We had a call with the top people at Hilaryβs campaign including John Podesta. The Clinton campaign wanted to know what evidence we had of fraud but thatβs not how to look at it. The purpose of a recount is to gather evidence that the outcome was correct or not. https://t.co/k5nDSxvh1b
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On the Sunday after the election, the speaker received an urgent email from an election integrity advocate, inviting them to join a phone call with the Clinton campaign. Although Hillary Clinton was not present, her campaign manager and other top officials were. They discussed the possibility of requesting a recount in key states. The campaign had concerns about the evidence of hacking, the cost of the recount, and the potential backlash from retracting their concession to Donald Trump. The speaker found it frustrating that the campaign wanted evidence of hacking before considering a recount, as the purpose of a recount is to gather evidence.
Speaker 0: Actually examine the physical evidence they had in a way that could potentially detect a cyber attack. So the first question, and really the beginning of this whole process for me, was on 13th, on the Sunday after election day. I was on a flight from New York to Los Angeles when I got a frantic email from Barbara Simons, another election integrity advocate. The email said, can you join a phone call in 15 minutes? It's with the Clinton campaign.
Hillary herself might be on the call. Well, what do I do? I'm on a flight, so I find a way to work around the airplane Wi Fi's attempts to block Skype and so forth, and find a way to dial into the call. It doesn't work well enough for me to talk on this 1st call, but I can listen in, and I can hear what they're saying. Clinton herself isn't there, But Podesta, her campaign manager, and many other top people from the campaign are on, and they're listening very, very carefully as Barbara and others are describing arguments why Clinton should recount should request a recount in several key states.
So candidates under American law have this ability. They can demand a recount, depending on the state, as long as they pay the requisite costs, but would Clinton do it? So there were a few concerns that the campaign brought up. The first one and the most aggravating to me is they wanted to know what evidence we had that the election had been hacked. Well, wait a minute.
That seems completely backwards. The purpose of a recount of any examination of the paper ballots is to gather evidence that the outcome was correct or not. Without looking at them, we don't have the evidence to begin with. All we can do is say that it would be possible for an attack to have changed the result without leaving any visible evidence. Another concern was how to pay for the recounts.
The cost was likely to rise to the 1,000,000 of dollars, But maybe most important and most aggravating was they were concerned about backpedaling from the concession about tiptoeing away from having conceded the victory to Donald Trump.
