Justice Department Sues Alaska, Charges Comey Before Midterms

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit in federal court in Anchorage last week that asks a judge to stop Alaska from certifying its U.S. Senate election results if incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan loses. The department filed the case because a second candidate on the ballot, Dan J. Sullivan, has a similar name. The department said it wants a judge to investigate whether voter confusion affected the count. Alaska's Republican-led state government has asked the court to dismiss the suit. President Donald Trump said he ordered the department to file it. "I'm the one that said do it," Trump said before a rally in Florida. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department examined the issue for months and decided on its own to proceed.

The lawsuit came as the department pursued several cases against people who have criticized Trump. On Oct. 28, court records made public showed that prosecutors charged former FBI Director James Comey on Oct. 5 with a criminal information, not an indictment. The filing alleges that Comey directed staff in 2016 to speak with a reporter about an article on email surveillance. The department said it used a criminal information because the 10-year statute of limitations expired the day of the charge. Comey denied the allegations.

Two former FBI officials were charged days earlier with making false statements to Congress during a Republican-led House inquiry into Hunter Biden. Their lawyers said the men did nothing wrong. Federal agents searched the Washington home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota two weeks before the election over allegations that she lied on immigration paperwork. Her attorneys called the search political. Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas was indicted on Oct. 21 in a corruption investigation that began during the Biden administration. Her lawyer said she denies the charges. Her daughter, Lisa Lucas-Burke, was also charged and is running for a Portsmouth City Council seat in November.

Blanche has appeared at the Republican convention in Texas and at rallies in New York and North Carolina for candidates aligned with Trump. At a news conference last week, he said, "We don't do political paybacks." He also said, "What we're doing is very consistent with past practices. People can criticize all they want." The department said in a statement, "This Department is following the facts and the law, not anybody's political time table."

Critics point to the department's 60-day policy, an unwritten practice under which prosecutors avoid public actions in the two months before an election. Blanche and the department call it informal and say it does not halt existing work. Perry Carbone, who left the Justice Department last year after working as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, said, "What we're seeing at the Justice Department is deeply troubling, not because of any one case, but because of the cumulative pattern." He added, "A Justice Department cannot maintain public trust if its decisions appear to depend on whom the president likes, whom he dislikes, or whom he wants to punish."

Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general who represents defendants under investigation by the Trump administration, said of the Comey filing, "My reaction to the information is that it's dead on arrival." He said, "It is remarkable to me that they have brought three terrible cases against the same man." A department spokesperson said the information was filed under seal on Oct. 5 and that a judge released it this week at the request of Comey's lawyers. The department will need an indictment from a grand jury to proceed. Voters go to the polls on Nov. 3.