WASHINGTON • Nearly three weeks after Election Day, Mrs Hillary Clinton's campaign said it would participate in a recount process in Wisconsin incited by a third-party candidate and would join any potential recounts in two other closely contested states, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The Clinton campaign held out little hope of success in any of the three states and said it had seen no "actionable evidence" of vote hacking that might taint the results or otherwise provide new grounds for challenging Mr Donald Trump's victory.

But it suggested it was going along with the recount effort to assure supporters that it was doing everything possible to verify that hacking by Russia or other irregularities had not affected the results.

In a post on Medium, Mr Marc Elias, the Clinton team's general counsel, said the campaign would take part in the Wisconsin recount being set off by Green Party candidate Jill Stein and would also participate if Ms Stein made good on her plans to seek recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Mrs Clinton lost those three states by a total of little more than 100,000 votes, sealing her Electoral College defeat by Mr Trump.

In Wisconsin, Mr Trump led by 22,177 votes. In Michigan, he had a lead of 10,704 votes, and in Pennsylvania his advantage was 70,638 votes.

He said "the people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, 'We must accept this result and then look to the future'".

"It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day - the most of any Republican since 1988," said Mr Trump.

"This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing," he said.

NYTIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE