This article was republished with permission from dermotcole.com.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, who never criticizes Donald Trump, hasn’t read the Trump indictment, but he had his staff write this statement for him that claims the unseen document “has moved our country into banana republic territory.”
It’s not true.
It’s startling to see Sullivan sound off from a position of ignorance when he spent the entire Trump administration pretending he couldn’t comment on this or that because he had not read, seen or heard about whatever Trump outrage he was being questioned about.
But now he’s basing his sweeping conclusions about the unseen Trump indictment on “numerous press reports.”
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 this 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 came 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 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, 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.
In the 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 truth is that Sullivan waited until after the insurrection to express his fervent wish. Before that he was giving it the Sullivan Pebble Mine treatment—fervently wishing to stay quiet in a corner, trying to ride out the election without crossing Trump or Trump voters.
He’s playing a similar dangerous game now with the Trump indictment, which he hasn’t seen.
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Dermot Cole has worked as a newspaper reporter, columnist and author in Alaska for more than 40 years. Support his work here.
