President Donald Trump believes the reported Democrat scheme to recruit a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot in Alaska to hurt Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) in the general election is “a criminal act” and that Alaska’s Democrat Senate nominee, Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK), who was reportedly aware of the scheme, should be prosecuted.
A day after the New York Times reported that Democrat operatives persuaded another Dan Sullivan to enter the race earlier this year to help Peltola and hurt the incumbent, Trump, at a campaign rally in South Carolina, said it appears to be a “conspiracy” and high-level “voter fraud.”
“It’s called splitting the vote. Totally wrong. Totally illegal. This is voter fraud at the highest level, and the Democrat candidate who was involved in the scheme, Mary Peltola—who treats her staff horribly, by the way, so badly that they think she’s abusive, actually—should be removed from the ballot and prosecuted, and so should the fake Dan Sullivan,” Trump said.
“This is a guy that never ran for office. He never had anything to do with politics. He just happened to have the name Dan Sullivan,” Trump added.
As the New York Times reported:
The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.
The endeavor, which was internally called the ballot composition project, involved secret trips to far-flung Alaskan communities and the appearance of a mysterious Midwestern operative, who traversed the state using a fake name and made his pitch to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs.
Peltola’s former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, who unsuccessfully tried to retract her initial statements to the Times before publication, told the outlet that Peltola was “definitely aware” of the scheme, though she was not directly involved.
“This was beyond anything that anyone’s ever seen before. And this behavior in our elections cannot be allowed to continue. It’s just terrible,” Trump said.
“So it’s being looked at very strongly. I think it’s a criminal act what they did, because it was a conspiracy,” he added.
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