United States Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended the Department of Justice’s decision to sue to prevent the certification of a Republican loss in Alaska’s tight Senate race.
On Sunday, Blanche did a tour of the morning political shows in the US, making stops at CNN’s State of the Union TV programme and CBS’s Face the Nation.
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In each appearance, he faced pointed questions about the legality of the Justice Department’s efforts, responding, in some cases, with open frustration.
“ Why is this controversial?” Blanche asked CNN host Dana Bash at one point. He proceeded to accuse one of the candidates in the Senate race of intentionally trying to confuse voters.
“We’re going to try to create a situation where that can be remedied,” he said. “That shouldn’t be something that is causing this shock and horror.”
But the Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed on October 22, has been the subject of bipartisan criticism.
Many have accused the administration of President Donald Trump of laying the groundwork to block a Democratic win in the race. Trump himself claimed to have authorised the lawsuit.
“I’m the one who said do it,” he told reporters on Friday.
Inside the Alaska Senate race
During the midterm elections on November 3, citizens in Alaska will be asked to vote in one of the closest Senate races in the country, one which will help decide whether Republicans maintain their majority in the chamber.
Senator Dan S Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, is seeking to defend his seat in the Senate. But he faces fierce competition from former US Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat.
Also in the running is another candidate named Dan J Sullivan, a former Forest Service employee.
The second Sullivan’s decision to also run has raised concerns that he is a spoiler candidate, whose presence on the ballot is designed to draw votes away from the incumbent.
But the Forest Service worker has denied any such intent. Such allegations, he said, are “entirely false”.
“I am not a registered Democrat, and I have had no conversations whatsoever with the Peltola campaign about my candidacy,” the second Sullivan wrote in a letter to Alaska’s lieutenant governor before the state’s primaries.
“I have considered running for political office for over a decade. I made the decision to formally run for the United States Senate in the upcoming primary election because Senator Sullivan has routinely failed the people of Alaska, and they deserve a better representative. It is my right to do so.”
Four candidates advanced to the final round of voting after Alaska’s August primaries. They included Peltola and both Sullivans. The two men are running as Republicans.
A controversial lawsuit
The Department of Justice has argued that its lawsuit — filed less than two weeks before the midterm elections — is necessary “to protect the integrity” of the election.
Any result in the Senate race, it argues, would be “tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J Sullivan”.
The department has therefore called on the US district court in Alaska to issue an order declaring the race’s certification “unlawful” and barring the state from “allowing such a certification to occur”.
Under the US Constitution, only states have the power to administer elections, though Congress has the right to pass regulations concerning federal votes.
It is highly unusual for a presidential administration to inject itself into issues of state election certification — and experts say such a move is likely to be deemed illegal.
Already, in June, Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that both Sullivans could compete in the Senate race. The state’s Division of Elections has also taken steps to reduce voter confusion.
The November 3 ballot, for instance, will list Dan S Sullivan as the incumbent and as a “registered Republican”.
Dan J Sullivan, meanwhile, will have the suffix “Jr” added to his name, and his party affiliation will be left blank, despite the candidate identifying as Republican.
But in Sunday’s TV appearances, Blanche — who leads the Department of Justice and formerly served as Trump’s personal lawyer — argued that merely having two Sullivans on the ballot is a recipe for confusion.
“It is wrong,” Blanche told CNN. “Putting aside whether we’re going to win or lose in the courts, putting aside what the Alaskan Supreme Court has done, in our system we should not have a candidate who has to worry about another candidate being on the ballot for no other reason than to confuse voters.”
Blanche also denied any impropriety in Trump saying he ordered the lawsuit.
“He’s supposed to make sure that everything in this country is running right, including elections,” Blanche said.
The race for the Senate
Historically, the Department of Justice has embraced a norm of judicial independence, though critics have accused the Trump administration of wielding its prosecutorial powers for political gain.
Bash, the CNN host, raised some of those concerns, pointing to Trump’s comments accusing Democrats of cheating, as well as his history of election denialism.
The president has long denied his loss in the 2020 presidential race, and his supporters sought to block the certification of that election, notably by storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
When Bash pointed to that incident, Blanche chided her: “Oh, you’ve got to stop it with that.”
“Why are you yelling at me?” Bash responded, as the two talked over each other.
“You are not being a real person. Come on, man,” Blanche continued. “That is crazy.”
He also denied that Trump was setting the stage for a contested election if the Democrat Peltola were to win. Instead, he framed the lawsuit as setting the stage for further investigations into any eventual results.
“The relief that we’re seeking — which, again, isn’t to determine who the senator is, it’s not to try to overturn something the state is going to do — it’s just to make sure that the ballots that come in are kept in a way that may allow a court to investigate further,” Blanche said.
Speaking to CBS, Blanche also dodged a question about whether Trump personally asked him to file the lawsuit.
“I will never, ever, ever talk about communications that I have with the president of the United States. I never have, and I never will,” Blanche said.
The race to control the US Senate is expected to be a nail-biter, with the Republicans holding a slim majority at present: They have 53 seats in the 100-member chamber.
Only a third of the Senate’s seats — 35 in total — will be up for grabs in the midterm races, though, as terms in the chamber last six years and are staggered across different election years.
Trump’s Republican Party is projected to face an uphill battle to protect its congressional majorities, amid backlash against the rising cost of living and Trump’s own withering poll numbers.
Roughly seven Senate elections are considered toss-ups, including the Alaska race.
In early October, The New York Times and Siena College released a poll finding Peltola leading the incumbent Sullivan by nearly seven percentage points, one of the widest margins of any of the toss-up states.