DOJ Is Looking for Someone to Indict in Alaska’s Dan Sullivan Circus

Amid the dysfunction and the focus on sideshows like ballrooms and monuments, it is easy to forget that the administration is consistently pursuing one overarching goal: amassing more power in the hands of Donald Trump and turning him into the kind of authoritarian leader that the Founding Fathers wanted to protect the country from.

Sometimes, that drive to undermine democracy and the rule of law manifests itself in actions far away from the nation’s capital – for example, in Alaska.

On Thursday, NBC News was the first to report that state and federal prosecutors are trying to build a case against a Senate candidate in the Last Frontier, Dan. J. Sullivan, whose only “crime” appears to be that his name is almost identical to that of the Republican incumbent.

Of course, the real offense is that this makes it a little less likely that Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-AK) will get reelected.

If you are unfamiliar with the two Sullivans, here is what’s going on: Dan J., a former teacher, is running for Senate with no chance of winning. However, because Alaska’s unique primary system allows the top four vote-getters from an August 18 vote to advance to the general election, it is possible that he might piggyback on the name recognition of Dan S. and make the final ballot.

In a very tight race in a sparsely populated state, this could make the difference for Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate.

Therefore, in order to protect Dan S., Republicans have been trying to keep Dan J. off the ballot… to no avail.

Earlier this week, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the former teacher can compete in the primary.

Up to this point, this has been politics as usual. Even if it turns out that the Democrats searched for someone named Dan Sullivan to drain a few votes from the incumbent, that is hardly the most shameful scheme in US elections this year.

For example, shadowy groups trying to obscure their source of funding spring up all the time to influence primaries in a way that helps the more radical candidate in order to benefit the other party in a general election, i.e., a Republican-allied group may boost a candidate from the extreme left in a close Democratic primary because they are then more likely to lose in the midterms.

Both sides are doing this.

Or take Nebraska, where Democrats wanted someone to win their own Senate primary who had no intention of running in the general election (and Republicans tried to keep her off the ballot), because an independent in the race has a better chance of defeating the GOP incumbent.

Are those dirty tricks? Of course.

But is any of this illegal? It’s hard to see how.

Speaking of legality, it came to light this week that Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been calling Iowa Libertarians and urging them to drop out of their races to help the Republican candidates.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported that story, he did so by dangling a promise of some sort of quid pro quo in front of them.

And that would be illegal, which RFK Jr. seems to be aware of.

Per the Post, he told one of them that he “can’t go into specifics because there’s legal prohibitions about that,” but also suggested that “if it’s something that you want to talk about, you know, you and I can talk about specifics.”

There is virtually no chance that Trump’s hyper-weaponized and partisan Department of Justice will go after the cabinet member.

However, Dan J. is another matter because it seems as though the FBI and state authorities are trying to charge somebody with something in that case.

According to NBC’s story, which has since been confirmed, prosecutors are probing whether there was a “conspiracy to confuse voters,” i.e., whether a thing happened in Alaska that is also happening all the time elsewhere around the country.

That being said, if they can prove that Dan J. was promised something of value for his participation, it would be a different matter.

You know, like what RFK Jr. seems to have done… or how he got his job in the first place when Trump offered him a cabinet position if he dropped out of the 2024 race.

The real threat to democracy here isn’t that Dan J. is running for the Senate, even if somebody asked him to because he shares the name with the incumbent.

Instead, it is that the FBI is getting involved in what certainly appears to be an effort to harass him into dropping out.

Of course, in light of the administration’s incompetence and poor track record in waging lawfare against Trump’s enemies, there is always the chance that they will indict the wrong Dan Sullivan.