In the raging recount battle, Jill Stein is right — and Obama is wrong

On Nov. 29 the seven Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote to President Obama and called for his administration to declassify additional information “concerning the Russian government and the U.S. election.”

Every Democrat and patriotic American should support the recount initiative pursued by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president in the recently concluded election. If there is even a small possibility that the results were tampered with by Russian espionage, a recount would be invaluable to protecting the integrity of vote counting in key electoral states.

{mosads}As I noted in my last column, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin that is currently more than 2 million votes. The outcome in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania was close, with Trump prevailing by razor-thin margins.

I am not charging that there was a successful interference with the vote counting by Russia or any other party. I am suggesting that the recount should proceed and be widely supported to determine, to the degree it is possible, whether any such Election Day interference occurred, especially since some technology experts believe it was technically possible.

There are some who have questioned Stein’s motive in seeking a recount. Shame on them! Her motives are not important. What is important is that the American people have a right to know whether the votes were counted accurately and properly. I applaud Stein for making the effort.

We know, from authoritative public statements of American intelligence and counterintelligence officials, that Russia clearly interfered in our election campaign. As American intelligence officials have stated, Russia was behind a string of hacking crimes including the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

There is no dispute that the Russians did engage in hacking and that all of Russia’s publicly known election-related crimes were against Democrats.

By contrast, it is not known whether the Russian hacking involved tampering with, or trying to fix, the results on Election Day. However, it is also known from public information provided by intelligence officials that Russia did launch probes that tested election systems in key states. Why would Russia launch these probes if it did not have an interest in ascertaining whether voting interference was possible?

To my knowledge there has not been any declarative statement by American intelligence or counterintelligence officials about whether Russia attempted or successfully executed any Election Day hacking or other actions.

David Sanger in The New York Times reported that an administration “statement” concluded there was no hacking. There was no document offered and no names attached to this “statement.” I contacted Sanger and asked who exactly issued this “statement” and who exactly within the administration agreed with it. Sanger did not respond.

I then contacted the administration directly and asked these questions. Based on the conditions of my exchanges with the administration I can only say that a “senior administration official” told me this, which was virtually identical to the “statement” Sanger quoted:

“The Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day. As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on election day. As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.”

I responded by asking this senior administration official, again, whether or not American intelligence officials agreed with this view. I received no reply to his inquiry, as of now.

My view is that this administration statement, without public support from the intelligence community that agrees with it, is far too definitive. A recount is required to ascertain more facts about whether the votes were counted accurately and without interference.

For these reasons, I believe that Jill Stein is right and President Obama, whose opinion has only been stated by this “senior administration official,” is wrong.

The recount should proceed. As Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have proposed, the administration should declassify far more information about the degree of Russian attempts to interfere with our election.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Chief Deputy Majority Whip Bill Alexander (D-Ark.). He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. Contact him at brentbbi@webtv.net. 

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