Former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta insisted Thursday on MSNBC that the campaign team accepted the results of the 2016 election.
"Let's start with the facts," Podesta said. "Hillary Clinton won more than—nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump nationally."
"He won the electoral college, we accepted the results," he continued. "But that doesn't change the fact that she won the popular vote and by a very substantial margin."
Clinton publicly conceded the day after the November election. "Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead," she told supporters.
But a month later, Clinton lawyers joined third-party candidate Jill Stein's lawsuit to hold a recount in Wisconsin, a state won by Trump.
The Clinton campaign also lent public support to an effort to get members of the electoral college to receive classified intelligence briefings about the extent of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, an effort the "Resistance" hyped as a way of overturning the results.
"Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed," Podesta said in a statement.