President Donald Trump said Friday he personally instructed the Justice Department to sue Alaska election officials over the state’s Senate race, an extraordinary federal intervention in a state-run election. “I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters after landing in Florida on Oct. 23, a day after the department filed its lawsuit. The suit argues that having an independent candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot alongside Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan could confuse voters and affect the contest against Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola. The department is seeking to prevent Alaska from certifying results if the incumbent loses by a margin narrow enough that votes for the independent could have changed the outcome. The race is among those viewed as important to Republican efforts to retain control of the Senate. Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled in June that the independent candidate could remain on the ballot, but Trump has continued to criticize his candidacy and the state’s election rules. Trump described the independent as “the fake” and suggested Democrats recruited him to draw votes from the incumbent. He offered no evidence for those claims. The lawsuit’s outcome could determine whether the state can certify its Senate results on the ordinary timetable in a close race.