President Donald Trump listens as Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, speaks at a campaign rally at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
The Trump DOJ’s lawsuit over alleged voter “confusion” in Alaska cannot “hang like the Sword of Damocles over the ongoing” midterm election and must be dismissed as soon as “this week,” said an emergency motion filed Sunday in federal court.
The DOJ on Thursday sought an injunction in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, preemptively making the case that if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan loses to Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, that may be because Daniel J. Sullivan — note the middle initial — “decided to run for Senator in 2026 as a Republican with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that the DOJ wasn’t “laying any groundwork for the president” to “take over a state election in any way, shape, or form,” but one prominent election law expert immediately panned the “legal argument” in the case, which President Donald Trump claimed credit for as “one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.”
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To hear the DOJ tell it, if Alaska certifies “any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan,” then the state “will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election.”
“On June 15, the Alaska Division of Elections (in a letter issued by Defendant Beecher) found that Daniel J. Sullivan’s declaration of candidacy was not properly filed with the Division because it was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality,” the DOJ said.
Peltola’s campaign, joined by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in a motion to intervene, responded Sunday that the DOJ’s ask is not only “unprecedented” but also legally baseless.
“DOJ seeks an unprecedented order precluding certification of the U.S. Senate election if the candidate the President favors loses narrowly. As the proposed Motion to Dismiss reflects, DOJ’s claims are utterly without legal basis,” the filing said. “The Court should not allow this lawsuit to hang like the Sword of Damocles over the ongoing election, lending false legitimacy to the President’s and the Attorney General’s ongoing efforts to spread false narratives about Alaska’s elections as voting continues and as results begin to be tabulated next week.”
In an attached declaration from the campaign, attorney David Fox of Marc Elias’ firm Elias Law Group LLP said the “meritless lawsuit” should be thrown out as soon as “this week” and “before election day.”
“If this lawsuit remains pending when results from Alaska’s Senate race begin to be released next Tuesday, November 3, and if those results suggest a narrow victory for Mary Peltola, Alaskans for Mary and DSCC are seriously concerned that the Attorney General and the President will use the pending lawsuit to falsely suggest that there is doubt about the lawfulness of Alaska’s election results, without any legal basis, to lay the groundwork for unlawful efforts to challenge a potential Peltola victory,” Fox said.
The lawyer urged Chief U.S. District Judge Sharon Louise Gleason, a Barack Obama appointee, not to let the Trump administration inflict “further damage to public trust in Alaska’s elections.” To that end, the Democratic candidate wants to fully brief the motions to intervene and dismiss over the next two days.
“Proposed Intervenors request that the Court order the Department of Justice and the existing Defendants at their option, to simultaneously respond to all three motions by 5:00 p.m. AKDT on Tuesday, October 27; to allow Proposed Intervenors to file a reply by 12:00 p.m. AKDT on Wednesday, October 28, and for the Court to resolve the motions as soon as possible this week,” the campaign said.
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