Biden declared it time to "turn the page, to unite, to heal."
"In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed," Biden said. "We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And so, now it is time to turn the page. To unite. To heal."
But he also unleashed on Trump and Republicans who have attempted to thwart the democratic process in a way he had not before.
Lawsuits from Trump and his allies were rejected resoundingly in state and federal courts. "And yet, none of this could stop baseless claims about the legitimacy of the results," Biden said.
His harshest words were directed at Trump and his Republican allies -- including 17 state attorneys general and 126 members of Congress who backed a baseless Texas lawsuit seeking to undo other states' election results.
"This legal maneuver was an effort by elected officials and one group of states to try to get the Supreme Court to wipe out the votes of more than 20 million Americans in other states and to hand the presidency to a candidate who lost the Electoral College, lost the popular vote and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse. It's a position so extreme, we've never seen it before," he said.