As recounts roll forward, Donald Trump charges that millions voted illegally

Articles over the weekend in The Washington Post and The New York Times offered new details on how Trump and his family met with their overseas business partners after the election.

Trump narrowly won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and, as of Wednesday, held a lead of nearly 11,000 votes in MI, with the results awaiting state certification Monday.

Stein and Independent candidate Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente each requested a recount Friday in Wisconsin. Stein also asked for a recount in Pennsylvania and was expected to do the same in MI, where officials certified Trump’s victory Monday.

Trump claimed that besides winning the Electoral College, he also won the popular vote.

Others inside Trump’s orbit, particularly Vice President-elect Mike Pence, are viewed as Romney supporters, believing he has a steady hand that would benefit Trump in the turbulent world of diplomacy, according to people familiar with the dispute who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Trump narrowly beat Clinton in the states by counts of 23,000, 70,000 and 10,000, all relatively close margins. But the only evidence he raised was a 2014 news report and a study on voting irregularities conducted before the 2016 election.

The billionaire has seen signs of discord over his picks for his cabinet, particularly the position of secretary of state which is said to be between 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani. Bob Corker and John Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, have also been under consideration.

Which brings us to the next point: The question wasn’t really about Trump forfeiting his right to participate in recounts or contest a close result – it often got simplified into “will he or won’t he concede” – but it was really about whether he would concede a race in which the margin wasn’t really close.

“It is going to be a very tight and aggressive timeline”, Hein said.

“It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him”, Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, on Twitter. Several potential hires are due to visit Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan on Monday to interview for administration posts, including John Allison, a former chief executive of BB&T Corp.; Paul Atkins, a former Securities and Exchange commissioner; and David Clarke, the sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

The state’s elections supervisor, Ross Hein, said Monday that the machines are not connected to the internet, limiting opportunities to tamper with them.

Interestingly enough, Trump isn’t alone in his recount outbursts.

Asked about that on Sunday, she told NBC that she was not “campaigning” against Romney, but was “just astonished at the breathtaking volume and intensity of blowback” to a possible Romney nomination. She said Romney was “nothing but awful” to Trump for a year. “Sad”, the President-elect went on to say, via Twitter.

However, there has been “no evidence produced to substantiate” Trump’s claims, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Conway won’t say what Trump might do after he becomes president with regard to U.S. Giuliani was initially the front-runner for secretary of state and is still in the mix.

That’s right: Trump is now questioning the legitimacy of the election he won.

Earlier Sunday, Trump launched one of his trademark tweetstorms, reiterating his previous criticism of the recount effort, taking aim at Clinton. He also tweeted how people should give him a “chance to lead”, now that he is president-elect. Those previous comments sparked an outcry from both Clinton and some Republicans.

Clinton’s lawyer said her team has been combing through the results since the election in search of anomalies that would suggest hacking by Russians or others and found “no actionable evidence” of an altered outcome.

Wisconsin Elections Commission Chairman Mark Thomsen said the recount will show that nothing illegal occurred.