Trump slams 'scam' Jill Stein election recount effort
President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday ripped what he termed a "scam" effort from Green Party nominee Jill Stein aimed at requesting recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
In a statement labeling the recount request "ridiculous," Trump said "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.
Trump highlighted the fact he won the vast majority of battleground states, total states, and the more than 2,600 counties in the country.
"This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than 1% 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," he said. "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," he continued.
Stein, along with another third-party candidate, filed petitions in Wisconsin on Friday to conduct a recount in the state, where Trump narrowly beat Clinton by roughly 30,000 votes. Stein has also been raising money for potential challenges in Michigan, where Trump appears to have won by just more than 10,000 votes, and in Pennsylvania, Trump won by roughly 70,000 votes.
The Green Party nominee came under fire after asking for additional money after her first goal of $2 million was surpassed earlier this week, claiming she now needed as much as $7 million to successfully push for a recount.
The Clinton campaign on Saturday said it would participate in the recount despite not finding any "actionable evidence" of hacking or attempts to "alter 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.
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