Trump calls recount effort a ‘scam’

President-elect Donald Trump blasted Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on Saturday for pushing for a recount in several states, calling her efforts a “scam.”

{mosads}”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,” Trump said in a statement.

Citing concerns that voting systems have been compromised, Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon, and has been fundraising off her vow to do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan — all states in which Trump won or is leading.

On Saturday, Hillary Clinton’s general counsel Marc Elias said that the campaign would be participating in the Wisconsin recount, though they had discovered no evidence that the voting process had been interfered with. He said the campaign would join the effort in the other states if Stein continued pushing for a recount there.

Elias wrote in a post on Medium that while no evidence of manipulation had emerged, “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.”

“But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself,” he added.

Trump’s statement on Saturday did not mention Clinton by name, though her campaign had joined the recount effort. She conceded to Trump shortly after he crossed the electoral threshold earlier this month to win the White House.

“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,” Trump said.

“All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes,” he said.