Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola denied Thursday that she knew anything about an effort to put another candidate on the Alaska ballot with the same name as the Republican incumbent as the Justice Department escalated a criminal investigation with new grand jury subpoenas.

Defense lawyers and Democrats say a blitz of headline-making actions and cases is no coincidence and reeks of politics — in both the timing and the targets.

It's the latest setback in the Justice Department's efforts to charge Trump's perceived adversaries.

Two former FBI intelligence officials who specialized in foreign election interference were charged Friday with making false statements about their roles in investigating the origins of Hunter Biden's laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the state's most powerful Democrats, was charged on Thursday in connection with what federal authorities alleged was a role leading a wide-ranging criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.