This story was originally published by Dermot Cole, Reporting from Alaska
This section is from the Alaska Beacon:
Sen. Lisa Murkowski told a group of journalists that she was “disappointed.”
“I do fear the message that is sent to these great men and women that stood by us,” the Alaska Republican said as she gestured toward the Capitol Police officers posted outside the Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon.
Murkowski’s fellow Alaska senator, Dan Sullivan, stopped to speak to reporters about the “grand slam home run” executive order from Trump that expands energy development in his state, but he would not comment on the president’s clemency for Jan. 6 defendants.
“I need to read the order first,” he said.
Here is Trump’s 334-word blanket pardon.
Murkowski always chooses her words carefully and errs on the side of understatement, sometimes in extreme fashion. She made that mistake in this case.
She followed up her disappointment with a better response: “I strongly denounce the blanket pardons given to the violent offenders who assaulted these brave men and women in uniform.”
As for Sullivan, he still hasn’t said anything about pardoning the January 6 criminals.
There has been no news coverage in Alaska of this by the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Public Media or Alaska’s News Source, the Associated Press, or any other institution.
Sullivan always uses the “didn’t read it,” “didn’t see it,” “didn’t hear about it,” “didn’t know about it” excuse when he can’t think of what to say or is afraid that Trump will take offense.
It is a scam, of course, as Sullivan comments all the time about things he hasn’t read when he believes he is operating in a safe space.
For example, on March 31, 2023 he released this detailed statement on a sealed indictment of Trump before reading the indictment, which dealt with Trump’s attempt to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
If ever there was a time for the “didn’t read it” excuse it would have been that one because the indictment was not released until four days later.
Still, the indictment that Sullivan had not read would do “lasting damage” to the nation, said Sullivan, “and move our country into banana republic territory.”
A year later Sullivan claimed that Trump’s trial was “eerily similar to the show trials Stalin launched against his political opponents.” Sullivan said the case was weaker than anyone could have imagined. Trump was later convicted on 34 counts.
On June 9, 2023, Sullivan also denounced Trump’s second indictment, about the mishandling of classified documents, before reading the specifics of the sealed charges.
The indictment he hadn’t read “will almost certainly do lasting damage to our polarized nation,” said Sullivan. “Equality before the law is a fundamental tenet of our republic. The Biden administration is shoving our country into dangerous territory that is eroding trust in critical institutions of our government.”
That denunciation was based on press reports.
But in 2019, when Sullivan was asked about Trump’s phone call pressuring the president of Ukraine to help Trump by investigating Joe Biden, Sullivan said that he wouldn’t base comments on press reports.
“I have no comment on that until I see what the facts are,” he said of that Trump scandal. “I’m not going to learn the facts from reading it in the press.”
In 2018, when former Trump attorney Michael Cohen made the allegations of campaign finance violations that started the chain of events connected to the porn star indictment, Sullivan said he didn’t know if the Senate should look into it.
Questioned by reporters on Aug. 22, 2018, Sullivan claimed to have been so interested in an Alaska primary the day before—he wasn’t on the ballot—that “I haven’t thought about” whether the Cohen claims deserved an investigation.
Before the 2016 election, Sullivan refused three times to say on MSNBC that racist comments by Trump were racist. Sullivan agreed they were racist only when asked a fourth time.
Sullivan said he did not vote for Trump in 2016 because the Access Hollywood tape showed Trump to be unfit for office.
But after the 2016 election, Sullivan became a fairly loyal member of the Trump party, never criticizing Trump. He sometimes claimed that he did criticize Trump, but it was always the impersonal sort of comment that bothered no one.
When contentious issues about Trump come up, Sullivan’s standard move is to play it safe by saying as little as possible for as long as possible.
In June 2020, Trump made up a story that a 75-year-old Buffalo protester knocked down by police could have been an “ANTIFA provocateur.”
A reporter tried to show Sullivan the Trump tweet and the senator said, “I don’t want to comment right now. I’m on my way to a meeting. I’ll see it when I see it.”
Another moment when Sullivan had nothing to say took place shortly before the 2020 election. It was after Trump refused to condemn white supremacy in a debate with Joe Biden.
“Senator, should the president have condemned white supremacy at the debate the other night?” CNN reporter Ted Barrett asked Sullivan as they walked along.
Hard to imagine an easier question. But Sullivan didn’t know how to respond.
“I’m not commenting. I didn’t see the debate,” Sullivan said.
“You didn’t see the debate?” Barrett said.
“I didn’t. I was doing another event, for myself,” Sullivan said.
“Certainly you’ve heard about it. Do you think it was mishandled?”
“Does it hurt your race, him saying things like that?” Barrett asked.
Sullivan “stared at the reporter silently for about 8 seconds before a Senate subway door closed, and whisked him away,” the CNN reporter said.
The most serious Sullivan silence of his Senate career came when he refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden had won the election and refused to say a thing about Trump’s repeated election lies. Sullivan refused to defend important American institutions under attack by Trump.
As I wrote here on Jan. 10, 2021, it had been obvious to Murkowski in November 2020 that Trump had lost. It was obvious to everyone who was not in the Trump cult.
The failure to produce any winning legal arguments should have ended this, but Senate Republicans encouraged Trump with their support or silence and Trump continued to lie from the highest office in the land.
The Trump loss was probably even obvious to Sullivan, but he had Trump and Trump voters in Alaska to placate, so he said nothing.
As late as Monday, Jan. 4, 2021, Sullivan refused to comment on the GOP coup proposed by radical members of Congress who didn’t want to accept the election results and wanted to boost Trump.
On Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021 Sullivan claimed to the Daily News he had “decided a number of days ago” to oppose the coup and accept the election results. Sullivan had claimed on Dec. 14 that he had personally accepted Biden’s win, but he never called on Trump to stop lying.
“I think had the president accepted the election results earlier and repudiated the mob violence earlier and more forcefully, it could have had an impact yesterday,” Sullivan told the Daily News a day after the riots, rewriting history to portray himself as someone who wanted Trump to change his behavior.
Sullivan said the rioters “need to be fully prosecuted to the extent of the law.”
In this post-riot term paper his office inflicted on Alaskans, Sullivan says, “I wish fervently that President Trump had accepted the results of the election. . .”
“The violence that engulfed our Capitol was a disgrace and will go down as one of the sadder and more dispiriting days in our country’s history. But those who chose violence in order to disrupt our constitutional duties did not have the last word,” the Sullivan term paper from four years ago said.
Trump and all those who chose violence have had the last word.
Dermot Cole has worked as a newspaper reporter, columnist and author in Alaska for more than 40 years. Support his work here.
