PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said without evidence in a tweet on Sunday that he won the popular vote in the Nov. 8 election "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

The allegation by Trump, who won the required votes in the Electoral College to secure the presidency, comes as Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote over Trump has surpassed 2 million votes and is expected to grow to more than 2.5 million as ballots in populous states such as California continue to be tallied.

Clinton's legal team said on Saturday it had agreed to participate in a recount of Wisconsin votes after the state's election board approved the effort requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, which Trump has called "ridiculous."

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," the Republican Trump tweeted as reporters waited for him to leave his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida to fly back to his residence in New York City.

The U.S. presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, based on a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the national vote. Trump has surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized on Dec. 19. Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

"It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than in the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited," Trump added in follow-up tweets.

Before the election, Trump made unsubstantiated allegations that the results of the election might be "rigged" against him.

Since the vote, his message has alternated between appealing for unity and railing against his opponents and the media.

In a video message released ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Trump said he hoped it would be a time for Americans "to begin to heal our divisions" following a "long and bruising political campaign."

Trump has derided the fundraising effort by Stein to launch recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as a "scam." Those states had voted Democratic in recent presidential elections but all broke narrowly for the Republican Trump in this month's election. The recounts are not expected to change the results of the election.

Stein, who won about 1 percent of the national vote, has said she wants a recount to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system, a push that came after some experts raised the possibility that hacks could have affected the results.

Democratic President Barack Obama's administration has said there is no evidence of electoral tampering, but experts have said that the only way to verify the results are accurate is to conduct a recount.</s>Hillary Clinton lost by a margin of around 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, 70,000 votes in Pennsylvania and 10,000 votes in Michigan (AFP Photo/Jeff Kowalsky)

Washington (AFP) - Hillary Clinton's election campaign said Saturday it would join in a recount of votes in the state of Wisconsin although it has not seen any irregularities so far in the White House contest won by Donald Trump.

Marc Erik Elias, an election lawyer for the Democratic candidate, said in a post on Medium.com that the campaign would also participate in recounts in the closely contested states of Michigan and Pennsylvania if they are arranged.

Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by just over 100,000 votes. The razor thin victories in those states pushed him above the 270 votes needed for victory in the Electoral College.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein has requested a recount in Wisconsin and has announced her intention to also seek recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

"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," said Elias, the Clinton counsel.

"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," he added.

"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," Elias said.

Although experts say there is virtually no chance of overturning the final result, the recounts could reignite debate over the legitimacy of Trump's election, already fueled by Clinton's lead in the popular vote, which now stands at more than two million.

Clinton lost by around 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, 70,000 votes in Pennsylvania and 10,000 votes in Michigan.

Elias noted that Trump's 10,000-vote lead in 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," Elias said.

Elias said the Clinton campaign had been conducting its own investigation of the election results after receiving "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."

But he said the Clinton campaign had seen no evidence so far the election results had been manipulated in Trump's favor.

"The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities," Elias said.

"While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported."

Stein has cited unspecified "anomalies" as grounds to mount a challenge to the November 8 election results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

"After a divisive and painful presidential race, reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts are causing many Americans to wonder if our election results are reliable," Stein said on her website.

"These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified," she said. "We deserve elections we can trust."</s>The allegation by Trump, who won the required votes in the Electoral College to secure the presidency, comes as Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote over Trump has surpassed 2 million votes and is expected to grow to more than 2.5 million as ballots in populous states such as California continue to be tallied.

Clinton's legal team said on Saturday it had agreed to participate in a recount of Wisconsin votes after the state's election board approved the effort requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, which Trump has called "ridiculous."

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," the Republican Trump tweeted as reporters waited for him to leave his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida to fly back to his residence in New York City.

The U.S. presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, based on a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the national vote. Trump has surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized on Dec. 19. Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

"It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than in the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited," Trump added in follow-up tweets.

Before the election, Trump made unsubstantiated allegations that the results of the election might be "rigged" against him.

Since the vote, his message has alternated between appealing for unity and railing against his opponents and the media.

In a video message released ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Trump said he hoped it would be a time for Americans "to begin to heal our divisions" following a "long and bruising political campaign."

Trump has derided the fundraising effort by Stein to launch recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as a "scam." Those states had voted Democratic in recent presidential elections but all broke narrowly for the Republican Trump in this month's election. The recounts are not expected to change the results of the election.

Stein, who won about 1 percent of the national vote, has said she wants a recount to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system, a push that came after some experts raised the possibility that hacks could have affected the results.

Democratic President Barack Obama's administration has said there is no evidence of electoral tampering, but experts have said that the only way to verify the results are accurate is to conduct a recount.</s>Wisconsin election officials are preparing to begin a recount of the state’s presidential vote this week. Here are answers to the most significant questions about the pending recount:

Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 22,170 votes, or about 1 percent of the vote, based on unofficial results. Wisconsin Elections Commission Chairman Mark Thomsen, a Democrat, said he expected Trump to still be the winner after the recount.

“The outcome is not going to be different,” Thomsen said. “It may not be 22,170, but I don’t doubt that the president-elect is going to win that vote.”

Who is asking for the recount and why do they want it?

Both Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and Independent candidate Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente requested the recount Friday, although Stein is the only one who was actively raising money to pay for it. She alleged in a filing with the state that irregularities with the Wisconsin vote indicated potential tampering. That, combined with “well-documented and conclusive evidence of foreign interference in the presidential race before the election,” call into question Wisconsin’s results, Stein alleged.

What evidence does she have?

University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman said in an affidavit attached to Stein’s recount request that hackers could spread malware into voting machines in battleground states and their work would be virtually undetectable. Halderman said whether the machines are connected to the internet is irrelevant since election workers typically copy ballot designs from a computer that’s connected online and transfer the designs to the machines using memory sticks. The only way to determine if an attack took place is to examine the paper trail to ensure votes cast match the results determined by the machines, he said.

What do Wisconsin election officials say?

There is no evidence that any voting machines were hacked, said Thomsen, the Elections Commission chairman. Wisconsin’s decentralized voting system — 1,854 municipal clerks who count votes — and the fact that the equipment in question is not connected to the internet makes a widespread attack “very unlikely,” said Wisconsin Election Commission administrator Mike Haas.

How would the recount be done?

The recount would include an examination of all ballots, poll lists, absentee applications, rejected absentee ballots and provisional ballots. The electronic voting equipment is tested and certified at the federal level, approved by the state commission and tested within 10 days of the election, Haas said. The equipment is secured until Election Day, Haas said. The machines also create a paper trail after the vote that can be cross-checked in the recount, he said.

Stein asked the commission for a hand recount, arguing that’s the only way to know if the results were hacked. She said Monday she would ask a judge to order one after the Elections Commission rejected the idea. Wisconsin state law says in order for there to be a hand recount the person requesting it must present evidence electronic equipment tabulated the vote incorrectly, that a hand recount would be more accurate and that the result is likely to change by doing a hand recount. “That seems to be a high burden of proof for any candidate,” Haas said.

Who is paying for this?

Stein and De La Fuente are on the hook for the cost of the recount since the election wasn’t close enough for taxpayers to pick up the bill. A cost estimate was being compiled by the Elections Commission and the bill, which was earlier projected to be about $1 million, would have to be paid on Tuesday for the recount to begin on Thursday.

Has Wisconsin ever been through this before?

Wisconsin’s last statewide recount was for a state Supreme Court race in 2011. The recount showed Justice David Prosser defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,004 votes, just 312 votes less than the unofficial results showed. That effort took more than a month and involved about half as many votes as the nearly 3 million votes cast in this year’s presidential election in Wisconsin.

When will it be done?

The deadline for counties to report their recounted vote totals is 8 p.m. Dec. 12. The Elections Commission will review the totals before certifying the vote on Dec. 13, the federal deadline. Electors meet on Dec. 19 this year.

What happens if the state doesn’t finish by the deadline?

The state could lose control of how its electoral college voters cast their ballots. Congress would then step in and decide which candidate gets the state’s 10 votes.</s>Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump's senior adviser and former campaign manager, publicly criticised the possibility of Mitt Romney becoming secretary of state on the morning political-show circuit on Sunday.

On ABC's "This Week," Conway told host Martha Raddatz that Romney had taken special steps during the presidential campaign to question Trump's character and intellect - criticism that she viewed as a major detriment, saying the primary quality of a secretary of state should be loyalty to the president.

"There was the 'Never Trump' movement and then there was Governor Mitt Romney," Conway said. "He went out of his way to hurt Donald Trump."

She added that it was unclear whether Romney had even voted for Trump.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the 2012 GOP presidential candidate, was a fierce and vocal critic of Trump throughout the latter's campaign. In a memorable speech from March, Romney said Trump was "playing the members of the American public for suckers."

Still, the two met on Nov. 19 for more than an hour at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., where they had what Romney called a "far-reaching conversation."

"It went great," Trump said of the meeting.

Since that encounter, Romney's name has been floated as a potential secretary of state.

The day after that meeting, Conway simply described both men as accomplished job creators. However, on Thanksgiving, she took to Twitter to say that she was receiving a "deluge" of social media and private communications warning against picking Romney as secretary of state.

On Sunday, Raddatz asked why Conway, one of Trump's closest advisers, was motivated to publicly tweet about opposition to Romney when she had the president-elect's ear: Was it a reflection of Conway's opinion or had she been told by Trump to do so?

"I won’t discuss that," Conway said, adding that Trump was the only person with final say on his cabinet picks. "Whatever he decides will have my full support and respect, and he knows that."

However, she went out of her way to point out that Trump had won states that Republicans — including Romney in 2012 — had not won in years, such as Iowa and Pennsylvania.

"This is Trump’s party now, and he won states that Mitt Romney lost," she said. "... I don’t think a cost of admission for party unity has to be the secretary of state position."

Conway repeated the same sentiments on CNN's "State of the Union," saying the volume of messages she has received from Trump loyalists concerned about Romney was "breathtaking."

"It's just the backlash from the grass roots," Conway said. "People are saying they'll feel betrayed if Romney was chosen. We don't even know if Romney voted for Donald Trump. I think there are concerns.... You want a secretary of state who's loyal."

"State of the Union" host Dana Bash asked Conway whether she thought Romney would be loyal to Trump if selected.

"I would hope so," she said. "If President-elect Trump chooses Mitt Romney, that will have the full support and backing of all of us."

Conway's comments on Sunday's television shows bewildered some, who wondered why Conway seemed to be so publicly campaigning against Romney.

Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist and political commentator who also was one of Trump's harshest critics during the campaign, tweeted that she was astounded by Conway's comments, especially since Conway "has the ability to tell Trump privately."

Conway responded to Navarro by saying that she had told Trump privately, as well.

On Sunday, Conway also derided plans by Hillary Clinton's campaign to participate in an election recount effort in Wisconsin initiated by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

On "State of the Union," Conway said Trump was not focused on prosecuting Clinton but wouldn't rule it out — which she said indicated that Trump was being "incredibly gracious and magnanimous" to Clinton.

Though the two issues are neither related nor causal, Conway on "This Week" linked Trump's latest public comments about not pursuing a prosecution of Clinton to the Clinton campaign's decision to join the recount effort.

"But this is how the president-elect feels at this moment about Hillary Clinton," Conway told Raddatz. "I would say, in response that, I guess her attitude toward that is to have her counsel, Mark Elias, go and join this ridiculously fantastical recount that Jill Stein is engaging in Wisconsin and perhaps elsewhere.

"So you've got the President-elect Donald Trump being quite magnanimous to Hillary Clinton and you've got her responding with joining into this recount."

Conway told Raddatz that she was confident the recount would not change the election results in Wisconsin, where Stein received 33,000 votes.

"33,000 votes is like the number of people who tailgate at a Packers game," Conway said. "It is not a serious effort to change the election results."

On "Fox News Sunday," the chairman of the Republican National Committee also criticized the recount effort in Wisconsin as "a total waste of everybody's time."

"This is a fundraising, notoriety-driven fraud by someone who won 33,000 votes in Wisconsin to President-elect Trump, who won 1.4 million," Reince Priebus said. "So, here, we have a person perpetrating a fundraising scheme that has lost over 1.35 million votes in Wisconsin attempting to undo a 28,000-vote lead. It's never going to happen. It's a total waste of everybody's time."</s>NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump is claiming, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally in the election he won, issuing the baseless claim as part of his angry response to a recount effort led by the Green Party and joined by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted Sunday. He later alleged “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions seeking evidence of the claims.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, said Monday that he had “not seen any voter irregularity in the millions.”

“I don’t know what he was talking about on that one,” Lankford said of Trump on CNN’s “New Day.”

Indeed, there has been no evidence of widespread tampering or hacking that would change the results of the presidential contest between Trump and Clinton. The Democrat’s team said it had been looking for abnormalities and found nothing that would alter the results.

Still, Clinton’s campaign was joining a recount led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein in up to three states. Wisconsin election officials are expected to meet Monday to discuss a possible timeline for a recount of that state’s presidential votes; recounts are possible in Pennsylvania and Michigan as well.

“We intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias said.

Trump narrowly won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and, as of Wednesday, held a lead of almost 11,000 votes in Michigan, with the results awaiting state certification Monday. All three would need to flip to Clinton to upend the Republican’s victory, and Clinton’s team says Trump has a larger edge in all three states than has ever been overcome in a presidential recount.

Still, Trump and his lieutenants assailed the effort, calling it fraudulent, the work of “crybabies” and, in Trump’s view, “sad.” Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232, not counting Michigan.

Trump spent the Thanksgiving holiday at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida and returned to New York Sunday night. He was scheduled to hold a series of meetings with prospective administration hires Monday as he seeks to build out his Cabinet and senior White House staff.

Trump’s team was divided over his pick for secretary of state, one of the most prominent and powerful Cabinet posts. The president-elect is said to be choosing between former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee who fiercely criticized Trump throughout the presidential campaign.

In an unusual public airing of internal machinations, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway warned Sunday that the president-elect’s supporters would feel “betrayed” if he tapped former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as secretary of state. Romney was “nothing but awful” to him for a year, she said.

The spectacle of close aides who speak frequently with Trump in private being so explicit about their personal opinions in public raised the possibility that Conway was acting at Trump’s behest. Romney denounced Trump in scathing terms during the campaign, prompting Trump to call him a “choker” who “walks like a penguin.”

People involved in the transition process said Trump’s decision on his secretary of state did not appear to be imminent. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and John Bolton, a former ambassador to the U.N., have also been under consideration.

Even with major administration decisions looming, Trump seems preoccupied by the prospect of a recount.

“Hillary Clinton conceded the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and after the results were in,” He tweeted Sunday. “Nothing will change.”

He quoted from Clinton’s concession speech — “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead” — and he concluded: “So much time and money will be spent – same result! Sad.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Conway said Stein, “the Hillary people” and others supporting recounts have to decide whether they are going to back a peaceful transition “or if they’re going to be a bunch of crybabies and sore losers about an election that they can’t turn around.”

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.” But “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,” he said.

Pace reported from Washington. AP writers Laurie Kellman and Cal Woodward contributed to this report from Washington.</s>Green Party leader Jill Stein filed for the recount request Friday. The state’s election board is expected to complete the recount by Dec. 13.

Wisconsin’s election board will recount votes from the Nov. 8 presidential election after the Green Party’s presidential candidate Jill Stein requested for one Friday. The board is expected to complete the recount by Dec. 13.

“We are standing up for an election system that we can trust; for voting systems that respect and encourage our vote, and make it possible for all of us to exercise our constitutional right to vote,” Stein said, in a statement.

Stein’s campaign is raising money to pay the recount fee, which is yet to be to be calculated. The estimated cost is likely to be $1 million and the campaign has raised over $5 million. She has said her aim is to raise $7 million to cover other fees and legal costs.

“The recount was not filed in order to change the election outcome, which is unlikely, nor to favor any one candidate. We are pursuing this recount to verify the integrity of the election result,” Stein’s campaign manager David Cobb said in the statement.

Wisconsin has never had a presidential recount. According to state law, a recount can be performed if the candidate who requested the recount can pay for it.

Apart from Wisconsin, Stein is also looking for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. All the three are battleground states where Republican Donald Trump defeated Democratic Hillary Clinton by thin margins.

If the recounts go in favor of Hilary Clinton, she would win the elections with 278 electoral votes, CBS News reported. However, the report noted that recounts rarely change election results.

In the 2004 presidential election, the Green Party had votes recounted in Ohio, where a net difference of 285 votes was found. That meant George W. Bush beat John Kerry in the state by 118,457 votes, rather than 118,775, as previously counted.</s>NEW YORK — The drama, disputes and falsehoods that permeated Donald Trump's presidential campaign are now roiling his transition to the White House, forcing aides to defend his baseless assertions of illegal voting and sending internal fights spilling into public.

On Monday, a recount effort, led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein and joined by Hillary Clinton's campaign also marched on in three states, based partly on the Stein campaign's unsubstantiated assertion that cyberhacking could have interfered with electronic voting machines. Wisconsin officials approved plans to begin a recount as early as Thursday. Stein also asked for a recount in Pennsylvania and was expected to do the same in Michigan, where officials certified Trump's victory Monday.

Trump has angrily denounced the recounts and now claims without evidence that he, not Clinton, would have won the popular vote if it hadn't been for "millions of people who voted illegally." On Twitter, he singled out Virginia, California and New Hampshire.

There has been no indication of widespread election tampering or voter fraud in those states or any others, and Trump aides struggled Monday to back up their boss' claim.

Trump met Monday with candidates for top Cabinet posts, including retired Gen. David Petraeus, a new contender for secretary of state. Trump is to meet Tuesday with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who is also being considered more seriously for the diplomatic post, and Mitt Romney, who has become a symbol of the internal divisions agitating the transition team.

Petraeus said he spent about an hour with Trump, and he praised the president-elect for showing a "great grasp of a variety of the challenges that are out there."

"Very good conversation and we'll see where it goes from here," he said. A former CIA chief, Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to a charge of mishandling classified information relating to documents he had provided to his biographer, with whom he was having an affair.

Pence is said to be among those backing Romney for State. Romney was fiercely critical of Trump throughout the campaign but is interested in the Cabinet position, and they discussed it during a lengthy meeting earlier this month.

Other top Trump allies, notably campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, have launched a highly unusual public campaign to warn the president-elect that nominating Romney would be seen as a betrayal by his supporters. Conway's comments stirred speculation that she is seeking to either force Trump's hand or give him cover for ultimately passing over Romney.

Three people close to the transition team said Trump had been aware that Conway planned to voice her opinion, both on Twitter and in television interviews. They disputed reports that Trump was furious at her and suggested his decision to consider additional candidates instead highlighted her influence.

Conway served as Trump's third campaign manager and largely succeeded in navigating the minefield of rivalries that ensnared other officials. Trump is said to have offered her a choice of White House jobs — either press secretary or communications director. But people with knowledge of Conway's plans say she is more interested in serving as an outside political adviser, akin to the role President Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe played following the 2008 election.

The wrangling over the State Department post appears to have slowed the announcements of other top jobs. Retired Gen. James Mattis, who impressed Trump during a pre-Thanksgiving meeting, was at the top of the list for secretary, but a final decision had not been made.

Trump was also considering former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for Homeland Security secretary, according to those close to the transition process. Giuliani was initially the front-runner for State and is still in the mix. But questions about his overseas business dealings, as well as the mayor's public campaigning for the job, have given Trump pause.

Even as Trump weighs major decisions that will shape his presidency, he's been unable to avoid being distracted by the recount effort. He spent Sunday on a 12-hour Twitter offensive that included quoting Clinton's concession speech, in which she said the public owed Trump "an open mind and the chance to lead."

His final tweets challenging the integrity of an election he won were reminiscent of his repeated, unsubstantiated assertions during the campaign that the contest might be rigged. Those previous comments sparked an outcry from both Clinton and some Republicans.</s>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — For months Donald Trump called the presidential election "rigged." The president-elect has a different word — "scam" — for the recount effort aimed at revisiting the vote in three pivotal battleground states.

"The people have spoken and the election is over," Trump declared Saturday in his first comments about the growing effort to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He added, "We must accept this result and then look to the future."

The incoming president had been paying little if any attention to Stein's recount push, but Democratic rival Hillary Clinton forced his hand on Saturday by formally joining the effort. Stein, who drew 1 of the vote nationally, is raising millions of dollars to fund the recounts.

"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," Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias wrote Saturday in a blog post. "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."

Elias said Clinton would take the same approach in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Stein were to follow through with recount requests those states, even though that was highly unlikely to change the election outcome.

Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton's 232, with Michigan still too close to call. It takes 270 to win the presidency.

Trump, who repeatedly challenged the integrity of the U.S. election system before his win, called the recount push "a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded."

"The results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing," he said in the statement, which didn't mention Clinton's involvement.

Trump was expected to return to New York on Sunday after spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his West Palm beach estate. His transition team said the president-elect had scheduled a series of Monday meetings with prospective administration hires.

"While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve," Trump said.

Trump's Cuba policy was inconsistent during the campaign. He first suggested he supported President Barack Obama's orders loosening the U.S. trade embargo on the island. He reversed himself less than a month before the election, however, vowing to overturn Obama's order unless Cuba meets demands including "religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners."</s>President-elect Donald Trump claimed without evidence Sunday that “millions” voted illegally in the national election, scoffing at Hillary Clinton’s nearly 2 million edge in the popular vote and returning to his campaign mantra of a rigged race even as he prepares to enter the White House in less than two months.

Trump and his lieutenants assailed an effort — now joined by Clinton — to recount votes in up to three battleground states, calling the push fraudulent, the work of “crybabies” and, in Trump’s estimation, “sad.”

The president-elect went on to cast a shadow over the legitimacy of an election that he actually won, tweeting that “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He further contended that if the popular vote determined the presidency, “It would have been much easier for me to win” it because he would have altered his campaign to pile up overall vote totals, not Electoral College votes.

There’s been no indication of widespread vote manipulation, illegal voting or hacking that materially affected the outcome one way or the other. It’s that very lack of evidence that suggests Trump is likely to prevail in recounts.

As Trump worked to fill foreign policy and national security posts in his Cabinet, a top adviser expressed astonishment that 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney remained under consideration for secretary of state after his campaign-long questioning of Trump’s character, intellect and integrity.

Trump on Sunday tweeted part of Clinton’s concession speech, when she told supporters they must accept that “Donald Trump is going to be our president,” and snippets from her debate remarks, when she denounced the Republican nominee for refusing to say in advance that he would accept the Election Day verdict.

This came on top of his saying it was a “scam” that Green Party nominee Jill Stein was revisiting the vote count in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and as of Wednesday, held a lead of almost 11,000 votes in Michigan, with the results awaiting state certification Monday. His Michigan margin was a hair’s breadth 0.22 percent of the state’s votes.

Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232, not counting Michigan. She could conceivably tip the electoral balance in the remote event that all flipped to her in recounts.

Trump planned to return to New York on Sunday after spending Thanksgiving weekend at his West Palm Beach estate. His transition team said the president-elect had scheduled a series of meetings Monday with prospective administration hires.

Among the jobs Trump has still yet to fill: secretary of state. Internal division over the position again spilled out into the open on Sunday as Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway voiced her concerns with the possibility of Romney landing such a significant position.

Trump supporters “feel a bit betrayed that you can get a Romney back in there after everything he did,” Conway said. “We don’t even know if he voted for Donald Trump. He and his consultants were nothing but awful to Donald Trump for a year.” She added that she was “reflecting what the grassroots are saying.”

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker are among other prospects to serve as the country’s top diplomat.

“I’m all for party unity, but I’m not sure we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position,” Conway said.

Trump’s incoming chief of staff, national party Chairman Reince Priebus, acknowledged that Romney would represent “a team of rivals concept.”

Trump was mostly silent on the brewing recount effort until it became known that Clinton would join it, at least in Wisconsin. On Saturday, a day after Wisconsin officials said they would conduct the first presidential recount in the state’s history, Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias said: “We intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”

Elias said Clinton would take the same approach in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Stein were to follow through with recount requests in those states.

“Hillary Clinton conceded the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and after the results were in,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Nothing will change.”

He quoted from her concession speech — “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead” — and he concluded: “So much time and money will be spent — same result! Sad.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Conway said Stein, “the Hillary people” and others supporting recounts have to decide whether they are going to back a peaceful transition “or if they’re going to be a bunch of crybabies and sore losers about an election that they can’t turn around.”

Priebus, on “Fox News Sunday,” called the effort a “total and complete distraction and a fraud and something that they should drop.”

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.

Elias said Trump also has a vote lead even in the closest states that well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount.

But “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,” he said.

Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by fewer than 22,200 votes, less than 1 percent of votes cast. He won Pennsylvania by some 70,600 votes, just more than 1 percentage point over Clinton.
The campaign of Republican president–elect Donald Trump has called the planned recounts by Green nominee Jill Stein's campaign in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan a "scam" and has criticized the participation of the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.