Donald Trump’s campaign manager has lashed out at Hillary Clinton’s team calling them a ‘pack of sore losers’ after it was revealed they intend to take part in a ballot recount in Wisconsin.
The defeated Democrat’s campaign said on Saturday it would be part of a recount initiated by Greens Party candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin and they would also support similar action if a recount was initiated in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
But Trump’s aide Kellyanne Conway has accused Clinton’s campaign of not being able to accept reality, Bloomberg reports.
‘What a pack of sore losers,’ Conway said. ‘After asking Mr Trump and his team a million times on the trail, “Will HE accept the election results?” it turns out Team Hillary and their new BFF Jill Stein can’t accept reality.
‘Rather than adhere to the tradition of graciously conceding and wishing the winner well, they’ve opted to waste millions of dollars and dismiss the democratic process. The people have spoken. Time to listen up.’
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Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has hit out at Hillary Clinton’s campaign for taking part in a ballot recount in Wisconsin
Hillary Clinton’s (pictured shopping for Thanksgiving in Chappaqua, New York) campaign says they intend to take part in a recount initiated by Greens Party candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin
Trump’s newly-appointed general counsel Don McGahn has already been briefed for a legal battle in regards to the Wisconsin recount, Bloomberg reports.
In a statement, Trump called the recount a ‘scam’ and said it was just a way for Jill Stein to fill her ‘coffers with money’.
‘The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, “We must accept this result and then look to the future”,’ Trump said in the statement obtained by Bloomberg.
‘This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount. All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes.
‘This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing.’
It comes after Marc Elias, Clinton’s campaign’s general counsel, wrote in a statement they had quietly taken a number of steps in the last two weeks amid calls for an audit and recount.
He said while the campaign had not planned to initiate a recount, they intend to participate given one will go ahead in Wisconsin.
The campaign received hundreds of messages in recent days urging them to investigate claims the election results were hacked, particularly in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Wisconsin will recount its presidential election votes after receiving a petition from trounced Green Party candidate Jill Stein (above) on Friday
The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced its plan to begin recounting votes next week in a statement issued on Friday
Trump’s newly-appointed general counsel Don McGahn has already been briefed on a legal battle for the Wisconsin recount, according to Bloomberg
Trump’s aide Kellyanne Conway (left) accused Clinton’s campaign of being a ‘pack of sore losers’ who could not accept reality
‘Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,’ Elias wrote.
‘If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well.
‘We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states – Michigan – well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount.’
Wisconsin announced its plan to start recounting ballots after Stein filed for a recount on Friday.
She has raised more than $5million for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania amid claims the election result has been tampered with.
She claims claiming voting machines used in some states were susceptible to cyber attack and therefore cannot be trusted.
Elias wrote that the campaign had consulted with experts to investigate any irregularities or to see if there is anything to suggest a hack.
‘The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities,’ Elias wrote.
‘While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.’
A recount in Wisconsin will do little for Stein’s own chances in the state given she only won one percent of the vote compared to Donald Trump’s 47 and Hillary Clinton’s 46
Clinton’s campaign general counsel Marc Elias, wrote in a statement the campaign had quietly taken a number of steps in the last two weeks amid calls for an audit and recount
A recount in Wisconsin will do little for Stein’s own chances in the state given she only won one percent of the vote compared to Donald Trump’s 47 and Hillary Clinton’s 46
A recount in Wisconsin will do little for Stein’s own chances in the state given she only won one percent of the vote compared to Donald Trump’s 47 and Hillary Clinton’s 46.
An Obama administration said on Friday it stood by the election results as recount proceedings began in Wisconsin.
‘We stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people,’ an official told Politico.
‘The federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day,” the official added. “We believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.’
In a statement on Friday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said it would begin recounting once it received full payment from Stein’s campaign.
‘The Wisconsin Elections Commission today received two recount petitions from the Jill Stein for President Campaign and from Rocky Roque De La Fuente.
‘The Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested by these candidates,’ Administrator Michael Haas said.
De La Fuente trailed behind Stein in Wisconsin, winning just 0.1 percent of the vote.
Clinton, however, lost by just one percent, some 27,000 votes. According to experts who have cast doubt over the election results, hackers could have cost her as many as 30,000 by tapping in to apparently vulnerable machines.
The recount will include paper ballots in addition to electronic votes, the commission said.
While a recount would do little to help Stein, analysts claim it could prove Clinton was robbed of thousands of votes by hackers and theoretically put her back in play for the presidency
The computer experts used a statistical analysis to conclude Clinton did worse in states with electronic voting machines – which they argue could have left the door open to hacking
Wisconsin is the first of the three targeted battleground states to respond to her calls for a recount.
Stein filed her petition with seconds to spare before the window for demanding recounts closed on November 25.
Unlike in Wisconsin, which the Elections Commission described as the ‘most decentralized system’ in the country, Pennsylvania requires a judge’s consent.
Michigan allows the winning candidate to object to a recount before putting the matter before the Board of Elections.
Pennsylvania has until November 28 to receive petitions for recounts while Michigan’s deadline is November 30.
The Wisconsin recount must be completed by December 13 to comply with regulations.
State election boards and county clerks keep record of ballots, including electronic voting machines, after an election.
One possible explanation for why a recount could show a different result is that hackers could have planted self-destructing malware before the election which was designed to tamper with results on November 8 but would no longer be traced.
Recounts in all three states could cost as much as $7million, Stein said in her website appeal to donors.
It was however needed to ‘ensure that ‘We the People’ can have confidence in reported results,’ she said.
‘To give you a sense of the problem, the voting machines used in Wisconsin were banned in California after they were shown to be highly vulnerable to hacking and malicious programming due to lacking security features,’ she said in her fundraising appeal.
Clinton lost the Wisconsin vote to Trump by 1 percent, roughly 27,000 votes, but analysts say she may have been robbed of as many as 30,000 by hackers targeting electronic voting machines
Trump took the lead over Clinton by more than 1 percent in Pennsylvania which has 20 electoral college votes
In Michigan, Clinton fell behind by just 0.3 percent in one of the tightest races
JILL STEIN AND THE GREEN PARTY FORM FOR DEMANDING RECOUNTS
Critics have accused Stein of ‘conning’ donors out of money
This is not the first time a defeated Green Party candidate has demanded a recount in a presidential election.
In 2004, David Cobb raised $150,000 to have the result challenged in Ohio amid wild claims officials had spoiled votes for John Kerry, pushing George W. Bush into the White House.
The recount did nothing to sway the outcome. It showed Kerry had in fact received some 300 more votes than first counted, but not enough to change the result, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Questions surrounding Jill Stein’s motives for a recount have grown since her efforts were announced.
On Friday, she appeared in a Facebook Live video to insist her intention was not to overturn the result but to shed light on the voting system and its apparent vulnerabilities.
‘We have raised at this point over $5million, the total cost will be $7million,’ she said.
‘We are well on our way to that. This is a real grass roots, people’s campaign.
‘The purpose here is not to overturn the results of the election, the purpose is to establish voting integrity, to verify our votes and to ensure we can, going forward, ensure we can count on the accuracy and veracity of our votes.
‘We need to know that the system has not been tampered with or compromised.’
Critics were quick to accuse her of ‘conning’ voters out of money, pointing to the fact that a recount is not necessarily guaranteed despite their donations.
Stein ran for the presidency in 2012 for the Green Party. She has an MD from Harvard Medical School.
Despite several efforts to run for president, governor and a house representative, Stein has only ever been elected to the Lexington Town Meeting in Massachusetts.
She later took to Facebook Live to celebrate the pace her campaign had gathered but admitted she had intention of overturning the election result.
‘We have raised at this point over $5million, the total cost will be $7million,’ she said.
‘We are well on our way to that. This is a real grass roots, people’s campaign.
‘The purpose here is not to overturn the results of the election, the purpose is to establish voting integrity, to verify our votes and to ensure we can, going forward, ensure we can count on the accuracy and veracity of our votes.
Stein appeared in a Facebook Live video on Friday night to celebrate the pace her campaign had gathered
‘We need to know that the system has not been tampered with or compromised.’
President-elect Trump has not responded directly to the calls for a recount. Earlier this week his senior adviser Kellyanne Conway lashed out at Stein’s crusade.
‘Look who ‘can’t accept the election results,” she said on Twitter.
Calls for a recount collected momentum after a variety of independent analysts and data groups aired the possibility that voting machines in key states may have been hacked.
Some, whose claims were published in New York Magazine, said Clinton’s performance in counties using electronic machines was drastically worse than in paper ballot zones and used this as cause for speculation of tampering.
Their calculations say a hack could have robbed her of 30,000 votes in Wisconsin where she officially lost to Trump by 27,000.
There is evidence she may have fallen victim to hackers in Pennsylvania and Michigan too, the magazine reported.
One of the quoted researchers later penned his own article for Medium to ‘set the record straight’.
‘The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania,’ said J. Alex Halderman.