Trump Pushes Unfounded Claim That Millions of Undocumented Immigrants Illegally Voted for Clinton

By Kenrya Rankin Nov 28, 2016

It appears that becoming president-elect is not enough to stop Donald Trump’s Twitter rants. Yesterday (November 27), he went online to not only criticize his former opponent Hillary Clinton for participating in a vote recount in Wisconsin, but to claim that millions of people voted illegally in the general election on November 8.

 

As NPR reports, Clinton is ahead in the popular tally by about 2 million votes, and there has been no evidence of voter fraud. The site traces the claim back to one made by radio host Alex Jones, who frequently promotes conspiracy theories, including one that said the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 was “fake.” Trump appeared on Jones’ show while campaigning for president. Politifact debunked Jones’ claim that 3 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally for Hillary Clinton earlier this month.

During Trump’s day-long rant, he also implied that Clinton is a hypocrite for supporting a recount, after she denounced him during the debates for refusing to say that he would accept the outcome of the election. Read many of those tweets here, via The Huffington Post.

The recount was initiated by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein via petition on Friday (November 25). Reform Party nominee Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente also petitioned for a recount. Per The Washington Post the recount needs to be concluded by December 13. Stein is also eyeing recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan—states where Trump appeared to win by narrow margins. She has already raised more than $5.25 million in donations related to the action. She will need to file a petition by today (November 28) to secure a recount in Pennsylvania, and by Wednesday November 30 to start the process in Michigan.

On Saturday (November 26), Clinton’s campaign general counsel, Marc Erik Elias, announced via a Medium post that the campaign will participate in any recounts Stein triggers.

Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but 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. If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well. We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states—Michigan—well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount. 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.