Attorney General Blanche clashes with CNN host while defending pre-emptive suit to block Alaska Senate certification

US Attorney General Todd Blanche lashed out in a television interview on Sunday while defending the Justice Department's pre-emptive lawsuit to block certification of Alaska's US Senate results if the Republican incumbent loses, calling a host's question 'crazy'.

The testy exchange unfolded on CNN's State of the Union. The department's unprecedented legal action alleges there could be 'voter confusion' because two candidates named Dan Sullivan appear on Alaska's ballot. President Donald Trump told reporters, 'I'm the one that said do it,' when asked about the suit.

Host Dana Bash said one of the big questions was whether Trump would try to overturn the election, and whether the result could be, God forbid, what was seen after January 6. Blanche replied: 'Oh, stop it. You are not being a real person.'

Bash said she would have said the same before January 6, when election-denying Trump supporters attacked the Capitol; a bipartisan Senate report said there were seven deaths in relation to the incident.

Blanche said the president and the department were acting because they were concerned that 'an absolute fraud' was happening in Alaska, and that asking whether the president would then do something 'crazy' was 'not a real question'. He insisted: 'We're not laying any groundwork for the president to do that. What I said is the groundwork that we are laying is for Alaska, for the state of Alaska.'

Blanche added: 'If it becomes an issue after the election, we'll have the ability to determine whether there was confusion that violates the law in determining who the senators should be.'

Blanche also appeared irked in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS's Face the Nation. After she summed up the litigation and asked whether Trump directed him to file suit, Blanche said: 'First of all, let me correct you. You described facts that were just simply either at best misleading, but really a lie to your viewers.'

Trump's Justice Department has claimed there might be voter confusion on Alaskan ballots, potentially propelling Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola to victory. Election experts, however, maintain that this position is legally weak.

Derek Mueller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said in a blogpost: 'The legal claim is so absurdly thin, there's essentially no likelihood of success.'

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the suit marked 'an unprecedented intervention by the federal government' and noted that Alaska's courts had 'fully litigated' this issue. He said the lawsuit 'raises serious concerns about political interference' and that he could not remember an attempt to stop the certification of an election, 'and certainly not 11 days before polls close'. Richard H Pildes, a law professor at New York University, told the New York Times: 'It is one of the weakest election lawsuits I've ever seen,' adding that it should have no realistic chance of success in the courts.