Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Counsel Will Participate in Wisconsin Recount

Hillary Clinton won the U.S. popular vote by approximately 2 million votes. But the nearly 300 electoral votes Donald Trump won are the reason the real estate magnate and former reality show host is the president-elect. On Saturday, the general counsel for the Clinton campaign, Marc Elias, weighed in on repeated calls for an audit and a recount related to those votes.

“Over the last few days, officials in the Clinton campaign have 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,” Elias wrote in an essay published on Medium. “Now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”

Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Reform Party candidate Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente separately filed recount requests Friday in Wisconsin. Friday was the last day to file such a request, and it marks Wisconsin’s first ever for a presidential race.

Elias called the 2016 election unique and cited the Clinton campaigns allegations of hacks of Secretary Clinton’s email being tied to “Russian state actors.” Elias also mentioned fake news propaganda circulating online through social media platforms in weeks leading up to the election.

Stein has given the indication she will seek recounts in other states, and Elias wrote that the Clinton campaign will take the same approach.

Elias concluded by thanking the nearly 64 million citizens who cast votes for Clinton and noted that while there is currently no evidence of manipulation of voting results, the recount will be done out of obligation to the voters who voiced their concerns about the election.

On Nov. 10, Hillary Clinton formally conceded the election to Donald Trump, and in her speech she admonished her supporters to “accept this result and then look to the future.”