The US justice department on Thursday is reported to have issued subpoenas in response to a report that the Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign collaborated with party operatives to get a challenger with the same name as the Republican senator Dan Sullivan on the midterm ballot.
ABC News and the Associated Press reported the subpoenas, citing sources familiar with the matter. The federal investigation comes a day after the New York Times found that the effort to recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan in the Senate race set to be decided on Tuesday was led by Peltola’s campaign, which had for months denied involvement.
Earlier on Thursday, Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, announced a criminal inquiry into the effort, which the Times reports was intended to confuse Alaskans who wanted to support the Republican incumbent.
Last week, Trump said he had ordered the justice department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of the Senate election if Sullivan does not win. That suit is pending.
The subpoenas are the latest aggressive move by the justice department amid a politically sensitive matter in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s midterm elections. The department has historically avoided taking overt investigative actions against candidates in the weeks before an election, or other public steps that could be perceived as attempting to influence a political outcome.
Election law experts said they were unaware of what federal law would justify the investigation.
“I don’t know what they’re putting out subpoenas to investigate because I don’t know what federal violations are implicated that DoJ would have jurisdiction over,” said Justin Levitt, a former Department of Justice official under Joe Biden. “Sure makes it seem like the point of the investigation is to become the story.”
The information came to light the same day that the justice department issued subpoenas to California officials in an escalation of its scrutiny of local election administration. Earlier Thursday, a federal judge in California appointed a special master to evaluate claims by the Trump administration that the state has some 20,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls. That action came less than 24 hours after the judge rejected the justice department’s demand that California sequester the ballots until citizenship can be verified, a ruling the department immediately appealed.
For months, the justice department has been looking into allegations that Dan J Sullivan Jr entered the race to mislead voters and help Peltola’s campaign. The potential targets of the justice department’s investigation are unclear, but Donald Trump earlier this week called for the criminal prosecution of Peltola and her campaign.
The race is among a handful of Senate contests this year expected to determine control of the chamber. Trump had previously directed his Department of Justice to sue to block certification of the Senate race should Peltola defeat the Republican senator Dan S Sullivan.
