By Tierney Sneed, Patrick Svitek, Tori B. Powell

(CNN) — Alaska officials said new revelations in The New York Times about efforts by Democrats to recruit a Senate candidate with the same name as GOP incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan do not change the state’s opposition to a Trump administration lawsuit seeking to potentially delay certification of the election.

The Times story, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Law told CNN in an email, confirms the “initial concerns” election officials had about the candidacy of Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, but it has “no impact on the current litigation.”

“Placing candidates on the ballot is a matter of state law, not federal law,” said spokesperson Sam Curtis, noting that the Alaska Supreme Court has already decided that Daniel J. Sullivan would be on the ballot. The Justice Department, meanwhile, is citing a federal law in the case that “does not dictate what candidates can run in elections and does not authorize the relief the DOJ seeks,” Curtis said.

“The Division is bound by the Alaska Supreme Court’s order and is committed to running a fair election and assisting voters as needed,” Curtis said.

The story published Wednesday rattled one of the country’s most competitive Senate races with less than a week until Election Day.

Mary Peltola, the state’s former at-large House member, is considered one of Senate Democrats’ top recruits of the midterms and her campaign continues to deny any involvement in Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign. Republicans have been concerned enough about the race that both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have made trips to Alaska in recent weeks.

Trump, who has complained about the two Sullivan issue for months and said he directed the Justice Department lawsuit last week, piled on with multiple social media posts slamming Peltola over the story, including one that said she “should be removed from the Ballot and prosecuted.”

“So should the FAKE Dan Sullivan,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Nothing else will do!”

The incumbent’s campaign accused Peltola in a statement of spending months “gaslighting Alaskans.”

“I am pressing my opponent to come clean,” Sullivan said while speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday night. “She’s been lying for over a year. She’s run a campaign about supposed corruption. She’s the corrupt one working with DC insiders to trick Alaskans. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to make sure every single Alaskan knows about this.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche on Fox News touted the Times’ story as proof that the Justice Department was right in bringing its unprecedented federal lawsuit. But when pressed over whether anything illegal had occurred that gives the DOJ the ability to intervene in the election, which is run by states, Blanche could not say.

The Justice Department on Wednesday told a federal judge it would like to seek answers and evidence from Peltola’s campaign regarding the Times report and Sullivan issue, which it called a “conspiracy.”

Late Wednesday, Alaska’s Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy also said he was ordering an investigation into whether criminal charges or civil action should be brought over the alleged Democratic efforts to confuse voters.

“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” he said on X. “Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”

Some Democrats noted that Republicans have also meddled in the race to boost spoiler candidates. An array of GOP groups, for example, contributed to a super PAC that attacked Peltola in the primary and promoted a lesser-known Democratic candidate and a Green Party candidate.

“This is basically a more extreme version of what the parties do all the time, which is try to find a candidate on the other side who can siphon votes away from the major party competitor,” election law specialist Rick Hasen told CNN. “And, you know, you can’t really hold someone responsible for impure motives.”

Dean Franita Tolson of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law said the Times reporting doesn’t give the Department of Justice’s lawsuit any more credence.

“At the end of the day, the federal government should not try to block certification of a race because they don’t like the outcome,” she said.

“It, I think, makes the Peltola campaign look bad,” Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, added. “I think it will adversely affect her in the eyes of some voters, but from litigation perspective, I think it really won’t affect things at this stage.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

The-CNN-Wire
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