Donald Trump admitted on camera Friday that he personally directed the Justice Department to sue Alaska over its Senate election before a single general election vote has been counted. “I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters when asked about the lawsuit. This is the president of the United States openly weaponizing the DOJ to pre-cancel an election result he fears is coming, and he wants credit for it.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Alaska, asks a judge to block the state from certifying the Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola, but only if adding every vote cast for a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan to the senator’s total would have changed the outcome. Nobody is alleging a single fraudulent ballot. The federal government is arguing that Alaskans cannot read their own ballots, and apparently only if the Republican loses.
The complaint claims the suit exists “to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska.” What it actually does is point the Justice Department of the United States at a private citizen, a retired teacher from Petersburg, whose offense is sharing a name with a sitting senator.
Alaska Already Settled This Months Ago
This exact fight has already been fought and resolved. Alaska’s Division of Elections kicked Daniel J. Sullivan off the primary ballot in June, arguing his candidacy was designed to confuse voters. He sued, and the Alaska Supreme Court ordered him back on the ballot. The state then listed the two men so voters could tell them apart. The senator appears as Dan S. Sullivan, labeled a registered Republican and the incumbent. The other man appears as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. with no party listed at all.
The state lost in court, fixed the ballot, and moved on. That should have been the end of it.
The primary results then demolished the entire confusion theory. Peltola finished first with 49.5% of the vote. Sen. Sullivan took 41.4%, and Daniel J. Sullivan got just 2.5%. Hand the senator every single one of the other man’s votes and he still loses by almost 6 points. A review of the returns found that the second Sullivan’s support came disproportionately from left leaning districts, meaning Democratic voters, not confused Republicans, put him into the top four. The government’s own numbers destroy the government’s own argument.
Sullivan’s Campaign And Murkowski Are Undercutting The Lawsuit
The people this lawsuit supposedly protects want nothing to do with it. Sullivan campaign spokesman Nate Adams said the campaign played no role in the filing and told reporters that “Alaskans can tell the difference” between the candidates on their ballot. That is the lawsuit’s central premise, voter confusion, dismissed in a text message by the incumbent’s own spokesman.
Alaska’s other Republican senator went further. Lisa Murkowski said Alaskans need no help voting for their preferred candidates and that the state already handled the issue by clearly distinguishing the candidates on the ballot. “The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit,” she wrote. When a state’s entire Republican Senate delegation is publicly telling the DOJ to stand down, the game is up.
The legal experts were even harsher. Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame, called the department’s theory one of the worst legal arguments he has ever seen, writing that the claim is so thin there is essentially no likelihood of success in court. Election law scholar Rick Hasen pointed out that the entire case rests on the preamble of the National Voter Registration Act, the introductory language stating the law is meant to protect electoral integrity. A preamble grants the federal government no power to do anything, and the DOJ has no authority over who appears on a state’s ballot in the first place.
This is also the same Justice Department that is now 0 for 26 in its lawsuits trying to force states to hand over unredacted voter files. Losing in court is not the point. Muddying the result is.
The Timing Gives The Whole Game Away
The deadline to challenge Alaska’s primary results passed on September 10, more than a month before this lawsuit appeared. By Friday morning, more than 30,000 Alaskans had already cast early and absentee ballots. The administration waited until people were actively voting to file paperwork designed for the day after its candidate loses.
The desperation is sitting right there in the polling. Rasmussen Reports, hardly a Democratic shop, has Peltola ahead of Sullivan 44% to 42%. The FiftyPlusOne polling average puts her up 49.7% to 47.7%. This is a race inside 2 points with control of the United States Senate on the line, and the president’s answer is a lawsuit that pre-contests the result.
Peltola called it what it is on Friday. “This is clearly corruption,” she said, describing the suit as a desperate attempt to silence Alaskans and a distraction from the affordability crisis and the Iran war driving up prices. Notice that she is the one talking about the cost of heating homes through an Alaska winter while the incumbent’s allies are in federal court trying to pre-cancel an election.
Alaska is not even the only state Trump is trashing before the votes come in. At his Fort Myers rally that same Friday, he declared that New Mexico has crooked elections, offering no evidence, no case, nothing. New Mexico’s secretary of state called the claim tired and patently false. It is the same move every time: brand the election crooked in advance so the excuse is sitting there waiting if he loses. It fits a pattern of moves to tilt the midterms that courts have only partially stopped.
Add it all up. Trump bragged on camera that he ordered his Justice Department to block an Alaska election result over a candidate the Alaska Supreme Court already placed on the ballot. The incumbent’s own campaign says voters can tell the candidates apart. Murkowski says the suit should never have been filed. The math from the primary shows the confusion theory is fiction. Donald Trump is not protecting anyone’s vote. He is trying to cancel the ones that do not go his way before they are even counted, and they only get this scared when they know they are losing.
