Secret Service sends additional agents to Delaware to ramp up protection for Joe Biden as he edges closer to a win and plans to make 'big announcement' later today

The Secret Service has increased its protective bubble around Joe Biden by sending in additional agents to Delaware as he edges closer to an election win. 

An extra squad of agents were sent to Biden's campaign headquarters at a  convention center in Wilmington overnight.

The move came after Biden's campaign told the agency he could make a big announcement from his campaign headquarters as early as Friday, law enforcement sources said.   

Dozens of Secret Service agents have been protecting the Democratic presidential candidate and his headquarters this week. 

Biden already had Secret Service protection as a candidate. He did have protection given his previous role as former vice president.  

In the past, the agency has increased security as soon as a candidate is declared the winner on election night.

The additional security was deployed as Biden inched closer to victory on Friday. 

The Secret Service has increased its protective bubble around Joe Biden by sending in additional agents to Delaware as he edges closer to an election win

It is not clear if that additional protection was granted given Biden is likely to become president-elect. 

Sources have said the additional detail is not equivalent to what the president-elect would be granted. It isn't clear how much additional protection Biden will receive if he does claim victory.  

The Secret Service and the Biden campaign would not comment.     

Despite his re-election hopes fading, Trump has already made it clear that he is not ready to accept defeat.

His campaign has been aggressively challenging the integrity of the huge number of ballots mailed in rather than cast in person on Election Day by filing multiple lawsuits in battleground states. 

Given the litigation and Trump's vow not to concede, sources told the Washington Post that it's possible Biden may not be immediately given president-elect protection if he does win. 

Agents may be told to wait until mid-December when the electoral college meets before treating Biden as the president-elect.

During the 2000 presidential race between George Bush and Al Gore, there was no official president-elect for 36 days as a recount was carried out in Florida before the Supreme Court finally made a decision.

Law enforcement guarded a stage set up by Biden's campaign outside his headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on Thursday. The move to provide Biden with extra security came after his campaign told the agency he could make a big announcement from his campaign headquarters as early as Friday

Dozens of Secret Service agents have been protecting the Democratic presidential candidate and his headquarters this week. He was flanked by agents in Wilmington on Thursday

During that period, the Secret Service decided to keep things the same and provided vice-presidential protective detail for Gore and candidate protection for Bush. 

Earlier on Thursday, Biden asked Americans to be patient and calm as they waited for the final ballots in the presidential race to be counted - amid mounting anxiety over the long wait for results and concern about public order.

'Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well,' he said.

'So I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed and we'll know very soon.' 

Meanwhile, Trump claimed he had been cheated out of reelection in an extraordinary appearance at the White House on Thursday.

'They are trying to steal the election,' Trump said. 

Providing no evidence and taking no questions from reporters, Trump spent nearly 17 minutes making incendiary statements about the country's democratic process -- of a sort never before heard from a president.

According to Trump, Democrats were using 'illegal votes' to 'steal the election from us.'

'If you count the legal votes, I easily win,' he claimed. 'They're trying to rig an election. And we can't let that happen.'

Trump repeated those claims in a tweet early on Friday.