President Trump ordered the Justice Department to sue over a second Dan Sullivan on Alaska’s Senate ballot, a step critics call an election threat.

President Donald Trump said Friday he told the Justice Department to move first against certification of Alaska’s Senate race, citing two candidates with nearly identical names and the risk of voter mix-ups. The department filed the lawsuit on Thursday.

At issue is incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, Democratic challenger Mary Peltola, and a third candidate, Dan J. Sullivan, who appears with no party affiliation. Trump called Daniel J. “the fake” and said Democrats put him up to siphon votes. Alaska’s own election office had already flagged the candidacy as a fairness problem; state courts still kept him on the ballot. The new federal case aims to stop the state from locking in results if that name confusion decides the race.

Trump did not hedge when asked about the filing. “Well, I’m one that said, ‘Do it,’” he told reporters.

"They have two guys run named Dan Sullivan running. So the Democrats put up a guy never -- I don't think he ever voted before,"

He added that Daniel J. “all of a sudden” decided to run and that “the Daniel J. is the fake.” On Wednesday he had posted that he was looking at “powerful legal options” to remove the second Sullivan from the ballot. The sequence matches a broader push on election rules, including Trump vows on ballot integrity aimed at officials who count unlawful votes.

Stanley Woodward, the Justice Department’s number-three official, laid out the remedy in Thursday’s filing. The department wants Alaska blocked from certifying any outcome “tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan.”

"Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan... the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election,"

Woodward set a clear two-part test. Certification should not go forward if Sen. Sullivan does not win, and if every vote cast for Daniel J. Sullivan had instead gone to the senator under Alaska’s rank-choice process, the senator would have won. In plain terms, the department is asking courts to treat the duplicate name as a live threat to the real result, not a curiosity.

A Justice Department spokesperson tied the case to earlier state findings and to federal law. Alaska’s Division of Elections, the spokesperson said, had determined the candidacy “was intended to mislead voters and compromise the fairness of the ballot.” The department said it was acting “consistent with the National Voter Registration Act” so a “frivolous candidacy” would not undercut “the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters.” ABC News reported the filing and the surrounding statements.

Alaska’s election office tried to pull the name first

The federal suit did not appear out of thin air. Over the summer, Alaska’s election office said Dan J. Sullivan would be removed because the candidacy was not in good faith. Officials described the purpose as “to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”

Dan J. Sullivan sued. A state judge ruled he was eligible for the Senate primary ballot. The Alaska Supreme Court upheld that order and required his inclusion. After that ruling, the Justice Department opened its own review. Republicans have long alleged a sham effort to draw votes from the incumbent through name confusion; the state administrative record now sits beside that claim.

Dan J. Sullivan has said he has voted for both parties in the past. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment. The Alaska Secretary of State’s office also did not respond. Those silences leave the public record dominated by the election office’s finding, the court orders that overruled it, and the new federal complaint.

Hours before the lawsuit dropped, Attorney General Todd Blanche fielded questions about whether the department would step into a state’s certification process. He would not rule it out in every case.

"I mean, is there any scenario? Yes, of course. There's scenarios that we could all come up with hypothetically, you know, some doomsday scenario, for example, right?"

Blanche also said it is “not DOJ’s intention to, and it’s never our intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state confirmation process or certification process.” The filing that followed treated the Alaska name collision as the kind of concrete risk the department would not ignore. Parallel legal fights over campaign rules and enforcement have already forced the department into public clean-up mode, including when Trump ads kept running past a court block.

Campaigns stake out opposite ground

Sen. Sullivan’s spokesperson struck a calm note and left the case to the courts.

"We'll let the DOJ complaint run its course. Alaskans can tell the difference between a Democrat sideshow and Senator Sullivan's strong record of delivering for Alaska."

Peltola’s campaign called the suit “a despicable political threat to overturn an election.” That charge collides with the paper trail already built inside Alaska: an election office determination of intent to mislead, a court-ordered restoration to the ballot, and a federal complaint that conditions any hold on certification on a measurable confusion effect under rank-choice rules. The dispute now sits where many midterm power fights do, in filings, statements, and competing claims about who is protecting voters. Related tension is visible when Sen. Warnock backs probes tied to House control after the elections.

Rank-choice voting makes the name problem sharper. Under Alaska’s system, lower-ranked choices can decide a final winner after first-round tallies. If voters mark the wrong Dan Sullivan, or if the third name pulls first-choice support that would otherwise flow to the incumbent, the certified result can diverge from what a clean ballot would have produced. The Justice Department’s test is built around that exact math: no win for Sen. Sullivan, plus a reconstructed rank-choice path that would have elected him if Daniel J.’s votes had been his.

Trump’s direction, Woodward’s conditions, and the earlier state finding all point the same way. Officials who first tried to clear the ballot of a confusing name were overruled in state court. The federal government is now asking a court to stop certification if that confusion proves decisive. Voters in Alaska, and taxpayers who fund clean elections, are the ones left holding the risk while lawyers argue. The same integrity focus shows up when the administration tightens legal immigrant visas and locks in border enforcement, rules that only work if the system is honest end to end.

The case remains pending. No certification outcome, no final court order, and no vote totals appear in the current record. What is on the record is straightforward: a president who ordered action, a department that filed, a state office that already called the candidacy a fairness problem, and a Democratic campaign that frames the remedy as an attack on the election itself.

Election integrity is not a sideshow. When ballots carry look-alike names after state officials flagged the danger, waiting until after certification is a choice to gamble with the result, and voters should not be the ones forced to take that bet.