House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has launched an investigation into allegations that Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign attempted to recruit a candidate with a similar name as Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-Alaska) to take votes away from the incumbent, his office announced on Thursday.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, also said he is investigating Peltola, citing a report from the New York Times that her campaign sought to “manipulate Alaska’s elections” by allegedly finding a candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, to enter the race.
Peltola’s campaign has denied the allegations in statements to media outlets.
Comer alleged Democrats “schemed to rig the U.S. Senate election in Alaska by deliberately confusing voters.”
“This is part of a broader pattern of misconduct by today’s Democrat Party,” he said. “Americans deserve answers about this latest attempt by Democrats to defraud the American people, and we will get them.”
Comer said he is seeking testimony from Democratic Party operatives, including Elisa Rios, the former manager of Peltola’s campaign, and Jerid Kurtz, a operative who was reported as allegedly being involved in recruiting individuals named Dan Sullivan to enter the race.
Dunleavy’s order and Comer’s announcement came as President Donald Trump called for the criminal prosecution of Peltola and her campaign and said the former House lawmaker should resign.
“That’s a fraud to the public… a plot by the Democratic party,” Trump said, adding that “they got caught.” Trump also described it “voter fraud at the highest level” in comments to reporters on Wednesday.
In an appearance on Fox News, Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested he thinks a crime was involved to impact elections in the state.
“They are cheating. Let’s call it what it is—they are cheating,” Blanche said 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.”
Peltola’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on Thursday. But during a campaign stop in Soldotna, Peltola suggested the Times’ report was 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 said in a video posted online. “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.”
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance did not call for Peltola to be prosecuted but said he supported a probe into possible election fraud.
“I mean, she is a person who, for months now, has pretended that she has had nothing to do with the fact that they have put a fraudulent person, a person explicitly designed to confuse Alaska voters, on the ballot,” Vance told reporters ahead of a campaign trip to Texas. “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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