By Marc Elias, Democracy Docket
Over the last 48 hours, two things have become unmistakable: Donald Trump is trying to steal the midterm elections, and Attorney General Todd Blanche will do whatever he can to help him.
In California, the DOJ has escalated its threats against election officials and voters. On Friday, it sent letters to all 58 counties demanding they set aside mail ballots the DOJ has flagged or face the “risk significant federal scrutiny.”
Meanwhile, in Alaska, Trump went further. He ordered his DOJ to sue to block certification of the Senate election if Democrat Mary Peltola wins. Asked about the lawsuit, Trump said, “Well, I’m one that said, ‘Do it.’”
My law firm, Elias Law Group, has already moved to intervene to defeat this on behalf of Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Party.
DOJ’s rationale for the lawsuit is ridiculous, and its legal arguments are frivolous.
The pretext for this lawsuit is the fact that two men named Dan Sullivan are on the ballot: Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg. DOJ asserts this is confusing to voters and that the remedy is to certify the Republican the winner.
For this astounding proposition, the DOJ relies on the National Voter Registration Act. Set aside that the law governing voter registration has nothing at all to do with the certification of elections. Set aside that the underlying factual claims in the complaint read like a cross between Mad Libs and an AI chatbot run amok.
The Alaska Supreme Court has already rejected the effort to keep the second Dan Sullivan off the ballot. And the Constitution gives states, not the president or the Justice Department, the authority to govern the composition of their ballots and the criteria for certifying their elections.
But this, in some respects, is beside the point.
The clumsy execution of Trump’s whim in Alaska is less important than what it reveals about his intentions and Blanche’s willingness to be his accomplice.
Trump’s goal is clear. He plans to try to steal the election by asserting control over the counting and tabulating of ballots. That extends to the certification of results.
More than a year ago, on August 18, 2025, he posted on social media that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
Since then, he has repeated variations of this claim on several occasions. Each time, I have called it out and warned that his plan for winning the midterms was to make it harder for Democrats to vote and easier for Republicans to cheat.
Too few people have listened or heeded my warning.
This is familiar territory for me. In 2020, I warned that Trump was going to try to overturn the election. After he lost, I helped lead the litigation efforts for Joe Biden that resulted in Trump and his allies losing more than 60 cases in court.
Throughout the Biden presidency, I kept sounding the alarm, even as many in the White House wanted me to stop fighting in court and hoped that civility and norms would return on their own.
Simply wanting something doesn’t make it so. I warned that Republicans viewed abiding by norms and preaching bipartisanship as signs of weakness, and that Trumpism was growing within the GOP.
And yet, even after Trump returned to office, too many people in positions to know better continued to offer false assurances that the guardrails of democracy would hold.
What we are witnessing right now is not the collapse of those guardrails, but rather proof that they do not exist. Trump is making good on his statements about taking over vote counting and tabulation. He is asserting the powers he has falsely claimed to have all along.
Todd Blanche is facilitating it. He is encouraging it. He is weaponizing the DOJ not only against political opponents but also against voters and election officials.
On October 16, his Justice Department warned California election officials that they could be liable for aiding and abetting a federal crime if they counted mail ballots from the list of 20,000 voters the DOJ created.
The same day the lawsuit in Alaska was filed, Blanche was asked directly whether the DOJ would try to block a state from certifying election results. “I’m not trying to not have an election certified. Of course not,” he said. He held out the possibility of federal action only for some hypothetical “doomsday scenario.”
We now know that was a lie.
DOJ was already moving to block certification in Alaska.
Stripped of its pretext, the doomsday scenario the DOJ laid out in that case is simple: a Republican senator loses and a Democratic candidate wins.
That is the standard for when the DOJ will act in this election. It is not interested in protecting voting. It couldn’t care less about fraud. It only cares about making it harder for Democrats to vote and easier for Republicans to cheat.
Donald Trump has been saying this for more than a year. I have been screaming about it for even longer. I hope everyone will finally listen and act before it is too late.
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