Trump in 2016 said ‘badly defeated’ Democrats were demanding recounts to ‘fill up their coffers’

President’s campaign is fundraising for recount effort, despite attacks on rivals in previous election for doing the same

Donald Trump, whose campaign wants recounts in Wisconsin following his election defeat, once derided the same demands from Democrats as attempts to “fill up their coffers”.  

The Republican president, who has so far refused to concede Tuesday’s election to the Democratic president-elect Joe Biden, complained four years ago that opposition attempts to recount votes were money-raising “scams”.

“The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralised Dems,” the then president-elect wrote on Twitter in 2016.

Four years on, his campaign is due to request a recount in Wisconsin within days, and was reported to have taken donations to do so, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.

According to an Associated Press (AP) projection, Mr Trump lost the “blue wall” state by around 20,000 votes, or 0.62 percentage points, in last week’s vote.

And, under Wisconsin state law, a candidate can request all ballots be recounted when that margin is within 1 percentage point.

When Mr Trump carried the state by 0.77 percentage points in 2016 and defeated the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, her campaign backed a Green Party bid to recount votes in the Rust Belt state.

Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee in 2016, admitted that recounts would not improve Ms Clinton’s chances in three states where they were requested, but instead show that “recounts are part of an election integrity movement to attempt to shine a light on just how untrustworthy the US election system is”.  

Within one day of announcing a fundraising attempt to support those recounts in 2016, Ms Stein was reported to have raised more $3.3 million (£2.2 million), Fortune reported at the time.

Mr Trump, who was triumphant, then tweeted that the recounts were attempts to “fill up their coffers” as well as challenges to his surprise 2016 election win.

While statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes, Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, claimed there were “reports of irregularities in several counties” and pointed to alleged printing errors in counties the Republican carried against Mr Biden, according to AP.

The Democrat, who will become the next president of the United States, is expected to remain unchallenged following a Wisconsin recount, in addition to a Trump campaign lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania on unfounded claims.

Other Trump campaign lawsuits filed in Michigan, Georgia and Nevada were rejected because there was no basis to support the president’s claims of election “fraud”.