Federal judge tosses Trump's Alaska election lawsuit
Meanwhile, the 907 Group and the AFL-CIO are protesting the voter intimidation tactics of the Department of Justice and the FBI in Alaska.
“The Trump Administration appears to want to use the FBI and DOJ to intimidate Alaska voters and hijack the election while the administration of Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy actively suppresses the vote in rural and Alaska Native areas," said Alaska AFL-CIO President Heidi Drygas.
“Instead of focusing on very real impediments to rural voters, most of whom are Alaska Native, the US Department of Justice announced on Friday a starkly partisan investigation into the campaign of Democrat Mary Peltola. The civil lawsuit underpinning the criminal investigation was thrown out on Sunday. DOJ immediately announced it will appeal that decision.”
Sen: Dan Sullivan claimed on CNN that if he doesn’t get enough votes the election would be “stolen” from him, echoing Trump-like piffle.
“The CNN host Jake Tapper asked Mr. Sullivan whether he was ‘only going to accept the election results if you win.’ Mr. Sullivan replied, ‘No, I’m going to accept the election results.’ He added later, ‘To all Alaskans watching, get out there and vote. Don’t let this election be stolen.’”
“On CNN on Sunday, Sullivan said he did not know whether Peltola’s campaign broke the law, though there are “good arguments on both sides.” Read more here.
ORIGINAL POST: Federal Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the Trump attempt to interfere with the U.S. Senate election in Alaska to benefit Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Here is the court order issued Sunday.
Here is an analysis from Democracy Docket.
The Department of Justice didn’t even try to explain how its demand that ballots be set aside so that a post-election investigation of some kind could be made to determine if voters were confused about which Sullivan was which, while preserving the secrecy of ballots.
“More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified “investigation” of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy,” Gleason wrote.
“Indeed, at an October 30, 2026, press conference, the United States Attorney for the District of Alaska suggested that federal and state law enforcement officers ‘are working to make sure that your vote counts in a way that you meant and intended it to count’ and represented that this case is ‘focused on preserving the ballots,’ ‘so Alaska can determine’ the winner of the election,” she said.
“In light of this statement and the lack of any explanation by the United States in its filings in this case as to how ballot secrecy would be preserved during this investigation, potential voters may well have concerns regarding the secrecy of their ballot,” Gleason wrote.
Gleason sided with the arguments made by the state Department of Law, which are at odds with the claims that Gov. Mike Dunleavy has made on right-wing cable TV shows. Dunleavy, who is constantly courting Donald Trump’s favor, is OK with federal tampering in the Alaska election.