As Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden inched closer to the magic figure of 270 electoral college votes, incumbent Republican President Donald Trump, in a barrage of tweets, claimed victory in states that have gone to Democrats and moved ahead with his plan to mount an unprecedented legal battle.

Trump declared victory in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia. “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers), the State of Georgia and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact … there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!” the President said in a series of tweets.

“Our lawyers have asked for ‘meaningful access’, but what good does that do? The damage has already been done to the integrity of our system, and to the Presidential Election itself. This is what should be discussed!” he said in another tweet.

At the last count, Biden had 253 electoral college votes to Trumps’ 214 of total 538 votes. This leaves Biden short of 17 votes, with five states yet to declare results, and Trump’s path to victory getting narrower.

Trump needs to win three other battleground states — Georgia, North Carolina, where he has a narrow lead, and Nevada, where Biden has a very slim lead. While many media outlets have projected Biden as the winner in Arizona, the Trump campaign is hoping that they will win it.

The Trump campaign, as announced, filed lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania and has demanded a recounting of votes in Wisconsin.

“We are going to win Pennsylvania, but they are trying to cheat us out of it because they know it is their only path to victory,” Eric Trump, the younger son of the president, told reporters at a news conference in Philadelphia.

Twitter marked as ‘disputed’ Trump’s tweet in which he said, “surprise ballot dumps” were aiding rival Joe Biden, as having content that was “disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process”.

On Wednesday, Twitter hid a Trump tweet that claimed “we are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election” behind a label that said it was potentially misleading. Facebook added a label to the same post that said “final results may be different from initial vote counts as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks”.