Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday accused CBS News's "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan of giving a "misleading" description of the Alaska Senate race, where two candidates with similar names will appear on the ballot. Brennan said the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Alaska preemptively to block the certification of the results if Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) loses and that President Trump said he directed the lawsuit.

"Well, first of all, let me correct you, OK?" Blanche said. "You describe facts that were just simply either, at best, misleading, but really a lie to your viewers. It is not two Dan Sullivans, one an incumbent and one running. That's not true." Blanche cited the head of the Alaska Election Commission, "not President Trump, not me," as saying that Daniel J. Sullivan "is running solely to confuse voters, solely to pull votes away from the incumbent senator, OK?" "So that is something that we're dealing with," he continued.

"It's not just two Dan Sullivans running on the ballot in Alaska. That is not true. And second, President Trump has been talking about what a travesty this is for many, many, many months, and the Department of Justice has been looking at it for many, many, many months as we should under federal law." The attorney general said that the lawsuit was not the federal government taking over Alaska's election system or certifying who will be its next senator, but that "it's asking the court to step in where the Alaska Supreme Court didn't, which is to look at federal law and, if necessary, to allow a process for Alaska to decide who should be certified as a winner."

Brennan pushed back, saying Alaska's top court upheld a lower court ruling and found that the notion that Daniel J. Sullivan is looking to confuse Alaska voters "is not supported by preponderance of evidence." The host showed a blown-up image of the ballot and how the names of the candidates will appear, with the senator's name listed as the incumbent.

Blanche accused Brennan of "not telling the truth" and not being "honest with voters." When asked whether Trump directed him to file the lawsuit, Blanche said he would never share his communications with the president and denied that Trump said, on camera, that he directed the DOJ to file the lawsuit. He later said he had "no idea" who the president was referring to. Following another back-and-forth where Blanche accused the host of not letting him speak, the attorney general said that because Alaska has a jungle primary, there is a possibility that Alaska voters could be confused by the outcome.

"I don't know yet because there hasn't been an election, but all we were doing is trying to put guardrails in place so that if that happens, there's a system allowed where the ballots are kept in a way so that we can determine whether there was confusion," Blanche said. "It's not saying, 'Don't certify.'" The DOJ filed the suit Thursday, claiming the existence of a candidate with a similar name to Sullivan’s would make a win by Democrat Mary Peltola invalid. Trump told reporters upon arriving in Florida that he had greenlit the preemptive election challenge himself.

"I’m the one who said do it," Trump said. In Alaska, the top four vote-getters in the primary advance to the general election, which is tabulated using ranked choice voting. While they have similar names, the two Sullivans will appear differently on the ballot, with the senator labeled "incumbent" and "Republican." Sen. Sullivan’s campaign spokesperson, Nate Adams, previously told The Hill that the campaign will let the DOJ challenge run its course and that Alaskans will be able to differentiate between the two Sullivans on the basis of their records.