trat­ed by his cam­paign to assert false­ly, again, that the elec­tion was tainted.

“This elec­tion was rigged and we can’t let that hap­pen,” Trump said by phone, offer­ing no spe­cif­ic evidence.

The 2020 pres­i­den­tial race is turn­ing into the zom­bie elec­tion that Trump just won’t let die. Despite dozens of legal and pro­ce­dur­al set­backs, his cam­paign keeps fil­ing new chal­lenges that have no hope of suc­ceed­ing and mak­ing fresh, unfound­ed claims of fraud.

But that’s the point. Trump’s strat­e­gy wasn’t to change the out­come, but to cre­ate a host of phan­tom claims about the 2020 pres­i­den­tial race that would infect the nation with doubt, even though the win­ner was clear and there has been no evi­dence of mass vot­er fraud.

“Zom­bies are dead peo­ple walk­ing among the liv­ing — this lit­i­ga­tion is the same thing,” said Frani­ta Tol­son, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Gould School of Law. “In terms of lit­i­ga­tion that could change the elec­tion, all these cas­es are basi­cal­ly dead men walking.”

It’s a strat­e­gy tol­er­at­ed by many Repub­li­cans, most notably Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell of Ken­tucky, who are cling­ing to Trump as they face a test of retain­ing their own pow­er in the form of two runoff elec­tions in Geor­gia in January.

“This real­ly is our ver­sion of a polite coup d’etat,” said Thomas Mann, senior res­i­dent schol­ar at the Insti­tute of Gov­ern­men­tal Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley. “It could end quick­ly if the Repub­li­can Par­ty acknowl­edged what was going on. But they cow­er in the face of Trump’s con­nec­tion with the base.”

A day after Trump said his admin­is­tra­tion should begin work­ing with Biden’s team, three more law­suits were filed by allies attempt­ing to stop the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in two more bat­tle­ground states. In Min­neso­ta, a judge did not rule on the suit and the state cer­ti­fied the results for Biden. Anoth­er was filed in Wis­con­sin, which doesn’t cer­ti­fy until Tues­day. Ari­zona Repub­li­cans filed a com­plaint over bal­lot inspec­tion; the state cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is due Monday.

And the cam­paign legal team said state law­mak­ers in Ari­zona and Michi­gan would hold meet­ings on the elec­tion “to pro­vide con­fi­dence that all of the legal votes have been count­ed and the ille­gal votes have not been count­ed in the Novem­ber 3rd election.”

In Penn­syl­va­nia, where state Repub­li­can law­mak­ers met at Get­tys­burg on Wednes­day to air griev­ances about the elec­tion, Trump lawyer Rudy Giu­liani attend­ed in per­son and Trump dialed in from the Oval Office.

“We have all the evi­dence,” Trump assert­ed. “All we need is to have some judge lis­ten to it prop­er­ly with­out hav­ing a polit­i­cal opinion.”

But the strongest legal rebuke yet came from a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can judge in fed­er­al court in Penn­syl­va­nia, who on Sat­ur­day dis­missed the Trump team’s law­suit seek­ing to throw out the results of the elec­tion. The judge admon­ished the Trump cam­paign in a scathing rul­ing about its lack of evi­dence. The cam­paign has appealed.

Trump’s allies have pri­vate­ly acknowl­edged their plan would nev­er actu­al­ly over­turn the results, but rather might pro­vide Trump an off-ramp for a loss he wasn’t own­ing up to and an avenue to keep his base loy­al for what­ev­er he does next.

“And then our gov­ern­ing and pol­i­tics will be hell­ish, because he will con­tin­ue doing what he’s doing from his pri­vate own perch,” Mann predicted.

Emi­ly Mur­phy, the top offi­cial at the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion, declared Biden the “appar­ent win­ner” Mon­day, a pro­ce­dur­al yet crit­i­cal step that allowed for the tran­si­tion to begin in earnest. She made the deter­mi­na­tion after Trump’s efforts to sub­vert the vote failed across bat­tle­ground states. She cit­ed “recent devel­op­ments involv­ing legal chal­lenges and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions of elec­tion results.”

Michi­gan cer­ti­fied Biden’s 154,000-count vic­to­ry Mon­day, despite calls by Trump to the GOP mem­bers to block the vote to allow for an audit of bal­lots in Wayne Coun­ty, where Trump claimed he was the vic­tim of fraud. Biden crushed the pres­i­dent by more than 330,000 votes there.

“The board’s duty today is very clear,” said Aaron Van Langevelde, the Repub­li­can vice chair. “We have a duty to cer­ti­fy this elec­tion based on these returns.”

Still, the Trump legal team dis­missed the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as “sim­ply a pro­ce­dur­al step” and insist­ed it would fight on.

Trump and his allies have brought at least four cas­es in Michi­gan that sought — unsuc­cess­ful­ly — to block cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of elec­tion results in part or all of the state.

In Penn­syl­va­nia, after Gov. Tom Wolf cer­ti­fied Biden as the win­ner, an appeals court judge ordered state offi­cials to halt any fur­ther steps toward cer­ti­fy­ing elec­tion results. The state has appealed to Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court.

In Ari­zona, just as lawyers for a woman in the Phoenix area dropped a case alleg­ing that equip­ment was unable to record her bal­lot because she com­plet­ed it with a coun­ty-issued Sharpie pen, Trump’s cam­paign filed its own law­suit echo­ing some of the same com­plaints. As that suit was about to be dis­missed, lawyers for the woman filed a new case reviv­ing the claims and demand­ing that she be allowed to recast her bal­lot. All three of the cas­es have now been dismissed.

“The legal process seems to be unfold­ing the way it’s sup­posed to, but the Trump cam­paign has made clear its desire to throw wrench­es in the sys­tem wher­ev­er it can,” said Lisa Mar­shall Man­heim, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton School of Law.

Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Maryclaire Dale in Philadel­phia, Scott Bauer in Madi­son, Wis­con­sin; Jacques Bil­leaud in Phoenix and Steve Karnows­ki in St. Paul, Min­neso­ta, con­tributed to this report.