“I think it crosses the line to crime.” Alan Dershowitz did not hesitate when Greta Van Susteren asked him on Newsmax’s The Record on Thursday whether the Alaska ballot affair was a dirty trick or something worse.
The affair centers on a name. According to The New York Times, aides tied to Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola and to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee helped persuade a retired teacher, Dan J. Sullivan, to run against incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan. Two men, one name, one ballot. The suspicion is that the second Sullivan was meant to peel votes away from the first.
Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor emeritus, backed the Justice Department’s widening investigation and pointed to a Second Circuit opinion. As he described it, when operatives work together to deny people their civil rights, or to defraud voters and steer them to the wrong person, that can become a five-year felony. “Here there’s clearly a conspiracy,” he said.
A crime that finishes before the vote
His sharpest point was about timing. Prosecutors, he argued, would not have to show that a single voter was fooled.
“The conspiracy doesn’t require an unlawful result,” he said. “And even if there is no impact on the election, the conspiracy has already occurred. That is, people have gotten together and agreed to violate the voting rights of Alaska citizens by misleading and defrauding them.”
If the scheme does change the outcome, he said, the fight moves to court. He expects lawsuits seeking to undo the election, and he noted that the Senate itself can decline to seat a winner who won by fraud. “So this is far from over,” he said. “I think we’re just seeing the beginning of something that may very well culminate in criminal charges.”
Where the investigation stands
Peltola says she knew nothing about any such effort and has dismissed the reporting as a “distraction.” Investigators are not waiting on her. The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department has issued fresh grand jury subpoenas. Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, has ordered a separate state investigation into possible election law violations.
President Donald Trump has called for Peltola to be prosecuted. His administration has also filed a lawsuit to stop Alaska from certifying the election if the incumbent loses by fewer votes than the rival Sullivan receives.
A late convert to the GOP
Dershowitz is no neutral observer, and he says so. He spent 75 years as a Democrat and published a book on September 29 titled Why I Quit the Dems: And So Should You! On Ask Dr. Drew on October 26 he called himself “a reluctant Republican, but I am a staunch anti-Democrat.”
What pushed him over, he said, was watching Ilhan Omar and Abdul El-Sayed embrace the streamer Hasan Piker, who said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11,” as The Washington Post noted. “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the party left me,” Dershowitz said. In April he had already written in The Wall Street Journal that he registered as a Republican because the Democratic Party had become the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history,” even though he disagreed with Republicans on abortion, immigration, healthcare and taxes.
Midterm elections take place on November 3.
Sources
- Law Prof Alan Dershowitz on the Alaska Sullivan Scandal: ‘It Crosses the Line to a Crime’ (VIDEO) * The Gateway Pundit * by Mike LaChance
- Alan Dershowitz
- Alan Dershowitz Says Democrats’ Alaska Ballot Ruse ‘Crosses the Line to a Crime’
- Alan Dershowitz says he is a "reluctant Republican" but a "staunch anti-Democrat" after seeing Ilhan Omar embrace Hasan Piker
- Sex Trafficking Brothers Reportedly Spent Up to $1M on Trump Ally's Legal Help While Seeking Pardons
- Rep. llhan Omar Raided: Ex-Dem Alan Dershowitz Predicts She'll Resign Over Birthdate & Brother Marriage Probe – Ask Dr. Drew | Dr. Drew Official Website – drdrew.com
Photo: news.flcourts.gov (Public domain)
