Trump Says He Ordered Suit That Could Block Alaska's Senate Certification

Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the Justice Department case on TV but wouldn't say whether Trump gave him the order.

President Trump said Friday that he ordered the Justice Department suit that could keep Alaska from certifying its Senate race if Dan Sullivan loses, PBS NewsHour reported.

The whole case turns on a name. A retired Petersburg teacher, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., is on the Nov. 3 ballot next to the Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, who polls show in a tight race with Democrat Mary Peltola, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The department wants certification held, pending an investigation, if the senator loses and would have won had every vote for his namesake gone to him instead.

"I'm the one that said do it," Trump told reporters in remarks PBS aired, and he called the challenger the fake Sullivan. Trump also said he didn't think the man had ever voted. PBS NewsHour noted on air that he has voted in Alaska races before.

On Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the case on CBS's "Face the Nation" and on CNN's "State of the Union," CNBC reported. When CBS host Margaret Brennan laid out two Dan Sullivans on the ballot and a suit filed preemptively to block certification, Blanche said she had described facts that were "at best misleading, but really a lie to your viewers," according to the CBS transcript. It wasn't simply two Dan Sullivans, he said, because Alaska's elections director had concluded the second one was running to confuse voters.

Brennan kept asking whom Trump had told. Blanche said he'd never discuss his conversations with the president and that the department's own civil rights lawyers drafted the suit. When she asked again whom Trump meant, he said, "I have no idea who he was referring to."

His defense is that this isn't a federal takeover. Blanche argued that Alaska's Supreme Court never weighed federal law, and that the department only wants ballots preserved so Alaska's own officials can tell whether voters were confused. In a social media post Saturday, he wrote that the department doesn't seek to stop the certification, the Daily News reported. The complaint itself asks the state not to certify any result that voter confusion may have affected.

On Friday, Peltola's campaign, Alaskans for Mary, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court in Alaska to let them join the case and dismiss it, NBC News and the Daily News reported. "Alaskans, apparently, must elect Senator Dan S. Sullivan or the President will not let them elect anyone at all," their motion says. Peltola called the suit a corrupt attempt to interfere, the Daily News reported.

The motion argues that the only law the department cites, the National Voter Registration Act, deals with signing up voters, not with which candidates appear on a ballot. It also says that assuming every vote for the namesake was meant for the senator insults voters. The ACLU and the ACLU of Alaska also moved to join and get the suit thrown out.

The Democrats also doubt the state will fight hard, because its own elections office tried to keep the challenger off the ballot. In June, election officials removed him after Division of Elections director Carol Beecher concluded he wanted to confuse or mislead voters. A state judge reversed that, and the Alaska Supreme Court upheld the ruling. The Alaska Department of Law said Friday it was reviewing the suit and had no comment.

The challenger denies trying to confuse anyone; he has said he got into the race because he thinks the senator has represented Alaskans badly, according to the Daily News. He had no immediate comment on the suit, and Sen. Sullivan's campaign said it had no prior knowledge of the suit and no role in it.

David Becker, an election expert who once worked as a Justice Department civil rights attorney, told PBS NewsHour the question sits entirely under Alaska law and Washington has no authority to step in. He called a suit to block certification 11 days before a vote unprecedented.

In the August primary, Peltola took 49.5% of the vote and the senator 41.4%. His namesake got 2.5%.

The court hasn't set a hearing date, NBC News reported. In the meantime, Alaskans are already voting on ballots that list one man as Dan S. Sullivan, the incumbent, and the other as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party.

Source: pbs.org, retrieved October 25, 2026. Other sources: adn.com, CBS News, NBC News.