3:37 P.M.
Obama Had a Secret Plan in Case Trump Rejected 2016 Election Results
By Mattathias Schwartz
In October 2016, senior staff in the Obama White House discussed what they should do if Hillary Clinton won the November election and Donald Trump refused to accept the result as legitimate. They had cause to be worried. At that time, Trump had openly speculated that the election might be “rigged.†During his final debate with Clinton on October 19, he said that his opponent “should never have been allowed to run†and declined to answer the question of whether he would concede. “I’ll keep you in suspense,†the Republican nominee said.
“It wasn’t a hypothetical,†Ben Rhodes, Obama’s senior aide and speechwriter, told Intelligencer. “Trump was already saying it on the campaign trail.â€
The Obama White House plan, according to interviews with Rhodes and Jen Psaki, Obama’s communications director, called for congressional Republicans, former presidents, and former Cabinet-level officials including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to try and forestall a political crisis by validating the election result. In the event that Trump tried to dispute a Clinton victory, they would affirm the result as well as the conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community that Russian interference in the election sought to favor Trump, and not Clinton. Some Republicans were already aware of Russian interference from intelligence briefings given to leaders from both parties during the chaotic months before the election. “We wanted to handle the Russia information in a way that was as bipartisan as possible,†Rhodes said.
more
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/obama-had-a-secret-plan-in-case-trump-rejected-2016-results.html
