Alaska’s Decoy Scandal Brings Back The Usual Suspects For Shady Election Tactics

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

Below is my column on the return of Marc Elias in another campaign controversy with the Alaskan decoy scandal. The Elias Law Group and other lawyers were tied to the effort to confuse Alaskan voters by The New York Times in its recent investigative report. These lawyers presumably have a growing conflict of interest as dozens of subpoenas shower down on Alaska. What is clear is that this scandal will not end on Tuesday and, if the results are close in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola, there could be a major fight over her taking her seat in the Senate.

Here is the column:

Marc Elias is back. The notorious Democratic lawyer who played a critical role in the 2016 Russia hoax is again in the news. His law firm has been identified by the New York Times as part of the expanding scandal involving Democratic effort to confuse voters in Alaska with a decoy candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan.

For those familiar with Elias’s checkered history, this is a case of rounding up the usual suspects.

The scandal involving Democratic candidate Mary Peltola has quickly snowballed this week. A New York Times blockbuster investigative report quotes former staff who claim she knew of a cynical effort by her own campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to confuse voters by recruiting and fielding a decoy “Dan Sullivan” candidate in the race against incumbent Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan (R-Alaska). State and federal investigations are now unfolding, with dozens of federal subpoenas raining down on Alaska.

The effort to get voters to cast mistaken ballots is grossly unethical and, even in these rage-filled times, a uniquely disgraceful scheme. Peltola and the Democratic Party had long denied any involvement in the other Sullivan’s candidacy. So when the Times produced evidence that she allegedly knew, and that Democratic staffers and lawyers had been deeply involved from the beginning, many of us were surprised – that is, until the name “Marc Elias” emerged. Then it made more sense.

The Elias Law Group was already in the news this election cycle for threatening reporters with defamation lawsuits if they kept asking questions about the health of former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina. Earlier, Elias caused a stir during an unsuccessful Democratic gerrymandering effort, raising the idea that Democratic leaders could abolish the entire Virginia government after courts blocked their attempted radical redistricting plan.

The fact that figures such as Peltola and Cooper wanted to be associated with any law firm headed by Elias is itself an indictment of their judgment and standards.

Despite his losses in cases such as National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, Elias is still a favorite of many on the left thanks to his aggression and partisan fervor. The controversies that make him notorious to many make him popular with others.

Elias was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it secretly funded the infamous Steele Dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy theory. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was later indicted but acquitted for making a false statement to the FBI.)

Clinton campaign officials lied to reporters during the 2016 campaign, denying any involvement in the Steele Dossier. Journalists discovered the truth after the election – that the Clinton campaign had hidden payments for the dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that when he tried to report the story, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”

Times reporter Maggie Haberman later observed that “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” The Federal Election Commission ultimately sanctioned the Clinton campaign for the subterfuge.

While raising money as the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy, Elias’s group has been involved in gerrymandering and efforts criticized as seeking to invalidate Republican votes, including unsuccessful efforts to challenge Democratic electoral losses.

In Maryland, Elias’s team supported another abusive gerrymandering scheme that a court found not only violated Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the proposed map “subverts the will of those governed.”

One media site accused Elias and his group of “making millions off gerrymandering efforts” while publicly denouncing Republican gerrymandering.

In 2024, Elias’s legal team was also accused of pushing “to bar third-party presidential candidates – including Cornel West – from swing state ballots where they might siphon votes” from Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Likewise, the New York Times reported that the Elias firm’s work “on behalf of a Soros-funded PAC in Texas … was opposed by a left-leaning election watchdog as undermining laws intended to limit the influence of major donors.”

His group’s work for New York’s redistricting effort was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters and also effectively negating Republicans’ votes.

In 2024, the Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin criticized the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”

Now, Elias’s group is linked to the decoy scandal in Alaska, which allegedly aimed to make voters cast mistaken ballots. What distinguishes lawyers involved in this type of voter disruption is less their talent as their willingness. There are simply some things that most lawyers will not do.

There is also a difference in how lawyers are treated in such controversies. It often seems that election controversies involving Republican lawyers are more likely to end with bar charges and disbarments. Take John Eastman, the former Trump lawyer disbarred in California after a state bar panel found that he had pushed unfounded legal theories and conspired to obstruct the electoral vote count on Jan. 6, 2021.

Although I publicly disagreed with Eastman’s theories, I opposed the effort to disbar him as setting a dangerous precedent for lawyers seeking to advance novel or unpopular theories of recovery or liability. After all, lawyers on the left routinely advance dubious theories, including some that are more ideologically than legally driven. Such controversies rarely rise to the level of disbarment, especially when more appropriate sanctions are available, ranging from reprimands to fines.

Eastman is currently asking the Supreme Court to overturn his disbarment. It is unlikely that Elias Law Group or Peltola’s lawyers will face similar disbarment efforts – nor should they, in my view, unless they were involved in criminal conduct. But the disparate treatment afforded to counsel in this country by party remains a growing concern. What draws a shower of bar complaints for Republican lawyers brings a windfall of clients for Democratic lawyers.

The New York Times has produced sources alleging that lawyers for Peltola’s campaign were involved in this effort, even though they previously told a federal court that they “lack knowledge or information” and “deny any allegation about those purposes.” Such filings and statements could raise ethical or even criminal questions in investigations at both the state and federal levels.

Meanwhile, though, tens of thousands of voters in Alaska have already cast ballots that included the decoy Sullivan candidate. This could result in a nasty fight in Congress if Peltola prevails in the vote count. And when it happens, that is where we will find Marc Elias in his element.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”