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DOJ: ‘Significant surge of law enforcement assets to Alaska’ to probe Peltola campaign — for something
Federal prosecutor declines to specify potential crimes being investigated for alleged ballot stacking — a generally legal tactic — in high-profile announcement just before Election Day
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Federal prosecutors turned up an already intense spotlight on Alaska’s U.S. Senate race Friday by announcing a months-long criminal investigation into Democratic candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign is being significantly stepped up just before Election Day.
DOJ also declared separately they want a federal court to isolate all ballots ranking Dan J. Sullivan as a choice to determine if voters might be confusing him with Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan.
However, Alaska’s top federal prosecutor declined to provide substantive responses to questions about what criminal charges might apply to the campaign’s alleged recruiting of spoiler candidates — a common and general legal tactic — or what legal authority the federal government has to intervene in a state-run election.
“I'm not making any assumptions on whether a crime has been committed or not," U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman said during a midday news conference that received global media coverage.
"That's what we do, is we investigate whether a crime has been committed under several theories, so I'm not going to comment on what those theories are, and I'm also not going to put the cart before the horse," he said.
It is unusual for DOJ to confirm the existence of a criminal investigation and — prior to President Donald Trump’s attempts to seize federal control of the process and launch multiple investigations against political opponents — to undertake such probes just before an election.
However, highly visible actions during the past week involving the Peltola campaign, including a lawsuit filed last week to halt certification of the election if she narrowly wins, are among a multitude occurring across the U.S. Among those are preemptive challenges to tens of thousands of ballots in California, attempting to strip the citizenship of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and vastly expanding the number of election monitors being sent to all 50 states.
Meanwhile, in Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy — a strong Trump supporter — announced Wednesday he has ordered a state criminal investigation into the allegations involving the Peltola campaign that is separate from DOJ’s.
Other notable headlines in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race on Friday:
– Explainer: Is it legal to recruit spoiler candidates in US elections? – Daniel J. Sullivan left his Alaska hometown before Senate election, sources say
The circumstances of Alaska’s Senate race have been generally known since May, when retired Petersburg teacher Dan J. Sullivan declared his candidacy as a Republican. There was immediate speculation his purpose was for voters to confuse him with incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, although the Petersburg resident denied it and the Peltola campaign denied any involvement in his candidacy.
An attempt by the Dunleavy administration to remove Dan J. Sullivan from the ballot was overturned during the summer by the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled the state didn’t have the constitutional authority to decertify a candidate based on alleged intentions. Legal analysts have generally stated DOJ’s lawsuit and criminal probe similarly lack legal merit.
But the accusations against the Peltola campaign got an immense political boost — if not necessarily a legal one — when The New York Times reported on Wednesday that top officials in her campaign and Democratic party officials did indeed engage in an effort to find as many candidates named Dan Sullivan as possible, plus potential other spoiler candidates.
Peltola at a Thursday campaign rally in Juneau repeated denials of knowing anything about such activity, and denials have also been issued by her campaign, Dan J. Sullivan and Democratic party officials.
However, Heyman said during Friday’s news conference the details in the Times story resulted in a "significant surge of law enforcement assets to Alaska" to investigate the case already underway.
"It is not clear what jurisdiction federal prosecutors have in the Alaska case, although officials have suggested it might be predicated on the existence of an as-yet unspecified criminal conspiracy," the Times reported in its coverage of the investigation on Friday. The article also notes Heyman "struggled to explain why The Times’s story jump-started an investigation that had, he claimed, been underway for weeks."
Trump, among other officials, has suggested Peltola and others could be guilty of perjury if they offered false sworn statements or legal filings about involvement in recruiting spoiler candidates.
DOJ’s court request to isolate ballots with rankings for Dan J. Sullivan was among the motions filed Friday in the lawsuit seeking to halt certification of the election if Peltola’s margin of victory is less than the number of votes for the Petersburg resident. The ballot isolation filing states it “seeks to preserve and segregate all ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan for the purposes of investigating whether such ranking was the product of voter confusion, should such an investigation become necessary.”
Experts have said such an investigation is not practically possible since ballots don’t contain the identity of individual voters.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
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