Ex-Alaska lawmaker details mystery recruiter as FBI, Congress widen 'Decoy Dan' scrutiny

A former Alaska Republican lawmaker told Fox News Digital the FBI interviewed him after an apparent Democratic political operative allegedly posed as a conservative recruiter and tried to persuade him to enter the state's U.S. Senate race amid an intensifying congressional investigation into the controversial "Decoy Dan Sullivan" ballot scheme.

The allegations raise questions about potential federal criminal liability. Article III Project attorney Will Chamberlain argued that a coordinated effort to deceive voters about a candidate's identity could violate 18 U.S.C. § 241, the federal conspiracy-against-rights statute.

The revelations come after former campaign staff for Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola spoke to the New York Times about their knowledge of a reported scheme to stack Alaskas four-person ballot with other "Dan Sullivans" to help siphon votes from incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan.

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The ballot ultimately included Peltola, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, Republican Gerald Heikes and retired Petersburg teacher Dan J. Sullivan. Whether the similarly named candidate diverted votes or affected the outcome remains unproven.

Chamberlain told Fox News Digital the alleged operation could constitute a federal felony if prosecutors establish that participants conspired to interfere with voters' constitutional rights.

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"The basic concept is you're not allowed to conspire to injure or harm people's constitutional rights. And one of those rights is to vote for the candidate of your choice," Chamberlain said.

"These people conspired to put a fake Decoy Dan Sullivan on the ballot in order to trick people who were going into the ballot box intending to vote for the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan," he alleged. "There's a lot of good precedent on this that suggests that's a crime and a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison."

Chamberlain cited historical cases involving ballot manipulation, while acknowledging that the precise circumstances of recruiting a same-name candidate have not previously been addressed in an identical case.

"Nothing exactly like this has happened before in the sense of recruiting a same-name candidate to trick people in the ballot box," he said, adding that a lot of slanted electoral messaging is not illegal.

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"If you want to pretend that another Republican is better than the current incumbent or pretend that the incumbent's not running and then persuade someone to vote for that candidate, that's not a conspiracy against rights because the right to vote for the candidate of your choice has not been impinged upon," he said.

"It's the fact that when you're conspiring to put two people with the exact same name on the ballot to trick people who are going in there intending to vote for the incumbent and get them to vote for somebody else by deception."

Meanwhile, former state Rep. David Eastman, a Republican from the Matanuska-Susitna Valley,