Blanche defends DOJ lawsuit blocking Alaska Senate results if Republican loses

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche Sunday defended his department's lawsuit seeking to stop Alaska from automatically certifying the results of its Senate election if the Republican incumbent there loses.

Earlier this week he had said the Justice Department could get involved in the vote certification process in a "doomsday" scenario.

Pressed on CNN about whether the suit was setting the stage for President Trump to challenge the outcome of next week's midterm elections, Blanche denied it.

The seat is seen as one vital for Republicans if they are to maintain control of the Senate for the second half of President Trump's term in office.

The Justice Department claims that potential confusion over candidates with similar names is the reason for the suit, though some Democrats have argued that it is actually an attempt to interfere in the democratic process.

A ballot with two Sullivans

A candidate on the Nov. 3 ballot is a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, named Daniel J. Sullivan, with a remarkably similar name to the current Republican senator, Dan Sullivan.

Republicans have accused Daniel J. Sullivan of running as a spoiler to try and divert votes away from the incumbent. But the other Sullivan has said the decision to run was his own and denied his candidacy was intended to confuse voters or siphon votes in Republican Sullivan's tight race against Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman.

The Justice Department has argued in its suit that the name overlap risks confusing voters.

"We're not laying any groundwork for the president to do that," Blanche told anchor Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union, after she asked whether the administration was positioning Trump to overturn a result he did not like.

"President Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape, or form," Blanche added.

Tense interview

The exchange grew heated when Bash raised Blanche's "doomsday" remark to reporters in Virginia.

Bash asked Blanche whether the Alaska case risked repeating some of the events during the aftermath of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. "Oh, you got to stop it with that. You are not being a real person. Come on, man," Blanche replied, calling the suggestion "crazy."

The Justice Department's lawsuit has demanded that Alaska not "certify any election results that may be impacted by voter confusion." Blanche insisted the more precise demand for relief from the Justice Department is "to not certify if the law is broken," and that it would ultimately be a question for Alaska and its courts to settle.

Blanche suggested it was "so embarrassing" for CNN that the discussion had turned to Jan. 6, and framed the case as a test of whether Alaska had violated federal law and the Constitution by permitting such a potentially confusing ballot process to continue.

"It is an obligation of the states to avoid confusion, among other things, confusion in the minds of voters in the election process," he said.

A state court and the Alaska Supreme Court kept Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot, after Republican election officials in Alaska had sought to remove him on the grounds that his candidacy was to mislead voters intentionally. That Alaska court decision, Blanche said, "explicitly didn't consider federal law."

Trump claims responsibility

The suit was filed late Thursday in federal court in Alaska and, citing the National Voter Registration Act, asked for certification to be blocked after the election until the government has investigated whether votes for Daniel J. Sullivan were indeed intended for the senator.

The Department of Justice has not clarified how that determination could be made in light of the secret nature of the ballot, but Trump said Friday that he ordered the case. "I'm the one that said do it," he told reporters in Florida.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's other Republican senator and a backer of her colleague Sullivan's reelection, said on social media that the state had already distinguished the candidates and that the department should not have sued.

State officials have already moved to distinguish the two men, with the senator appearing as "Dan S. Sullivan," marked as a registered Republican and the incumbent. Meanwhile "Daniel J. Sullivan Jr." carries no party label beside his name.

Alaska's ranked choice system also allows voters to rank both candidates, and back in August during the state's primary, the senator won more than 68,000 votes to the other Sullivan's 4,107.

The lawsuit was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who had represented several people accused of participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol before he joined the department.