The Republican governor of Alaska announced plans to launch a criminal investigation after a report accused the campaign of Democratic senate candidate Mary Peltola of trying to confuse voters by recruiting a candidate with the same name as her opponent.

Governor Mike Dunleavy wrote on social media that he was “directing the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted”.

It came after the New York Times published a damning report in which one of Peltola’s former staffers said that the Democrat’s campaign recruited people named Dan Sullivan to run for office against the Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, to deliberately confuse voters.

Donald Trump also called for Peltola to be “removed from the Ballot and prosecuted” after the report. The US president previously condemned the presence of two candidates named Dan Sullivan and accused Democrats of putting an “imposter” on the ballot.

Peltola’s campaign had denied involvement in encouraging or soliciting Dan J Sullivan, a former educator with no political experience, to run against Dan S Sullivan, according to an Anchorage Daily News report from May.

But Duleavy said the report “reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections” and that “Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support.”

“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections. Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable,” Dunleavy wrote.

The New York Times report relied on interviews with Peltola’s former campaign manager and longtime aide, as well as several other people who participated in or were told about the plan.

Text messages and documents seen by the New York Times also shed light on the plan that Peltola’s campaign staff and senior aides in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) hatched to encourage other people named Dan Sullivan to run.