President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded that Democrat Mary Peltola be pulled from Alaska's U.S. Senate ballot and face legal consequences after a New York Times investigation found her campaign worked with Democratic operatives to recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan to run as a spoiler against incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.
"It has just been determined that the Democrats in Alaska illegally searched for, and recruited, a man named Dan Sullivan to run against our distinguished Republican Senator, Dan Sullivan, in order to defraud, confuse, and obfuscate the Election, thereby taking votes away from the REAL Senator, Dan Sullivan," Trump wrote on Truth Social, according to RedState.
The president did not stop there. In a second post, he said Peltola "should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done, A FRAUD ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, and Dan Sullivan should be allowed to run without either Mary Peltola or FAKE Dan Sullivan on the Ballot." Trump also called for Peltola to leave the race and be prosecuted, PBS News reported.
What the Times Found
The New York Times reported that Peltola's team worked with people trying to recruit a retired Petersburg teacher, Dan J. Sullivan, to enter the Senate race. Text messages, interviews and documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign showed the effort went beyond a single recruit, according to the Times.
The reporting indicates the group also worked to coax other would-be candidates into the race. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was involved in the effort, per the Times, and both Peltola's campaign and the DSCC have denied recruiting candidates.
Dan J. Sullivan told Courthouse News last week that he entered the race because he wanted change, per HuffPost. He appears on the ballot alongside the incumbent senator and Peltola in Tuesday's election.
Peltola has repeatedly denied her campaign's involvement in the second Sullivan's candidacy. The Times reporting directly contradicts those denials.
DOJ Lawsuit Already Filed
The Trump administration filed a lawsuit last week asking the Justice Department to block certification of Alaska's Senate race if Sen. Sullivan loses, according to HuffPost. The suit was filed before Wednesday's Truth Social posts and signals the White House is treating the matter as a federal election integrity issue, not a local campaign spat.
The legal ground is contested. HuffPost noted that while recruiting spoiler candidates may raise ethical questions, the practice is not illegal — despite Trump's characterization of the scheme as fraud. That distinction will matter if the DOJ's suit advances.
The Alaska race is tight, and a second name identical to the Republican incumbent's on the ballot could siphon votes in a state where name recognition decides close contests. The president's demand that Peltola be removed from the ballot altogether has no clear procedural path under Alaska election law, which does not provide for removing a major-party nominee days before an election over allegations of campaign tactics.
Peltola's Response
Peltola's campaign has denied involvement in recruiting either Dan Sullivan and said it did not recruit other candidates into the race, per the Times and HuffPost. The campaign did not address the specific text messages and documents described in the Times reporting in statements given to other outlets.
The DSCC has likewise denied involvement. Neither the Peltola campaign nor the DSCC has responded publicly to Trump's Wednesday posts calling for prosecution.
What It Means for Alaska Voters
Alaska voters head to the polls Tuesday with two Dan Sullivans on the ballot and a sitting Democratic nominee who, according to the state's largest newspaper of record across the country, worked with national party operatives to confuse them. The DOJ's suit, if it succeeds, would block certification of a Sullivan loss — an extraordinary intervention in a state race that would almost certainly be litigated for months.
The president's posts also put the Alaska race squarely into the national midterm conversation in its final week. Republicans hold the Senate narrowly, and a pickup in Alaska — or a spoiler-driven loss — carries consequences far beyond the state.
An Instagram post circulating Wednesday showed a clip of Trump assailing the New York Times over its reporting, though the post's caption as indexed did not include a full transcript of his remarks.
Our Take
Here's what the legacy media won't say plainly: a national party apparatus, according to the New York Times' own reporting, went shopping for a man with the exact same name as a sitting Republican senator and put him on the ballot. That is not politics as usual. That is a scheme to make voters pull the wrong lever, and the people who ran it knew exactly what they were doing.
Peltola's denials were always thin. Now the Times — hardly a friend of this president — has produced text messages and documents that contradict her. Alaskans deserve an honest choice on Tuesday, and right now they don't have one. The DOJ lawsuit should proceed, the fake Dan Sullivan should be exposed for what he is, and every voter in that state should know who tried to play them for fools. The question now is whether Alaska's election officials will let this stand — or whether they'll do their jobs.
