The White House says there is no evidence to support Donald Trump’s claim of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 US presidential election.
Press Secretary Josh Earnest dismissed the president-elect’s unsubstantiated allegations that millions of people had cast illegal votes.
Trump also alleged voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California, states which Hillary Clinton won.
Earnest deferred to Trump’s team for further comment.
“What I can say, as an objective fact, is that there has been no evidence produced to substantiate a claim like that,” he told reporters at a White House briefing.
Trump, who won the all-important electoral college count, aired his grievances with the election result in a tweet on Sunday.
“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he wrote.
The president-elect’s Twitter outburst comes after the camp of Mrs Clinton, his Democratic rival, said it would support a vote recount in Wisconsin initiated by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, reports the BBC.
Ms Stein also moved to issue a recount in Pennsylvania and is expected to do the same in Michigan, where Trump’s 16 electoral votes were certified on Monday.
Trump won by two-tenths of a percentage point out of nearly 4.8 million votes, making it the closest presidential race in Michigan in more than 75 years.
He is the first Republican presidential nominee to win Michigan since 1988.
Results would need to be overturned in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to alter the outcome of the November presidential election – something analysts say is highly unlikely.
Concerns over the possibility of Russian interference were expressed in the run-up to the vote.
Mrs Clinton’s campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias, said there was no evidence to conclude the election had been sabotaged, but “we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported”.