The American Civil Liberties Union believes that there should be consequences for Trump Justice Department attorneys who pursued a federal lawsuit seeking to block any certification of an Alaska Senate race that doesn’t favor the Republican incumbent.
In a blistering new motion to dismiss, the ACLU — which represents a coalition of voters and advocacy groups — asked a federal judge to send a message about the Trump administration’s “bizarre, eleventh-hour stunt suit.”
“The U.S. Department of Justice may wish to have a junkyard brawl with a partisan political campaign in the days before an election. But in the absence of anything approaching a federal claim, it cannot do so in federal court,” the motion states. “The Court should immediately dismiss the United States’ frivolous, election-eve lawsuit and consider sanctions for this continued abuse of the judicial process.”
During a conversation on Substack Live with All Rise News, the ACLU’s deputy executive director Yasmin Cader said that it wasn’t a request that the group made lightly.
“I can tell you as an attorney who practices regularly in federal court and in state court, that is something that you rarely, rarely ask for,” Cader said, adding that attorneys reserve such a request for the “most egregious of circumstances.”
In this case, the ACLU argues that the circumstances warrant strong action.
“The Department of Justice’s desire for a political confrontation is no substitute for a legitimate legal theory, and it cannot justify holding Alaskans’ votes hostage,” the group wrote. “The most important thing that this Court can do to promote the integrity of Alaska’s election is to immediately and forcefully dismiss this lawsuit. And this Court would do American democracy and the rule of law a further service by considering Rule 11 sanctions against the attorneys who signed the pleadings in the name of the United States Department of Justice.”
One of those attorneys is Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the third most powerful official in the Trump Justice Department.
A longtime Trump ally, Woodward represented Trump’s criminal co-defendant Walt Nauta and multiple key witnesses in the classified documents case, and his law firm received roughly $1.4 million from Trump’s political action committees for that legal defense. Woodward has inserted himself in numerous politically charged cases of interest to the White House in a manner that’s unusual for senior Justice Department officials, who typically don’t involve themselves in individual lawsuits or prosecutions.
In the video, the ACLU’s senior official discusses a broad range of topics, including The New York Times reporting on the campaign of Mary Peltola, the state-level Alaskan litigation that led to the other Dan Sullivan’s placement on the ballot and why — from a legal perspective — the Frontier State doesn’t care whether he’s running in “good faith.”
Asked about Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s (R) announcement that he would consider trying to withhold certification of the election if Peltola wins, Cader responded to the governor directly: “We'll see you in court if something like that were to happen.”
She also explained why, even as Trump’s campaign of attempted election interference accelerates, she maintains her optimism as Tuesday draws closer.
Read the ACLU’s motion to dismiss in full here.
Watch the conversation in full at the top of this newsletter.
