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There was a thread on FR early in this process from a liberal source. The original news source was written by a Hillary supporter who said that they would like the result changed, but did not think that a recount approach would be fruitful or helpful. Instead, they suggested that Stein was just fleecing Democrats for funds. Their evidence was a statement on Stein’s funding page that said the funds might not be used for recount costs.

Based on that speculation, I posit that Stein intended to engage in a few low cost recounts and pocket the rest of the money. It would certainly explain her exasperation with Hillary’s campaign joining the recount effort.

I think that Hillary’s campaign saw the appeal for funds as money grabbing and decided to cut off Stein at the knees. First, the addition of Hillary to the recount request would give the request legal “standing”. Second, the Pennsylvania recount request had to be submitted to a court. Hillary’s people might have kept Stein from submitting a “weak” court document designed to fail. A successful court bid in PA would have meant fewer funds left over.

Now, if Stein has dropped the effort in PA, as reported, that further supports the above conjecture that Stein was trying to get either denied, thus expending no funds, or get a low-cost machine recount after pulling in lots of money.