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President-elect Trump on Monday downplayed claims that Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee and emails from top Hillary Clinton officials, in an apparent effort to cast doubt on reports from the intelligence community that Russia tried to swing the election in his favor.
Despite a seeming consensus on Russia being responsible for the release of DNC and Clinton campaign emails in the intelligence community, Trump tweeted that no one really knows who is responsible.
"Unless you catch 'hackers' in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?" Trump tweeted.
It was widely reported before the election that the intelligence community believed Russia was responsible for the hacks. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the Department of Homeland Security released a statement in early October blaming Russia for the hacks.abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.
However, Trump has refused to bend on his skepticism that the Kremlin attempted to influence the election, and said he thinks it's just sour grapes from Democrats after they failed to keep the White House.
"Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!" Trump tweeted.
While many lawmakers took to the airwaves to call for congressional investigations into the hacking on Monday, the message from Trump's camp was that the reports on hacking are attempts by Democrats to delegitimize his election.
On CBS, Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump aide, said the president-elect doesn't trust "off the record, unsourced quotes."
"People are trying to conflate that now to revisit the election results," Conway said. "We're just surrounded by election deniers."
For Conway, the reports of hacking coming from the Central Intelligence Agency during the weekend are simply attacks on Trump's win. She said he has respect for the intelligence community, but Trump and his supporters will not let them attack his victory.
"We're not going to accept that, we're not going to allow people to insult or demean the president-elect," she said.
Optical ballot scanners in Michigan that malfunctioned on election night and may have counted votes twice were situated in heavily Democratic areas, meaning that any vote fraud in the state actually favored Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.
The revelation is buried in a Guardian article which discusses broken voting machines in Detroit and one-third of surrounding Wayne County, where Hillary Clinton won in a landslide;
“Eighty-seven of Wayne County’s decade-old voting machines broke on election day, according to Detroit’s elections director, Daniel Baxter. He told the Detroit News, which first reported the story, that ballot scanners often jammed when polling place workers were trying to operate them. Every time a jammed ballot was removed and reinserted, he suspects the machine may have re-counted it.”
In other words, in an area where the significant majority of people voted for Hillary Clinton, their votes may have been counted twice.
This means that Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan may be even larger than the 10,704 votes initially recorded.
The Guardian’s claim that, “Wayne’s population of 1,759,335 makes it the likeliest candidate to contain errors bigger than that margin,” suggesting that Hillary would have a chance of overturning defeat is a misnomer given that any vote irregularities would have been in her favor.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, after five days of the recount and over a million votes counted, Donald Trump has extended his lead in the state by 26 votes.
Trump lost 302 votes but gained 386 votes elsewhere, whereas Hillary Clinton lost 293 votes and gained 351 elsewhere.
In Pennsylvania, where a statewide recount now looks unlikely, Clinton has gained only five votes after the state’s two largest counties completed their recount.
DETROIT, MI — About half of the ballots in heavily Democratic Detroit,
which overwhelmingly supported former secretary of state Hillary
Clinton by a two-to-one margin in the Nov. 8 presidential election,
could be tossed out of the ongoing recount because the number of
voters and the actual ballots cast don’t match. Problems were
reported in 392 of the city’s 662 precincts.
The problem isn’t unique to Detroit, and it casts a shadow over the
accuracy of the election, according to the state coordinator of the
massive recount of Michigan’s 4.8 million presidential ballots. In all,
610 precincts in Wayne County, including those from the 392
problem precincts in Detroit, may not be counted. A final decision
on that is pending.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein asked for a vote recount in Michigan,
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania after a prominent group of election
attorneys and computer scientists, including University of Michigan
computer science professor J. Alex Halderman, claimed to have
uncovered “persuasive evidence” that the election results in the three battleground states could have been hacked. President-elect
Donald Trump won all three states by slim margins. In Michigan, the difference between Trump and Clinton was only 10,704 votes.
Daniel Baxter, the elections director for the city of Detroit, told The
Detroit News the problem seems to stem from worn-out voting machines.
Eight-seven optical scanners broke on Election Day when voters tried
to feed their ballots into them.
“It’s not good,” he said.
“We’re seeing this issue in several instances of precincts being deemed
not-recountable because the numbers don’t match,” Keenan Pontoni,
the Recount Michigan coordinator, told the Detroit Free Press. “We
think that any instance where ballots are not being counted compromises the process.”
Under Michigan law, if discrepancy exists between the poll book and
ballot box numbers, the ballots won’t be recounted unless there’s a
valid explanation. If none exists, the original Election Night tally stands.
“Michigan law is stupid on this point,” Mark Grebner, a political
consultant who has studied Michigan elections for decades, told
the Free Press. “It makes no sense, and it should be fixed. Other
states don’t do this.”
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In some cases, all it took was one missing ballot to scuttle a precinct
recount. In Rochester Hills’ Precinct 11, for example, the poll book
listed 848 voters, but the now-unsealed box contained 848 ballots.
There’s no explanation for the discrepancy, according to the Free Press.
The Wayne County recount starts Tuesday morning. Baxter said he
doesn’t think all 392 of the Detroit precincts with mismatched numbers
will be disqualified. Most will match when sealed ballot boxes are
reopened, he predicted.
“It’s a challenge, but we’re confident the ballots will match,” Baxter
told The Detroit News. “I don’t think it’s going to be 100 percent,
but it never is with a recount.”
Wayne County certified its election results, even though canvassers
weren’t given an explanation for the mismatched numbers.
Problems were also reported in Flint, another Democratic stronghold.
Of 222 precincts in Genesee County, poll books and ballots didn’t
match in 13 of 222 precincts, about half of of them in Flint. Those
results were also certified.
“The trouble is there’s too much leniency with the board of canvassers,”
said John Gleason, Genesee County’s clerk, told The Detroit News.
“They’re not as stringent as need to be because they think it won’t
affect the outcome of the election.”
If large numbers of Detroit precincts are disqualified, it will be
“almost impossible” for Clinton to make up the 10,000-plus-vote
difference, Ernest Johnson, a Democratic political activist who
worked for the Clinton campaign on get-out-the-vote efforts,
told The Detroit News.
“It’s a real long-shot now because, if I were looking for 10,000 votes,
the first place I’d look is Wayne County,” Johnson said. “That’s a
huge problem. ... But if anything good comes of this it brings up
this problem (with voting machines) that needs to be corrected.”
Updated. Michigan's Board of Canvassers deadlocked
along party lines Friday on an objection filed by
President-elect Donald J. Trump's campaign to a
recount of the 4.8 million votes cast by Michiganders
in the Nov. 8 presidential election. That means a
hand recount will proceed, barring court action,
which the state's attorney general has requested.
The Board of Canvassers had said that if it deadlocked,
the hand-recount would proceed. However, lawyers
for the president-elect have asked the board to stay
its decision, and it's unclear whether the hand-recount
favored by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who
requested the recount, or a machine recount favored
by Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, will proceed.
Recount advocates have argued that a machine recount
would repeat the errors — if there were any — in the
original count of the state's votes.
In either case, the recount can't start until Tuesday at
the earliest, and it could be pushed back even farther
in light of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's
Earlier update: Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette
said Friday he has filed an emergency action asking the
Michigan Supreme Court to stop a statewide hand-
count of the 4.8 million ballots cast in the 2016 presidential
election. The recount requested by Green Party candidate
Jill Stein was among requests filed in three battleground
states that swung the election to President-elect Donald J. Trump.
Trump's campaign has contested the recount, and the Michigan
Board of Canvassers is meeting Friday morning to consider it.
“Michigan voters rejected Stein’s candidacy by massive margins
but her refusal to accept that state-verified result poses an
expensive and risky threat to hard-working taxpayers and
abuses the intent of Michigan law,” Schuette said in a statement.
“We have asked the court to end the recount which Stein is
pursuing in violation of Michigan laws that protect the integrity
of our elections. It is inexcusable for Stein to put Michigan voters
at risk of paying millions and potentially losing their voice in
the Electoral College in the process.”
Schuette, who said he filed the action in his constitutional role
of representing the people of the state of Michigan, is asking
the court to order the Michigan Board of Canvassers to reject
Stein’s request for a statewide hand recount and claims it
violates Michigan law.
Schuette’s suit explains that the Michigan statute authorizing
recounts requires Stein to demonstrate that she was “aggrieved”
by fraud or mistake in the counting of votes. Stein has said that
she has no evidence of fraud or mistake, and Schuette argues she
has not been “aggrieved in any sense of that word” after receiving
only about 1 percent of the votes cast in Michigan.
Schuette also filed an emergency motion with the Michigan
Supreme Court asking to bypass the Court of Appeals for
immediate consideration.
Schuette’s suit also argues that Stein’s demand for a recount will
be at the expense of Michigan taxpayers —she paid only about
a fourth of the estimated $5 million cost — and risky as well,
because the delay caused by a hand-recount puts Michigan’s
votes at risk of not being included when the U.S. Congress
convenes on Jan. 6 to count the states’ electoral votes.
On Thursday, attorneys for Trump also argued that Stein is
not an "aggrieved" party by fraud or mistake; there is not
adequate time to complete the recount by Dec. 13, the "safe
harbor" date to assure Michigan electors can cast ballots
when the Electoral College meets Dec. 19; and that Stein's
petition wasn't properly signed and sworn.
Our earlier story: President-elect Donald J. Trump's
campaign officially objected Thursday to Green Party candidate
Jill Stein’s request for a laborious hand-recount of the state’s
nearly 4.8 million ballots. Trump was declared the winner of
the state’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 10,704 votes on Monday.
President-elect Donald Trump's Friday meeting has Democrats shaking in their boots, plus more from today's news.
The campaign said Michigan election officials should not grant
"this lawless, insulting request."
Further, the campaign said in the objection that "voters should
not risk having the Electoral College door knocked off its hinges
all because a 1 [percent] candidate is dissatisfied with the
election’s outcome. Given her tiny vote total, (Green Party
presidential candidate Jill) Stein does not and could not
possibly allege a good faith belief that she may have won
the state of Michigan."
Stein filed her recount request Wednesday, along with a
check for $973,250 to cover the costs to recount ballots in
Michigan’s 6,300 precincts. The Green Party candidate,
who received negligible support among Michigan voters,
has never said her outcome would change. Rather, she
has said she wants to ensure that all votes were counted.
Stein and her attorneys have acknowledged there is no
evidence of fraud or impropriety but raised questions
about 85,000 ballots with “blank votes” in the presidential race —
more than enough to make up for the difference separating
Trump and Clinton.
Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said Wednesday the
recount will cost more than $5 million, most of it to be
borne by Michigan taxpayers. The state Republican party
went further, suggesting costs could soar to $12 million.
The recount was expected to begin Friday, but Trump’s equest will delay it, The Detroit News reported. The state
Board of Canvassers could rule on the request by 9:30 a.m.
Friday, but even then the recount can't start for two business days.
Now it appears unlikely that the recount — if it is allowed —
will be completed by Dec. 10.
Trump in the past has been critical of the recount request,
calling it “ridiculous” and “a scam.”
“This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less
than 1 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,"
the president-elect said in a statement.
Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Michigan
Republican Party, has called the request by Stein a “temper
tantrum” that won't change the outcome of the vote.
The recount requests came after a prominent group of
election attorneys and computer scientists, including
University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex
Halderman, claimed to have uncovered “persuasive evidence”
that the election results in the three battleground states could have been hacked.
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