The Trump administration pressed a criminal investigation into Alaska’s pivotal US Senate race and said yesterday it would likely take its fight over thousands of California mail-in ballots to the Supreme Court, as the midterm campaign for control of Congress entered its final weekend.
In Alaska, federal prosecutors are investigating whether aides to Democratic challenger Mary Peltola helped to recruit a retired schoolteacher, Daniel J Sullivan Jr, to run because he shares a name with the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S Sullivan. The closely contested race is seen as crucial to Democrats’ hopes of taking the Senate in Tuesday’s vote.
It is one of 35 Senate races, along with all 435 House seats, that will decide whether Trump’s Republicans keep control of Congress for his final two years in office.
Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and a narrow edge in the House. Losing either chamber would let Democrats block Trump’s agenda and launch investigations of an administration that has until now faced largely compliant Republican majorities.
Early voting has set a record. More than 51 million Americans have already cast ballots in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, up from nearly 46m who voted before Election Day at the last midterms in 2022.
In California, a federal appeals court earlier this week ruled 2-1 that the Justice Department had failed to justify its emergency bid to force the state to set aside mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters it alleges are likely noncitizens.
“I hesitate to give a final answer, but I think probably the Supreme Court’s next on this one,” acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told Fox News yesterday, adding that any request for Supreme Court consideration would come before Tuesday’s election.
Trump has been on a campaign blitz in multiple states over the past month but was at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida yesterday. He returns to the campaign trail today in Kansas and Iowa.
The US Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Alaska, US Attorney Michael Heyman, said at a Friday Press conference that a recent New York Times article saying there had been an effort to recruit Daniel J Sullivan Jr had driven a ‘surge’ of FBI resources onto the case.
Heyman said he had assigned several prosecutors to it and that investigative steps were taking place ‘intensely and swiftly.’
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