WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has dramatically escalated its investigation into the Alaska Senate race and will issue dozens of new grand jury subpoenas on Thursday, The Post has learned.
Meanwhile, the Alaska Republican governor announced early Thursday he was ordering an investigation into whether members of Democrat Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign should face criminal charges following the revelation that they recruited a candidate with the same name as GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan in a bid to siphon votes away from the incumbent.
After the plot was revealed in a Wednesday New York Times report, Gov. Mike Dunleavy described it as “an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates—including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator—to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.”
The escalation on the federal level also comes in light of the bombshell report about the scheme, which was reported to involve Democratic campaign officials. Peltola was also aware of the efforts, the report said.
The subpoenas will seek information about efforts to recruit a candidate with the same name as incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.
The Times report contained details the Justice Department had not seen, officials said, resulting in a flurry of activity on their end.
Now prosecutors are exploring whether to bring charges alleging a conspiracy to violate voters’ rights, according to a DOJ official.
Here’s the latest on the ‘Decoy Dan’ scandal in the ongoing Alaska Senate race:
Fox News reported the DOJ issued at least 30 subpoenas in the last 24 hours as part of its criminal investigation into whether there was coordination between the “Decoy Dan” and the Peltola campaign.
And there are other investigations in progress.
The department, at President Trump’s direction, filed a civil lawsuit last week seeking to stop the state from certifying the results of the election should Sen. Sullivan lose with a “decoy” candidate known as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the ballot.
Additionally, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, ordered a state investigation into the same allegations.
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” he said.
Alaska’s Senate race is one of the most competitive in the nation with both parties seeing it as key to controlling the Senate next year.
In the wake of the new report on the recruitment effort, Trump called on Peltola to drop out of the race and be criminally prosecuted.
Her campaign has denied involvement with the scheme.
Peltola refrained from issuing an unequivocal denial of involvement.
Instead, Peltola lashed out at the press for coverage.
“This is just another distraction. It’s another diversion. Every day it’s some new, you know, look over here moment. Not Dan Sullivan, registered Republican incumbent. Voted for this war. And I 14 times,” she raged at an event in Soldotna, captured by freelance reporter Matt Tunseth.
Alaskan officials sought to minimize confusion by labeling Sen. Sullivan as the incumbent as well as putting the candidates’ initials.
Peltola is the only Democrat on the four-person ballot after a successful pressure campaign by Democrats resulted in candidate David Leslie, who ran as a Democrat and originally made the top four, to drop out.
The winner on Nov. 3 will be determined through ranked-choice voting.
Ryan King and Sam Chamberlain contributed to this report.
