On Saturday, Hillary Clinton's campaign said it will participate in a recount or audit of the Wisconsin election results being financed by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and also any recounts Stein requests and pays for in Michigan and Pennsylvania. This apparently set off the series of angry tweets from Donald Trump about Clinton's participation in Stein's "scam" and prompted his baseless assertion that "millions" of illegal voters robbed him of the popular vote. Clinton currently has a 1.7 percentage point lead over Trump, or 2.3 million more votes, giving Trump what The Washington Post's Aaron Blake calls "a historically small mandate."
On Monday, Trump adviser and confidante Roger Stone said on The Steve Malzberg Show that by participating in the recount, "Hillary, I think, increases her chances of prosecution by acting this way." He alleged, without offering any proof, that Clinton or George Soros must be secretly financing Stein's recount. Trump, during the presidential campaign, had repeatedly said he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton's alleged "crimes," but has suggested since the election that he is not interested in hurting the Clintons. "It's just not something that I feel very strongly about," he told The New York Times.
If his supporters and advisers are any indication, Trump became more interested over the weekend. Here's conservative commentator Katie Pavlich, echoing Stone's barely veiled threat:
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
And Trump transition senior adviser Kellyanne Conway was only slightly more subtle on CNN Sunday, when she responded to a question about Trump's shift on prosecuting Clinton by arguing that Trump has "been incredibly gracious and magnanimous to Secretary Clinton at a time when, for whatever reason, her folks are saying they will join in a recount to try to somehow undo the 70-plus electoral votes that he beat her by."
"It would be a major breach of the Justice Department's traditional independence from the White House for the president to order the prosecution of any individual as a means of political retaliation," notes Politico's Madeline Conway.
-
Has Zohran Mamdani shown the Democrats how to win again?Today’s Big Question New York City mayoral election touted as victory for left-wing populists but moderate centrist wins elsewhere present more complex path for Democratic Party
-
Senate votes to kill Trump’s Brazil tariffSpeed Read Five Senate Republicans joined the Democrats in rebuking Trump’s import tax
-
Border Patrol gets scrutiny in court, gains power in ICESpeed Read Half of the new ICE directors are reportedly from DHS’s more aggressive Customs and Border Protection branch
-
Shutdown stalemate nears key pain pointsSpeed Read A federal employee union called for the Democrats to to stand down four weeks into the government standoff
-
Trump vows new tariffs on Canada over Reagan adspeed read The ad that offended the president has Ronald Reagan explaining why import taxes hurt the economy
-
NY attorney general asks public for ICE raid footageSpeed Read Rep. Dan Goldman claims ICE wrongly detained four US citizens in the Canal Street raid and held them for a whole day without charges
-
Trump’s huge ballroom to replace razed East WingSpeed Read The White House’s east wing is being torn down amid ballroom construction
-
Trump expands boat strikes to Pacific, killing 5 moreSpeed Read The US military destroyed two more alleged drug smuggling boats in international waters
