The Trump administration is on an eleventh-hour blitz to challenge the results of Alaska's Senate race - before the election has even occurred.

The race was shaken up this week after a bombshell report found Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign allegedly 'planted' a candidate with a name double of her Republican opponent Dan Sullivan in a scheme to boost her winning chances.

Her campaign - and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - are now under a criminal investigation opened this week by the state's Republican governor for allegedly recruiting the 'Decoy' Dan Sullivan.

At the same time, an ongoing civil case - filed by the Department of Justice earlier this year - is examining whether Alaska can certify the results if incumbent Dan Sullivan loses.

The Cook Political Report ranks Alaska's Senate race as a toss-up, and the crucial seat could determine the balance of power in Congress. 

President Donald Trump has called for Peltola to be prosecuted herself after the report came to light, decrying 'fraud' in the state and demanding that she and the 'Decoy' Dan be removed from the ballot.

But legal experts told the Daily Mail that the civil case - and Trump's calls for a federal prosecution - are unlikely to advance.

A criminal case would be thin for prosecutors – and would almost certainly fail, says Rick Hasen, election law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

'To begin with, it is regular practice for people to support candidates for bad motives: Republicans boosting Greens and Democrats boosting Libertarians, Hasen told the Daily Mail. 'The effort in Alaska is just an extreme version of that.'

'That might not stop DOJ from trying to prosecute it,' he added. 'But I think such a claim would fail.'

Hasen further explained that Dan Sullivan 2.0 would likely defend his actions under the First Amendment, which would almost certainly outweigh any conspiracy charges – regardless of how unsavory his motivations may have been for entering the race.

'I don't see how the government could criminalize his running for office for having impure motives.'

And even if the claims would hold up, 'it could be a crime every time that the Republican Party backs a Green Party candidate, or Democrats support a MAGA candidate in a primary in the hopes that the candidate would be weaker against a Democrat in the general election. This stuff happens all the time.' 

In fact, name doubles in elections are not a new political trick.

In 2024, Washington's Democratic state Attorney General Bob Ferguson was joined in the gubernatorial Democratic primary by two other candidates with the same name – both of which were paid by a Republican activist hoping to confuse voters, CNN reported.

And already in the mid 1950s, another 'JFK' – John Francis Kennedy – capitalized on the Massachusetts fame of then-Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy to become state treasurer without any public campaign or party endorsement.

As for the ongoing civil case, the Justice Department's case appears to focus, at least in part, on possible conspiracy charges. 

That being whether Democrats knowingly recruited Dan J Sullivan on Peltola's behalf, as part of a broader effort to confuse and or deprive Alaskans of their votes. Or whether Dan J Sullivan himself knowingly aimed to deprive voters.

Derek Muller, an election law expert and professor at Notre Dame Law, described the Alaska civil lawsuit as 'one of the worst' he had ever seen.

The attempt to invalidate the state election results in the event of Democratic win is seen as very weak.

Alaska has gone to great lengths to distinguish the two candidates on the ballot - including by adding their middle initials and the full name Daniel J Sullivan, as opposed to Dan S Sullivan, the GOP incumbent.

Finally, they explicitly list Dan S Sullivan as 'incumbent' - making clear who is who. 

Trump has insisted voters still need a '190 IQ' to get the ballot right as most people 'don't know what incumbent means.'

Regarding possible criminal charges, Muller stressed the many unknowns – and that 'further investigation is essential' to determine whether the charges should be brought by federal prosecutors.

'I do wonder if there were campaign finance violations committed here,' Muller said in a post on the Election Law Blog.

'We’ll have to wait and see how contributions were structured, and whether some where appropriately made but simply difficult to find in the disclosure data, or whether some were in violation of law.'

As far as possible charges of conspiracy to violate the National Voting Rights Act, Muller theorized on where the line might be drawn between 'ordinary politics' and 'dirty tricks' – and when that 'crosses into behavior that is designed to prevent voters from exercising a choice.'

'I think the voters have been appropriately informed, and there is little likelihood of actual confusion,' Muller said. 'But I think the attempts to do so this spring and summer could still be criminal.'

The DOJ argued in its amended complaint that both Peltola's campaign and the DSCC misled the court last week, when claiming they lacked the 'knowledge or information' to speak to the decoy candidate's intentions to run for office.

The Justice Department's filing ticks through the New York Times report before saying it provides the opposite: That they 'orchestrated the sham campaign' for purposes of 'misleading Alaskan voters.'

It is unclear whether this will alter the strength of the case.

Peltola's campaign and the DSCC, meanwhile, vehemently disputed the allegations in a filing of their own, saying Friday that the accusations were 'nonsense' and a thinly veiled attempt to delay certification of the vote.

'The only one who could possibly know Daniel J Sullivan’s true reasons for filing as a candidate is Daniel J Sullivan,' they told the court.

The turmoil around the political trickery has led to unprecedented attention on the Last Frontier's Senate race.