 |
| Clinton Is Playing With Fire By Backing a Recount in Wisconsin |
Former
secretary of state Hillary Clinton is playing with fire by allowing her
unsuccessful Democratic presidential campaign organization to
participate in an election recount in Wisconsin initiated by Green
Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
Marc
Elias, the Clinton organization’s general counsel, said over the
weekend that the campaign would take part in the Wisconsin recount
without financially contributing to the operation. He also raised the
possibility of joining the Third Party in recounts in two other closely
contested states, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Republican
President-elect Donald Trump, seething over what he and his top
advisers perceive as Clinton’s reneging on her pledge to abide by the
outcome of the Nov. 8 election, predicted that a recount in Wisconsin
and the other states would not alter the results of the election.
“Hillary Clinton conceded
the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and
after the results were in,” Trump said in one of a flurry of angry
tweets early Sunday. “Nothing will change.”
The
Trump team bitterly complained that the recount would be a colossal
waste of time and money and serve as a distraction from the
president-elect’s efforts to assemble a new cabinet and administration
that would carry out his agenda and help reunite a sorely divided
country.
More
ominously, Trump’s campaign manager and senior adviser, Kellyanne
Conway, hinted that Trump might be having second thoughts about
abandoning a campaign pledge to call for a special prosecutor to
investigate Clinton’s mishandling of State Department emails and the
questionable fundraising activities of her family’s global foundation.
Trump
told the New York Times last Tuesday that he had no intention of
pressing for an investigation of Clinton and her family, saying that “I
don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t.” During an appearance
today on the ABC News “This Week” program, Conway noted repeatedly that
Trump “is being very magnanimous” towards Clinton.” At the same time,
she declined to totally rule out the possibility that the Justice
Department would eventually seek such an investigation after Trump
takes office.
Conway
suggested that Trump’s generosity was being met by a slap in the face
from Clinton, who ordered Elias, her counsel, to “join this ridiculously
fantastical recount that Jill Stein is engaging in in Wisconsin and
perhaps elsewhere.”
Conway
didn’t say specifically that Trump would retaliate against Clinton for
allowing her organization to take part in the recount, but she left it
to viewers to connect the dots.
“I
guess the real question is, why in the world can’t the Democrats accept
the election results: after Clinton and the news media made a big issue
of Trump’s refusal to definitively promise to abide by the results if
he lost the election,” she said.
Clinton
and her advisers sharply criticized Trump during the campaign for
refusing to say definitively whether he would abide by the election
results if he lost. Trump warned his supporters that he could only lose
to Clinton if the election was somehow “rigged” against him, and he even
called on his backers to be vigilant at the polls for possible fraud.
Elias wrote in a post on Medium
that Clinton’s campaign had received “hundreds of messages, emails, and
calls urging us to do something, anything, to investigate claims that
the election results were hacked and altered in a way to disadvantage
Secretary Clinton,” especially in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
where Trump’s combined margin of victory was only 107,000 votes.
Reince
Priebus, the Republican National Committee chair and newly appointed
chief of staff to Trump, fumed during an appearance on “Fox News
Sunday” that the recount was a “ridiculous” fund-raising fraud”
perpetrated by a Green Party nominee. He noted that Stein won only
33,000 votes in Wisconsin, compared to Trump’s 1.4 million votes in the
state.
“So
here we have a person perpetrating a fundraising scheme that has lost
by over 1.35 million votes in Wisconsin, attempting to undo [Trump’s]
28,000 vote lead [over Clinton]. It’s never going to happen. It’s a
total waste of everybody’s time.”
Stein
on Friday filed for a recount in Wisconsin and said she had raised more
than $5 million for the effort. She indicated she would be raising more
money for similar efforts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and disputed
Trump’s claim that this is a scam.
“The point to drive home here is that having a secure elections process benefits us all,” Stein told CNN’s “Newsroom.”
Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who challenged Clinton for the Democratic
nomination, said the Green Party has a legal right to seek a recount,
regardless of how unlikely it was to change the election results. “No
one expects there to be a profound change, but there’s nothing wrong
with going through the process.,” he told Dana Bash of CNN today.
Sanders,
who is taking a prominent role in trying to rebuild and reshape the
Democratic party, said the more important question is whether Trump
would keep many of his campaign promises that Democrats actually agree
with -- such as lowering prescription drug prices and protecting Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid from cuts.
“Let’s see if he keeps his word,” Sanders said
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/clinton-playing-fire-backing-recount-222300204.html
No comments:
Post a Comment