Donald Trump ordered his Justice Department to sue Alaska so that the state cannot certify its U.S. Senate result if the Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, loses to the Democrat Mary Peltola. "I'm the one that said, 'do it,'" Trump told reporters in Florida on Friday, a day after the department filed the suit in the federal court in Anchorage. Polls show Peltola narrowly ahead, nine days before the vote.

The complaint claims that a second candidate on the ballot, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg, is "frivolous" and is standing only to confuse voters and help Peltola. It asks Judge Sharon Gleason to stop Alaska certifying any result in which the senator loses but would have won "had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan", until an investigation decides whether those voters meant to vote for the senator. In other words, the Justice Department wants every vote for one candidate handed to Trump's candidate before a Democratic win can stand.

Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, defended the suit on the Sunday shows today. He told Margaret Brennan on CBS's Face the Nation that her summary of the case was "at best misleading, but really a lie to your viewers", and he told CNN's Dana Bash it was "crazy" to ask whether Trump was laying the groundwork for another January 6. "We're not laying any groundwork for the president to do that," he said.