Hillary Clinton’s campaign has stopped short of suggesting voter fraud gave Donald Trump the White House. But Clinton’s lawyers are leaving the door open to the possibility.
Marc Erik Elias, general counsel to Hillary for America, announced Saturday that the campaign’s lawyers and data analysts will participate in a Wisconsin recount launched by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein.
The Clinton camp didn’t call for a recount because no “actionable of hacking” had been uncovered, Elias explained in a lengthy statement posted on Medium.
“Now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin,” he continued, “we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”
The Clinton campaign would also participate, Elias added, in Michigan and Pennsylvania recounts if Stein triggered recounts in those states.
In other words, while the Clinton campaign hasn’t made any allegations of wrongdoing, they’re not ruling anything out yet. Ultimately, the move will likely fuel further speculation that Clinton allies are pushing Stein to fight the recount battle by proxy.
Word that the Clinton’s camp will participate in the Wisconsin recount comes one day after the Obama administration told the New York Times that the presidential election “accurately reflects the will of the American people.”
Elias did little to assuage fears of a rigged election Saturday though. The top lawyer raised doubt about Republican victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — blue states that Trump carried by thin red margins. Trump carried those three states, he noted, by just 107,000 combined votes.
That tight margin is less than the population of South Bend, Indiana or Green Bay, Wisconsin. It’s one of the reasons that an #AuditTheVote campaign has picked up steam among Clinton supporters shocked by Trump’s upset victory on Election Day. It’s also led to the Democratic nominee’s own investigation.
Even after Clinton delivered her concession speech, her campaign looked into the matter. Recruiting experts from inside and outside the party, Elias wrote that “since the day after the election we have had lawyers and data scientists and analysts combing over the results to spot anomalies that would suggest a hacked result.”
The Clinton attorney again floated the possibility of “Russian state actors” meddling in the presidential candidate. “This election cycle was unique in the degree of foreign interference witnessed throughout the campaign,” he wrote blaming the Kremlin for hacking emails and generating “fake news.”
