President Donald Trump has called for the prosecution of a Democratic Alaska Senate candidate amid allegations that her campaign attempted to try to recruit a Republican candidate with an almost identical name to the Republican incumbent.
In comments to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said, “I think they should be prosecuted,” referring to Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), the Democrats’ nominee for the Senate seat, and Dan. J. Sullivan, who entered the Republican race against Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-Alaska.). Earlier on social media, Trump wrote that Peltola should face political and legal “consequences for what she has done.”
“It’s terrible what’s happened in Alaska,” Trump said, citing a New York Times report that alleged her campaign sought to recruit the other Sullivan. He said Peltola should resign.
“That’s a fraud to the public,” Trump said, adding that it was a “plot by the Democratic party” and that “they got caught.” Trump called it “voter fraud at the highest level.”
Peltola’s campaign and Dan. J. Sullivan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s attorney general, Todd Blanche, also suggested in a Wednesday interview that a crime may have been involved.
“They are cheating. Let’s call it what it is—they are cheating,” Blanche told Fox News on Wednesday. “They are trying to take votes away from the incumbent, not by running an election, and not by running on issues, but by putting up a person with the same name so they’d confuse Alaskans.”
“It cannot be in this country that you can have an election that is cheating and fraud, but that there’s nothing wrong and that we’re all okay with that,” he added.
The remarks from Blanche and Trump were made after Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he had ordered an investigation into Peltola’s Senate campaign in light of the report.
According to the report, Peltola’s campaign was able to recruit Dan. J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, to register to enter the race just three days before the June 1 deadline. Notably, he had switched his party affiliation from the dissolved Alaska Independence Party to Republican in order to file. Alaska, unlike most other states, has ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank their candidates in their order of preference.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has been a frequent critic of Trump from the Republican side, said that “ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process” and said that voters “deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign.”
“What has been revealed is a pattern of lies and coverups and a culture of deception that belongs nowhere in our elections or among our elected officials,” she wrote in a post on X.
During a campaign stop in Soldotna, Peltola called the NY Times’ report a “distraction” from issues, such as Sen. Sullivan’s support of the war in Iran.
“This is just another distraction, it’s another diversion,” she also said in a video posted online. “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.”
In a statement, Peltola’s campaign said she “got in this race because Alaskans deserve a champion who is fighting to lower their costs and put Alaska first, and no tweet or threat from any DC politician will keep her away from that fight.”
Earlier this year, a top state elections official ruled the non-incumbent candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, ineligible for the primary ballot, concluding that his declaration of candidacy was filed “with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.” The case went to the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled he was qualified to run.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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