DOJ Sues to Halt Alaska Senate Certification as Trump Calls for Peltola Prosecution

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on late last week demanding that a federal court hold the certification of the Alaska U.S. Senate race. The department argues that voters may have been confused by the presence of two candidates with the same name on the ballot. President Donald Trump directed the move, aiming to preemptively contest a potential Republican loss in the state. The lawsuit seeks to delay the official declaration of a possible Democratic victory until the confusion is resolved.

The administration followed the filing with a call to prosecute Democratic candidate Mary Peltola. Peltola, a former congresswoman, is the target of the legal push based on a New York Times report. The report indicated her campaign helped recruit a challenger named Dan Sullivan to draw votes from the Republican incumbent, also named Dan Sullivan. Trump told reporters this week that he pushed for the legal action, stating, “I’m the one that said do it.” He added that he would accept the election results if they were honest elections.

This legal intervention marks a shift from rhetoric to executive action. For years, Trump has claimed that elections are rigged when his party trails. He has used midterm rallies to criticize election officials by name and to label the ranked choice voting system in Alaska a scam. The certification lawsuit elevates these claims, indicating a preparation to use presidential power to reverse a possible loss as the party struggles to hold control of Congress.

Earlier this week, the president announced a $1 million bounty for anyone who provides proof of prior or current voter fraud in the country. It remains unclear how he plans to follow through on that promise. Theresa Lee, a senior attorney with the ACLU, said her organization has been preparing for such moves for at least the last year and a half.

The Justice Department has taken similar aggressive steps in other states. The department sued California to block it from counting ballots, alleging the state had 20,000 noncitizens on its rolls. It made a similar demand of Washington regarding about 400 voters. A federal judge rejected the California demands on Wednesday, and both states said the requests came too close to the election to fulfill. The department also seized ballots and election records from Georgia’s Fulton County related to the 2020 presidential election.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department does not want to intervene in elections but had no choice in Alaska. Blanche told CNN on Sunday, “We are not doing anything improper.” He added that President Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape or form.

Republican allies in Alaska have not fully supported the federal move. Senator Lisa Murkowski said the administration should never have filed the lawsuit. The state’s Republican-controlled government filed court papers to try to have the case dismissed. Sen. Dan Sullivan did not state whether he supported the suit. Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, called the legal argument one of the worst he has ever seen. He noted that a lot of the conduct seems impulsive rather than strategic.

Early voting has proceeded quietly, with about 35 million Americans casting ballots without notable disruption. This mirrors the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia in 2025, where Democrats braced for action but saw no major issues. Pat McCrory, a former North Carolina governor and part of the group Right Count, said the Constitution protects the system from anarchy. He described the document as a cement wall. Matt Dallek, a Georgetown political scientist, said courts are likely to throw out most of these charges but that the move intensifies the signal to supporters that elections are rigged.

The administration has pushed out career staff and stocked its ranks with people who helped challenge the 2020 election. This has raised concern that it could deploy immigration agents, the FBI, or the military to the polls. Multiple administration officials have denied such plans. Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist, warned that the threat is that the president will take actions that can’t be undone before courts can weigh in.