Trump backers try to block vote recounts

Move to fill top cabinet posts quickened

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Dec 3, (RTRS): Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump moved on Friday to halt the Green Party’s requests for long-shot recounts of the presidential votes in three states where Trump, a Republican, won with narrow victories.

Lawsuits were pending in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three “Rust Belt” states which bucked their history of supporting Democrats and gave Trump thin wins in the Nov 8 election.

The Green Party has said its requests for recounts in those states are focused on ensuring the integrity of the US voting system and not on changing the result of the election.

Even if the recounts take place, they are extremely unlikely to change the overall outcome of the election, in which Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton. Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who garnered only about 1 percent of the vote, has said the recount campaign is not targeted at Trump or Clinton.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, filed a lawsuit on Friday to halt the requested recount in his state, where Trump won with a margin of roughly 10,700 votes over Clinton.

Recounting all of the state’s votes “threatens to silence all Michigan votes for president” because of an impending federal deadline to finalize results, Schuette said in a statement.

In Wisconsin, where the recount is already underway, a federal judge on Friday rejected a request for an emergency stay by the Trump-supporting political action committee Great America PAC. US District Judge James Peterson scheduled a hearing for Dec 9 to consider whether to halt the recount at that time.

The lawsuit filed by the PAC cited as legal precedent the US Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision that ended the 2000 election and Florida recount.

The presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, or a tally of wins from the stateby-state contests, rather than by the popular national vote. Federal law requires states to resolve disputes over the appointment of electors by Dec 13.

Trump surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, with 306 electoral votes, and the recount would have to flip the result to Clinton in all three states to change the overall result. In the popular vote, Clinton had a margin of more than 2.5 million votes over Trump, the Cook Political Report said.

Schuette also criticized Stein for the potential expense of a recount, although Stein said last week that she had raised $3.5 million to cover some costs. A Schuette spokeswoman said on Friday that Stein had contributed $787,500, but the recount would cost some $5 million.

Stein has scheduled a news conference for Monday at Trump Tower in New York City.

“We won’t stand down as Donald Trump and his allies seek to frivolously obstruct the legal processes set up to ensure the accuracy, security and fairness of our elections,” Stein said in a statement on Friday.

Michigan’s recount is expected to begin on Wednesday, barring court action, after the state’s board of canvassers deadlocked 2-2 on Friday on a motion objecting to the recount, the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office said.

The board of canvassers is required to respond in writing to Schuette’s lawsuit by midday on Tuesday.

The Trump campaign’s own attorneys have also moved to block recount efforts in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

A Pennsylvania court has scheduled a hearing for Monday morning in Harrisburg, the state capital. In an order on Friday, the court told lawyers for both sides to be prepared to talk about whether enough evidence of wrongdoing exists to keep the case going.

According to Stein’s website on Friday, the Green Party had raised $6.8 million so far for the recount and has

a goal of $9.5 million.

Lawyers for Clinton have said they would take part in the Wisconsin recount effort to ensure her campaign is legally represented, and that they would do the same if necessary in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump won Wisconsin with a margin of roughly 22,000 votes over Clinton, and in Pennsylvania he won with a margin of about 49,500 votes.

Candidates

Meanwhile, Trump said he expected to have most members of his Cabinet announced next week, interviewing more candidates at Trump Tower for top jobs in his administration as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20.

Trump is still weighing who to choose as secretary of state. The Republican president-elect said on Thursday he had chosen retired Marine Corps General James Mattis as defense secretary and would make a formal announcement on that on Monday.

“We have tremendous people joining the Cabinet and beyond the Cabinet. You’ll be seeing almost all of them next week,” Republican Trump, who has never previously held public office, said in an interview that aired on Friday on Fox News.

Even without his full foreign policy

team in place, Trump had more phone calls with foreign leaders, breaking tradition by speaking with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the first such contact by a president-elect since President Jimmy Carter adopted a oneChina policy in 1979.

Trump also invited Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte to the White House next year during a “very engaging, animated” phone conversation, according to a Duterte aide. Duterte has sparred with Democratic President Barack Obama and insulted him. Obama canceled a planned meeting with him in September.

A statement issued by Trump’s transition team made no mention of an invitation.

Domestically, Trump plans to move quickly after taking office on his goals to overhaul taxation, healthcare and immigration laws, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said in an interview published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Top priorities include curbing illegal immigration, abolishing and replacing President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare program, and filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Pence told the newspaper.

Asked what he would do on his first day in office, Trump told Fox News he may address his campaign pledge

to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, though he did not go into specifics.

“We could do the wall, we’re going to do some repealing, we’re going to do some executive orders that we think are inappropriate,” Trump told Fox, referring to the possibility of reversing executive orders issued by Obama, a Democrat, during his eight-year term.

On Friday Trump named an advisory panel led by the chief executive of Blackstone, the world’s biggest alternative asset manager, stacked with executives from some of America’s largest companies, such as Wal Mart Stores Inc, Boeing Co and International Business Machines Corp .

On Thursday he claimed success in persuading Carrier Corp, an Indiana an air conditioner maker, to keep about 1,000 jobs in the United States rather than move them to Mexico. But that drew criticism from former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a Trump supporter who had been reported to be under consideration for a Cabinet job.

“When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favoring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent,” she wrote in an opinion piece on the Young Conservatives website youngcons.com.

“Instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail,” she wrote.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had an investment of up to $250,000 in 2014 in United Technologies Corp., the parent company of Carrier.

Trump is weighing who to put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, which enforces immigration law and plays a key role in preventing terror attacks; a director of national intelligence; and several Cabinet posts dealing with energy and the environment.