2026-10-23T19:25:28.138Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
唐纳德·特朗普总统领导的司法部，费了九牛二虎之力要突破执法与为特朗普政治阵营充当法律后盾之间的道德底线。
最新的事例是两起非同寻常的诉讼：司法部试图介入阿拉斯加和加利福尼亚两个州的计票程序。
这两起诉讼基本都不太可能取得成果；实际上，专家表示，它们本质上都是孤注一掷的法律手段。
但更值得关注的是另一层启示。这些诉讼表明，特朗普领导的司法部极愿采取极具争议的行为，试图为特朗普及其共和党同僚操纵选举结果。总统甚至不愿隐晦自己在此事中的角色——周五下午被问及对阿拉斯加诉讼的看法时，他答道：“是我下令这么做的。”
就阿拉斯加的诉讼而言，特朗普的司法部试图阻止该州参议院选举结果的认证：如果共和党参议员丹·沙利文以微弱劣势落败，且存在另一位同名候选人丹尼尔·J·沙利文赢得足够多困惑选民的选票、导致参议员落败的可能性，司法部就会发起阻止行动。阿拉斯加对民主党掌控参议院的计划至关重要。
上周，特朗普的司法部试图阻止加州官员统计约2万名被政府声称可能是非公民的选民的选票。
这两起诉讼都存在明显且重大的法律问题。
阿拉斯加的诉状称，若不调查选民困惑是否导致沙利文落败、就认证民主党人玛丽·佩尔托拉获胜，将违反阿拉斯加根据《全国选民登记法》承担的“保护选举程序完整性”的职责。
但圣母大学法学院教授德里克·穆勒周五在《选举法博客》上撰文指出，该法律实际上并未给各州设定此类“职责”。
加州大学洛杉矶分校法学教授里克·哈森告诉CNN：“如果这份诉状是我的学生写的，我会给它打不及格。这是司法部的耻辱，而且极不可能胜诉。”
加州的诉讼被认为同样成功无望。政府辩称，依据宪法的《最高条款》（联邦法律与州法律冲突时联邦法律优先），它可以质疑加州处理所谓非公民投票的方式。但穆勒和哈森指出，目前尚无关于各州如何核实公民身份的联邦法律。
除此之外，还有其他令人警惕的问题。
在阿拉斯加，由于该州采用排序复选制，丹尼尔·J·沙利文几乎不可能产生实际影响：任何感到困惑的选民都可以将两位丹·沙利文都列入排序，他们的选票很可能会被计给现任参议员。此外，与丹尼尔·J·沙利文不同，这位参议员在选票上标注的是“现任”和共和党候选人身份。
目前也完全不清楚，如何调查才能确定有多少张选票因选民困惑而导致沙利文落败。
这个问题已经在法庭上被广泛审理，阿拉斯加最高法院在6月裁定丹尼尔·J·沙利文有资格参选。
所以，此举很可能是为了在佩尔托拉获胜时制造怀疑，至少有部分目的是如此。
还有特朗普直接声称自己指示司法部提起诉讼，这在政治上有明显的潜在影响。这在现阶段并不令人意外——他显然在推动司法部起诉政治对手方面发挥了作用——但这种行为仍然极具问题。
（而且，我们从未看到乔·拜登领导的司法部做出过类似的事情。）
至于加州的诉讼，总检察长托德·布兰奇周四被问及，政府在选举临近之际采取这一行动是否会引发选举混乱时，他表达了反对意见。
布兰奇说：“我一直想不通，为什么有人……如果有证据表明有数以万计，也就是2万名无资格选民在接收选票，却没有任何动机采取措施应对这一问题。”
问题在于，政府长期以来一直在炒作非公民投票的虚假恐慌。它经常声称一些数字，但这些数字在审查面前完全站不住脚。
例如，它曾声称内华达州选民名册中有多达1.6万名非公民。后来又大幅将这一数字削减至185人。但内华达州调查这些案例后发现，这185人全部都是公民。
本周，一名联邦法官引用了这一有缺陷的数据，同时叫停了国土安全部对包括加州在内的多个州所谓非公民投票调查的部分工作。
法官指出，这些努力最终可能主要属于“干涉或恐吓”性质。
这才是关键所在。提起针对合理问题的诉讼是一回事，为了政治目的提起胜算渺茫的诉讼，甚至只是为了施加压力，则是另一回事。
2020年大选表明，诉讼不需要成功就能产生影响。特朗普多次大肆散布虚假的大规模选民舞弊言论，煽动其支持者的狂热情绪，其中数百人后来在法律途径失效后于2021年1月6日冲击了美国国会大厦。
即使没有暴力起义的威胁，这类法律行动也可能为特朗普多次提及的、与选举相关的其他极端行动提供借口。
如果法院不愿阻止民主党在阿拉斯加参议院选举中“作弊”获胜，会发生什么？如果法院不愿协助联邦政府阻止加州所谓的非法投票，又会发生什么？
试想一下，一位总统可能以此为由采取的行动。
周四，布兰奇被问及司法部是否会参与选举认证程序，或试图阻止各州认证选举结果。他拒绝排除这种可能性，但表示只会在“极端情况”下才会这么做。
此后不久，我们就获悉，司法部确实在采取行动阻止某州认证选举——至少是有条件地阻止，因为特朗普下令了。
Why Trump’s dubious election lawsuits in Alaska and California should raise eyebrows
2026-10-23T19:25:28.138Z / CNN
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has gone to great lengths to bulldoze the ethical line between enforcing the law and serving as the legal wing of Trump’s political operation.
The latest episodes: A pair of extraordinary lawsuits in which the DOJ seeks to intervene in the vote-counting process in two states: Alaska and California.
Both lawsuits appear very unlikely to bear fruit; indeed, experts say they basically amount to legal Hail Marys.
But there’s a bigger takeaway. They signal a very notable willingness by Trump’s DOJ to engage in highly questionable behavior to try and put its thumb on the electoral scale for Trump and his fellow Republicans. And the president isn’t even trying to be subtle about his role here — asked about his take on the Alaska lawsuit Friday afternoon, he replied: “I’m the one that said do it.”
In that case, Trump’s DOJ is seeking to block the certification of that state’s Senate race if GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan loses by a small enough margin that it’s possible that another candidate with a similar name, Daniel J. Sullivan, won enough confused voters to cost the senator victory. Alaska is a critical state for Democrats’ hopes of flipping control of the Senate.
In California last week, Trump’s DOJ sought to block state officials from counting the ballots of around 20,000 people that the administration has claimed could be noncitizens.
There are major and readily apparent legal problems with both of these lawsuits.
The Alaska filing claims that certifying Democrat Mary Peltola as the winner without examining whether voter confusion cost Sen. Sullivan the race would violate Alaska’s duties under the National Voter Registration Act to “protect the integrity of the electoral process.”
But Notre Dame Law School Professor Derek Muller wrote on the Election Law Blog on Friday that the law doesn’t actually place any such “duties” on a state.
Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, told CNN: “I would give the complaint in this case a failing grade if it were written by one of my students. It’s an embarrassment to the Department of Justice and is extremely unlikely to succeed.”
The California lawsuit is seen as a similar longshot. The administration argues it can challenge how California has handled purported noncitizen voting because of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states that federal law prevails when it conflicts with state law. But Muller and Hasen noted there is no federal law regarding how states should verify citizenship.
Beyond that, there are other eyebrow-raising problems.
In Alaska, it is very unlikely that Daniel J. Sullivan would ever actually matter due to the state’s ranked-choice voting, meaning anybody who is confused could rank both Dan Sullivans, and their vote will in all likelihood be counted for the senator. Also, the senator, unlike Daniel J. Sullivan, is listed on the ballot as an “incumbent” and a Republican.
It’s also not at all clear how an investigation would ever ascertain how many votes Sen. Sullivan lost due to voter confusion.
This issue has already been litigated extensively in court, and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in June that the Daniel J. Sullivan was qualified for the ballot.
So this looks like an effort to inject doubt if Peltola wins, as much as anything.
And then there’s Trump outright saying he directed his DOJ to file the lawsuit, which carries obvious implications for him politically. That’s not surprising at this point — he’s clearly played a role in getting DOJ to prosecute his political foes, for example — but it’s still highly problematic.
(And no, we never saw anything like it with Joe Biden’s DOJ.)
As for the California lawsuit, Attorney General Todd Blanche objected Thursday when asked whether the government was inflicting chaos on the election with its late move.
“It continues to baffle me why anybody … if presented with evidence that there are tens of thousands, 20,000 ineligible voters that are receiving ballots — that there isn’t some motivation, anything to do something about that,” Blanche said.
The problem is that the administration has been crying wolf about noncitizen voting for a very long time. It has regularly claimed numbers that utterly fell apart under scrutiny.
It claimed there were as many as 16,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls in Nevada, for example. It later sharply pared that number back to 185. But when Nevada probed the cases, it found all 185 were citizens.
A federal judge this week cited that flawed data while halting portions of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation of purported noncitizen voting in a series of states, including California.
The judge cited how the efforts could ultimately mostly amount to “interference or intimidation.”
And that’s really the point here. It’s one thing to file lawsuits that target legitimate issues; it’s another to file longshot efforts for political purposes or even just to apply pressure.
The 2020 election showed that lawsuits don’t need to succeed to have an impact. Trump’s many wild and false claims of mass voter fraud whipped his supporters into a frenzy, with many hundreds of them later attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, when legal avenues failed.
Even absent threats of a violent uprising, these kinds of legal efforts could deliver a pretext for other extraordinary action related to the election — which Trump has repeatedly left on the table.
What happens if the courts won’t step up to (supposedly) prevent Democrats from cheating to win the Alaska Senate race? What happens if they won’t assist the federal government’s efforts to prevent (supposed) illegal votes in California?
Think about the things a president could justify.
Blanche was asked Thursday whether the Justice Department would ever get involved in the certification process or try to block states from certifying their elections. He declined to rule it out but suggested it would only be in a “doomsday scenario.”
Shortly thereafter, we found out the DOJ is indeed moving to block a state from certifying its election — at least conditionally — because Trump told it to.
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