Dunleavy's order, posted overnight on social media, comes a day after President Donald Trump called for the criminal prosecution of Mary Peltola and her campaign.
In a race that's among a handful of Senate contests this year expected to determine control of the chamber, the Republican president had previously directed his Department of Justice to sue to block certification of it, demanding that Alaska be prevented from certifying a win by Peltola if Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. remains on the state's ballots.
Dunleavy wrote that reporting by The New York Times “reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates — including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator — to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.”
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” Dunleavy added, noting that the reporting “substantially supports” earlier findings by the state’s elections board into the matter.
Peltola dismisses the claims as a ‘distraction’
Peltola’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a message early Thursday seeking comment on Dunleavy’s order. But during a campaign stop in Soldotna, Peltola, a former congresswoman, suggested the Times’ report was a “distraction” from issues such as Sen. Sullivan’s support of the war in Iran.
“This is just another distraction. It’s another diversion,” she said in a video posted online. “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.”
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance didn’t go as far as the president did in calling for Peltola to be prosecuted but said he supported a probe into possible election fraud.
“I mean, she is a person who, for months now, has pretended that she has had nothing to do with the fact that they have put a fraudulent person, a person explicitly designed to confuse Alaska voters, on the ballot,” Vance told reporters ahead of a campaign trip to Texas. “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful.”
