00:00:09.000Yes, yes, it should be a criminal offense to mislead the electorate.
00:00:13.000So, why did the person who was just talking, you know, the Democratic candidate in Alaska, apparently her campaign attempted to cheat the electorate of Alaska with one of the most absurd tricks in the history of American politics?
00:00:24.000So, this is an insane story out of Alaska.
00:00:27.000If you've been watching that Alaska Senate race, which again is extremely, extremely tight within the margin of error, And it pits a sitting senator, Republican, Dan Sullivan against Mary Peltola, an Alaska Democrat.
00:00:38.000But it also includes another person named, wait for it, Dan Sullivan.
00:00:42.000And that seems like a gigantic coincidence, right?
00:00:44.000I mean, two guys named Dan Sullivan, both running for Senate in Alaska of all places.
00:00:52.000Well, now the New York Times is reporting on the sordid details of how this came about.
00:00:57.000According to the New York Times, in the summer of 2025, a staffer for Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who was eyeing a run for the Senate, received unusual instructions from top campaign aides.
00:01:07.000Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can.
00:01:14.000Well, the staffer did it and went through all the voting records and produced a gigantic list of all the Dan Sullivans.
00:01:20.000That was not a random request, says the New York Times.
00:01:22.000Dan S. Sullivan is the name of the state's Republican senator.
00:01:26.000And if the Peltola campaign or its allies could track down and persuade another Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, the confusion could cost the senator crucial votes on the state's unusual four person ballot.
00:01:35.000And the plan worked because they found a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska panhandle.
00:01:41.000reachable only by errantcy and announced his candidacy for the Senate.
00:01:48.000Now, the Peltola campaign, they're saying they had nothing to do with this, but according to the New York Times, doing some actual reporting.
00:01:55.000So, you know, like slow clap for the New York Times doing some actual journalisming.
00:01:59.000The New York Times looked into it and they found based on interviews and text messages along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign that not only did Miss Peltola's team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader.
00:02:14.000The group worked to coach To coax other would be spoilers into the race to dilute the incumbent's support and help catapult the Democrats' victory.
00:02:23.000One of the people speaking up is one Elisa Rios, Peltola's former campaign manager and a longtime aide, who was fired back in August.
00:02:30.000She said, Alaskan voters need to know.
00:02:33.000There's a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.
00:02:37.000While she says that Peltola was not directly involved, she was definitely aware.
00:02:43.000So the New York Times did interviews with some 12 people who participated in or were told of the plan.
00:02:49.000And they obtained dozens of text messages providing updates on the progress of the effort.
00:02:54.000Well, last week, as the Times prepared to publish the article, Rios, who had been planning to file a wrongful termination lawsuit against the Peltola campaign, contacted the Times and said she wanted to retract her statement, which is weird.
00:03:06.000And the Times doesn't have to abide by that because if they think that you're lying in the retraction, they can print the original.
00:03:11.000Also, Ms. Rios' interviews were consistent with the Times' other reporting.
00:03:15.000According to the New York Times, the operation began in the summer of 2025 to lure potential spoiler candidates onto the state's unusual four person ballot.
00:03:24.000In one early meeting, according to Rios, aides with the DSCC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, introduced a veteran Democratic operative named Jared Kurtz to Rios and Anton McParland, who at the time was Peltola's chief of staff.
00:03:38.000And Kurtz was introduced as a specialist in secret ballot maneuvers.
00:03:42.000Well, months later, in early 2026, Kurtz participated in a video call with members of the ballot composition team.
00:03:48.000And he told the team he had made contact with one of the myriad Dan Sullivans.
00:03:54.000And apparently, Kurtz said that he was amenable to running if it would help Peltola.
00:03:59.000Kurtz told us when we found him he said that the new Sullivan, the fake Dan Sullivan, said he hated Trump.
00:04:08.000And if it was going to help Mary, he liked Mary.
00:04:09.000He had no interest in being a politician, but if this could help, he would do it.
00:04:14.000According to the FEC, a pro Peltola super PAC called 49th State PAC paid Wingspan Strategies, a firm co owned by Kurtz, about $87,000 back in the fall.
00:04:24.000Text messages show communications between the DSEC and the Peltola campaigns.
00:04:28.000This isn't just, by the way, the Peltola campaign.
00:04:30.000It's the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which means like the National Democratic Party.
00:04:36.000And the DSEC celebrated alongside the campaign when an Alaska court cleared the way for the fake Dan Sullivan to stay on the ballot.
00:04:45.000Shelby Danchik, a DSEC employee, wrote in internal group chat.
00:04:49.000Three people, including two Peltola aides and a member of the DSEC staff, reacted with heart emojis.
00:04:57.000Now, again, the timeline here is pretty astonishing and clear.
00:05:00.000The Peltola campaign, with her probable general awareness, but certainly with the knowledge of pretty much all of her campaign aides, literally went and found a list of Dan Sullivan's.
00:05:11.000This is very reminiscent back in the 1990s when Michael Jordan was the biggest name in sport.
00:05:15.000There was a company that famously couldn't get Michael Jordan to endorse them.
00:05:20.000And obviously, Michael Jordan was very expensive.
00:05:22.000So they found like a random Michael Jordan to go endorse their product.
00:05:25.000And then they put on their product, this thing is great, Michael Jordan.
00:05:30.000And then, of course, that ended with lawsuits and they had to pull it down and all the rest.
00:05:33.000But apparently, if you do this in an electoral campaign, it's totally fine, even praiseworthy, apparently.
00:05:41.000So, again, according to the timeline, in 2025, the Peltola campaign aides told the staffer to find all the Nance Hullabens.
00:05:46.000In January 2026, one of the chief of staff for Peltola, this Anton McParland, texted the DSCC's director of campaigns I'm hearing that our friend in the state is being noticed.
00:06:00.000In early 2026, That contractor, Kurtz, said he found a Dan Sullivan who was willing to do it.
00:06:07.000And McParland asked for regular updates from our friend Jared.
00:06:11.000And again, Jared would be Jared Kurtz, the contractor.
00:06:15.000In May of 2026, the actual real Senator Dan Sullivan filed for reelection.
00:06:20.000In late May, Kurtz traveled to Petersburg, where the decoy Dan lived.
00:06:24.000And decoy Dan then switched his personal party registration from unaffiliated to Republican just before the deadline and then filed to run for office.
00:06:31.000And then he hired Amber Lee, a Democratic strategist who has publicly supported Peltola.
00:06:36.000In early June, Alaska Republicans moved to remove Dan J. Sullivan, the fake one, by referring the case to the FEC.
00:06:45.000The Election Commission Director of Alaska Division, Carol Beecher, issued a decision that Decoy Dan could not appear on the ballot, finding that Decoy Dan's filing was not a good faith candidacy and was made to confuse the voters.
00:07:00.000So Decoy Dan challenged that in court, and the Alaska Superior Court said, no, no, no, you have to let him on the ballot.
00:07:06.000And everybody inside the Democratic headquarters was celebrating.
00:07:11.000In late July, Decoy Dan told the New York Times he voted for Hillary, Biden, and Kamala and voted for Peltola for Congress.
00:07:18.000In August, again, it's always somebody being personally betrayed by being fired that leads to these sort of stories coming out.
00:07:25.000It's never anybody doing this on principle.
00:07:28.000The Peltola campaign demoted McParland and fired Rios.
00:07:32.000Dan J. Sullivan insisted he ran on his own.
00:07:35.000And the NBC reported that the DOJ had issued a grand jury subpoena to compel information from witnesses linked to the Decoy Dan campaign.
00:08:02.000And as you can see, this is very confusing because Daniel J. Jr. Sullivan Jr. is listed just above Dan S. Sullivan.
00:08:11.000So it says Gerald Hikus, registered Republican, Mary Peltola, registered Democrat, Sullivan Daniel J. Jr., and then Sullivan Dan S., registered Republican incumbent.
00:08:21.000Okay, that's confusing and it's deliberately confusing.
00:08:26.000And the fact that his middle initial J means that he comes alphabetically before Dan S means that his name is listed first.
00:08:31.000So if you're just in a rush and you want to vote for Dan S. Sullivan, the actual senator, you just mark the ballot for the first guy named Dan Sullivan.
00:08:58.000Well, Trust and Will does all that stuff.
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00:10:02.000But given the fact that there is so much focus on this particular issue right now, the two Dan Sullivans, and that the DOJ filed a lawsuit to try to pause any kind of formalizing the vote until things are worked out, if the incumbent Republican, Dan Sullivan, doesn't win, this is something that is sending Democrats scrambling, no doubt.
00:10:29.000I mean, it should send Democrats scrambling, at least on a political level.
00:10:32.000The Attorney General, Ty Blanch, says, well, whether or not it is illegal, it certainly should be illegal.
00:10:39.000If it's cheating, if it's fraud, is it illegal?
00:10:42.000And the answer is, it certainly should be.
00:10:44.000And so, look, that's why there's an investigation, and that's why we have law enforcement.
00:10:47.000And then, you know, we're not talking about ongoing criminal investigations, but we do have now a civil investigation, a civil suit that is hoping and asking the federal court to step in to stop this.
00:10:57.000It cannot be in this country that you can have an election that is cheating.
00:11:01.000And fraud, but that there's nothing wrong, and we're all okay with that.
00:11:04.000And the Alaskan citizens, they're not okay with that.
00:11:07.000The people in this country are not okay with that.
00:11:09.000And neither is President Trump, and neither am I. Right?
00:11:13.000It is truly insane, truly insane that this is not illegal.
00:11:20.000It's under the National Voter Registration Act, specifically 52 U.S. Code 20501B3 in the Act's Finding and Purposes section.
00:11:28.000It says one of the law's purposes is to protect the integrity of the electoral process.
00:11:33.000And so the DOJ is saying, well, you know, this isn't protecting the electoral process and therefore it's violative of the law.
00:11:38.000It's a little bit vague for a statutory violation, frankly.
00:11:41.000Jonathan Turley is saying maybe there is a risk of obstruction.
00:11:44.000Like, if you lie to law enforcement about the thing you were doing, you can be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, even if the underlying activity is not criminal in nature.
00:11:52.000Fox is now reporting that there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the fake Dan Sullivan.
00:11:58.000Quote, multiple grand jury subpoenas will be issued in the coming hours and days.
00:12:01.000There are preservation orders to cell phone companies that are being prepared regarding text messages and emails that may build a timeline for how Daniel J. Sullivan was placed on the ballot.
00:12:11.000Now, the original statute cited by the Alaskan Electoral Commission.
00:12:15.000That removed Decoy Dan from the ballot was 52 U.S. Code 30124.
00:12:21.000No person who's a candidate for federal office or an employee or agent of such a candidate shall fraudulently misrepresent himself or any committee or organization under his control as speaking or writing or otherwise acting for on behalf of any other candidate or political party or employee or agent thereof on a matter damaging to the other candidate.
00:12:37.000So, again, kind of on point, kind of not.
00:12:40.000So, as a legal matter, this is in a murky gray area.
00:12:43.000As a moral matter, it is perfectly obvious.
00:13:17.000Lisa Murkowski quit voting for that war in Iran six months ago, and he's doubling and tripling down.
00:13:24.000And this is not somebody who's working in our best interest.
00:13:28.000And anybody who's working in our best interest isn't going to talk about the nonsense.
00:13:33.000This is all stuff to sell newspapers, this is all stuff to get subscriptions.
00:13:39.000Nobody at the New York Times cares about affordability in Alaska.
00:13:44.000Okay, again, this is the Democratic all purpose redirect.
00:13:47.000So if you are a Michigan Senate candidate who loves terrorism, You say that you're just not concerned.
00:13:51.000Those people who are asking me about terrorism, it's just they're not concerned about affordability.
00:13:56.000Now, the people who are asking you whether your campaign attempted to steal an election by getting a person with the same name as your opposing candidate to run, those people just aren't concerned about affordability, right?
00:14:11.000The president put out a statement on this.
00:14:14.000He says, It has just been determined that the Democrats in Alaska illegally searched for and recruited a man named Dan Sullivan to run against our distinguished Republican senator, Dan Sullivan.
00:14:23.000In order to defraud, confuse, and obfuscate the election, thereby taking votes away from the real Senator Dan Sullivan.
00:14:29.000The New York Times reports that Democrats have insisted they have nothing to do with the other Dan Sullivan on Alaska's Senate ballot.
00:14:35.000But aides with the Mary Peltola campaign and DSEC were part of a months long secret plan to recruit him to run, as well as other candidates.
00:14:41.000The Democrats' false statements were made under oath in federal court.
00:14:44.000Therefore, they perjured themselves and should be liable for very serious consequences.
00:14:48.000Mary Peltola should suffer the legal and political consequences for what she has done.
00:14:51.000He's not wrong about any of this, by the way.
00:14:53.000If perjury is committed, people should go to jail for all of this.
00:14:55.000Senator Murkowski, who can hardly be called A staunch, ardent Republican, right?0.99
00:15:00.000She's about as rhinoe as it's possible to be.0.99
00:15:02.000She says, While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot stacking should have no place in our electoral process.
00:15:09.000Run and win on your merits, your views, your policy ideas, your accomplishments.
00:15:12.000By contrast, recruiting candidates to manipulate the field and influence voting outcomes is simply wrong.
00:15:17.000Alaskans deserve the honest truth from Mary and her campaign.
00:15:19.000What has been revealed is a pattern of lies and cover ups and a culture of deception that belongs nowhere in our elections or among our elected officials.
00:15:27.000Now, again, Democrats are trying to redirect away from what is an extraordinary scandal.
00:15:31.000I mean, it really is kind of incredible.
00:15:32.000Imagine, again, if the shoes were on the other feet.
00:15:36.000If, on a presidential level, Donald Trump had recruited another man named Joe Biden to run against him to misdirect votes from, you know, the Joe Biden.
00:15:46.000All they have in the Democratic bag right here is basically misdirect.
00:15:53.000The New York Times article was based on interviews with 12 people they said who participated in or were told of this plan or the would be candidates that the team tried to recruit.
00:16:03.000It's not like they just had one person saying this, it was a pretty deeply sourced report.
00:16:08.000About the lengths they went to to try to get other Dan Sullivans on the ballot.
00:16:12.000I mean, would you like it if another Chris Murphy ran on the ballot?
00:16:17.000But I wouldn't have any worry if the ballot in Connecticut said incumbent Senator Chris Murphy.
00:16:24.000I would trust that everybody who wants to vote for me is going to vote for me.
00:16:27.000But you're missing the underlying story here.
00:16:29.000The underlying story is that Donald Trump has basically declared that he believes any election that results in a Democrat winning is an illegitimate election.
00:16:41.000Well, no, that's actually not the underlying story.
00:16:42.000The underlying story is that you guys literally tried to steal an election by going and recruiting a dude with the same name as the Republican candidate.
00:16:49.000Mary Peltola, I mean, she's been relegated to some pretty weak defenses here.
00:16:52.000Here she was saying this election isn't about her on her worst day.0.99
00:16:56.000No, it's about you and your campaign literally trying to steal.
00:16:59.000Like, I've never seen a clearer attempt to steal an election than this one.
00:18:07.000She's also been tied via donors to Black Lives Matter activist Sean King, according to the Alaska story.
00:18:13.000Federal Election Commission records show Michael Kishnick of Palo Alto, California, contributed $2,000 to Alaskans for Mary, Peltola's campaign committee.
00:18:21.000Kishnick, the co founder of Credo Mobile, was also among the founders of Real Justice Pack, a national political organization created with Sean King and other progressive activists to elect prosecutors committed to changing policing, bail, and prosecution policies, and to recall those who did not support catch and release policies.
00:18:39.000So, again, she is a mess of a candidate.
00:18:42.000And then, stack on top of that, the fact that her campaign pretty obviously allegedly tried to commit election fraud and.0.99
00:18:49.000Alaskans should think about this before they decide on whether or not to vote for her.
00:18:55.000So, terrible things happening over in Alaska.
00:18:57.000We'll see how it affects Mary Paltola.
00:18:59.000Meanwhile, over in Utah, the authorities have decided that it's time to prosecute Kalshi.
00:19:04.000Before all of this came down from Utah earlier in the week, we recorded an episode of Titans on Tomorrow with the founder of Kalshi, Tarek Mansour.
00:19:11.000Folks, full disclosure as always, Kalshi is one of our sponsors.
00:19:15.000Well, that's relevant because now Utah is attempting to bring charges against Kalshi.
00:19:20.000Again, based on what I think is a deep misinterpretation of the law, Utah has now charged Calche and its founders.
00:19:29.000Basically, they are attempting to put people in jail because they are saying that a prediction market is a betting market.
00:19:35.000That is what Utah is currently saying.
00:19:37.000According to NBC News, Utah on Wednesday filed criminal charges against prediction market operator Calche and two of its executives, months after a federal judge rejected Calche's effort to prevent Utah from enforcing its strict anti gambling laws against the activity.
00:19:54.000By the way, kind of crazy, because the charges include 13 counts of violating the state's prohibition on gambling and another charge involving profiting off illegal activity.
00:20:06.000To charge them with felonies that could amount to 75 years in jail for running a prediction market, which is, um, they're rapists in Utah who are not getting 75 years.
00:20:17.000Now, this whole thing comes down to whether prediction markets and betting markets are exactly the same thing, right?
00:20:23.000Because Utah bans, say, sports betting markets, like DraftKings.
00:20:29.000And so they're also trying to ban Calchie, saying they're the same thing.
00:20:31.000So in the interview that I did with Tarek Mansour, I asked him this specific question like, what is the difference between a prediction market and, say, a gambling market?
00:20:44.000People have tried to compare it on the one hand to the stock market.
00:20:46.000People have tried to compare it on the other hand to, say, sports betting, like draft kidding and polling.
00:20:51.000So, if you were to sort of break down those various silos, one being polls, one being sports betting, and one being a stock market, which one is the prediction market most similar to and how?
00:22:04.000Like the card counters get kicked out of the casino and then they figure out who the losers are and they keep giving them, they figure out how to make them addicted so they keep losing.
00:22:12.000That model is regulated differently because their draft king sets the odds and you need to make sure that the state by state, like, hey, don't screw.
00:22:35.000So no matter what I say, everybody will take it with a grain of salt, which is totally fine.
00:22:39.000I will just say I find Tarek Menser's argument about prediction markets versus betting markets pretty convincing on economic, legal, and intellectual grounds.
00:22:48.000So prediction markets, as an intellectual framework, are distinct.
00:22:51.000From pure betting markets like against the house.
00:22:55.000I'm not the only one who says this, right?
00:22:56.000Economists, Eric Snowberg, Justin Wolfers, Eric Zitsowitz, they argued in the Handbook of Economic Forecasting, they said, quote, prediction markets quickly incorporate new information, are largely efficient and impervious to manipulation.
00:23:10.000In 2007, a bunch of famous economists, Nobel Prize winning economists, people like Kenneth Arrow and Daniel Kahneman and Robert Schiller, they said, quote, using these markets as forecasting tools could substantially improve decision making in the private and public sectors because basically you're putting your money where your mouth is.
00:23:24.000You think, That it's going to rain tomorrow.
00:23:28.000And now you're not just having an opinion, you're actually having to put your money behind the opinion.
00:23:35.000Well, again, none of this is an argument at how people use or abuse prediction markets.
00:23:39.000You can absolutely abuse CalShee, right?
00:23:41.000You can be somebody who is obsessed with putting money and quote unquote betting on CalShee.
00:23:45.000But you can also do the same thing with stock markets or with futures options.
00:23:48.000You can treat them like gambling apps.
00:23:50.000Probably a bunch of friends have done this and lost a bunch of money day trading.
00:23:53.000But prediction markets conceptually are about using belief about future events to define financial decisions and hedge risks.
00:24:01.000They act more like a futures market, say like a grain future, which allows you to defray the risk of a bad harvest by putting money on a futures option that shorts the market, meaning it gives you the option of buying grain at a lower price in a few months and then selling it at a higher price.
00:24:16.000And that's been a hallmark of global markets for a century, another point that Tarek Mansour makes in our interviews.
00:24:22.000I know that a lot of people have very strong feelings about prediction markets.
00:24:25.000I think that the interview is fascinating.
00:24:28.000I certainly think that Utah's attempt to extend the law without actually defining the difference between a prediction market and just sports.
00:24:50.000Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.