Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s lawsuit aiming to block certification of Senate race results in Alaska if the Republican candidate narrowly loses.
The Justice Department argued in a suit filed Thursday that the Senate contest could be tainted by the presence on the ballot of a contender with a name similar to that of Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.
Polls show a tight race between Sen. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman. DOJ says it is concerned that a third contender in the race — another Republican, named Dan J. Sullivan Jr. — could siphon off votes from Sen. Sullivan because some voters might be confused.
“All we are doing is trying to put guardrails in place so that if that happens, there’s a system allowed where the ballots are kept in a way so we can determine whether there was confusion,” Blanche said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
DOJ is asking a judge to block the state from certifying the election results if Sen. Sullivan loses to Peltola by a margin less than the number of votes that the other Sullivan receives.
President Donald Trump has said publicly that he ordered the Justice Department to file the suit.
When pressed about Trump’s role, Blanche said he would not discuss his private communications with the president.
“But I will tell you this,” Blanche told CBS. “This is the Department of Justice doing our own research under the law, the civil rights unit in the Department of Justice drafting this lawsuit, and then ultimately we filed the lawsuit.”
In a separate interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Blanche said he believed DOJ had an obligation to “try to step in, to stop what I think every American views as an injustice.”
The word “incumbent” will appear underneath Sen. Sullivan’s name, according to samples of Alaska’s ballot. Blanche told CBS he didn’t know whether that would be sufficient. Trump said Sunday that confusion is still an issue because “a lot of people don’t know what ‘incumbent’ means.”
Trump said in a post to Truth Social on Saturday that DOJ filed the lawsuit to “stop this impending crime and tragedy.”
CNN moderator Dana Bash asked Blanche what crime Trump was referring to.
“It depends,” Blanche said. “There could be a crime. But the real wrong here is that Alaskans are going to be confused and will not have their vote heard.”
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