After first claiming that he didn’t have time to study the frivolous Texas lawsuit trying to overturn the election of Joe Biden as president, Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced Thursday night that he had time, apparently pressured by his right-wing fanbase to join the lawsuit.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I was disappointed that we didn’t have enough time to thoroughly review the details. Had this not been the case, we may have come to a different decision,” Dunleavy said after first deciding that he couldn’t join the lawsuit.

But the political pressure got to Dunleavy.

In an instant, Dunleavy accepted the lies in the Texas lawsuit as a high-minded matter of principle, supporting the idea that tens of millions of voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan should be disenfranchised to help Trump.

Acting Attorney General Ed Sniffen, no doubt pushed by Dunleavy, revised his legal claims about timeliness to placate the governor, who had been attacked by crackpots for his wishy-washy position.

“Today, Alaska's attorney general joined in the Texas lawsuit on election integrity,” Dunleavy said late Thursday on Facebook, without explaining the contradiction with his earlier claims.

“I agree with the AG that the integrity of this election is a critical bedrock principle of our republican form of government. There are too many important questions that need to be answered to give the American people confidence that their vote counts.”

The suit is about the integrity of the election, but not in the way that Trump and Dunleavy claim. They want to throw out the votes of millions of Americans in key states where Trump lost.

That Dunleavy would sign onto this nonsense is an embarrassment to Alaska. He has aligned himself with a Texas attorney general who has been indicted for securities fraud.

If there are important questions of integrity in this matter, they are about the lack of integrity shown by Dunleavy in joining this dumb stunt and the open question of whether American institutions are capable of surviving the constant lying of Trump and his Republican sycophants.

Trump is trying to overturn the will of American voters, with the full support of the Trumpists in the Republican Party in Alaska and across the country. His bogus claims that the election was stolen from him have been defeated in court after court, but he is a man who cannot stand to admit defeat.

He is the biggest loser, but he is trying to cheat his way into staying in office.

Former Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth correctly sized up this baseless and dangerous lawsuit in which Dunleavy is claiming that one state can legally challenge the vote in another state—an idea that would open Alaska elections to Outside interference.

“It’s time for our elected officials to follow the footsteps of Republican leaders like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse and Gov. Herbert of Utah who are calling out these attempts to undermine the will of the voters what they are: publicity stunts and a waste of taxpayer dollars. And once Gov. Dunleavy appoints the next attorney general for our great state, our Legislature needs to ensure in the confirmation process that our future attorney general will protect the rule of law, and not join such baseless attacks on our democracy, even if directed to do so by the governor,” she wrote in a letter to the Anchorage Daily News.