facebook-pixel

Supreme Court — again — rejects Utah brothers’ effort to reinstate Donald Trump as president

The suit sought to kick President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and nearly 400 members of Congress out of office and return Trump to the White House.

FILE - In this Nov. 14., 2020, file photo supporters of President Donald Trump attend pro-Trump marches outside the Supreme Court Building in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

A lawsuit from a trio of Utah brothers seeking to kick President Joe Biden out of the White House and return Donald Trump to the presidency will not be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court again rejected the brother’s case on Tuesday.

In January, the Supreme Court declined to consider Brunson v. Adams et al., which claimed nearly 400 members of Congress violated their oaths of office by failing to investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and certifying Biden’s Electoral College win on Jan. 6, 2021. The suit sought to remove Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and those members of Congress from office, while immediately making Donald Trump eligible to be inaugurated as president. That request ignores the Presidential Succession Act, which specifies the Speaker of the House would be next in line for the presidency.

In an appeal filed on Jan. 26, Raland Brunson, the lead plaintiff in the case, along with brothers Loy and Deron, argued the Supreme Court should reconsider the decision not to hear the case because it “represents a very powerful domestic covert operation” that has impacted the national security of the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The petition also warned of “ the destruction of property along with a large volume of bloodshed in our own streets” if the justices did not agree to take up the case.

The rules of the Supreme Court state any petition for a rehearing will only be granted if a majority of the nine justices agree.

The Brunsons’ effort even caught the attention of Trump, who posted a link to a story about the petition for a re-hearing on his Truth Social platform last week.

[Get the latest Utah political news in the new Daily Buzz email newsletter. Sign up here.]

Deron Brunson, who says he drafted the lawsuit, told The Salt Lake Tribune shortly after filing the petition for a rehearing that the justices would be violating their own oath of office if they did not agree to take up their case.

“Their failure to hear this case and rule in Brunson’s favor clearly identifies that they, too have violated their oath,” Deron wrote in an email.

Shortly after the Supreme Court denial, Raland Brunson wrote on Facebook that they were working on a yet-to-be-revealed “plan C,” promising to share more details in the coming days.

“We have been working long and hard on these strategies and there are more to come,” Brunson wrote.

Despite that cryptic claim, this effort is at a dead end. The only path forward for the Brunsons is to start again, according to Steve Vladek, the Charles Alan Wright chair in federal courts at the University of Texas School of Law and author of a forthcoming book on the Supreme Court.

“They might try to re-file the lawsuit to try to get it back to the Supreme Court, but that’s just a different procedural path to the same dead end,” Vladek said.

The Brunsons vow to continue their quixotic quest to remove Biden from office, urging supporters to flood the Supreme Court with a pre-written affidavit arguing that a “rigged election is an act of war” against the United States, and demanding an explanation from each justice why they refused to hear the case.

“This is my goal and it CAN BE DONE because ‘We the People’ are powerful and we own our public servants, they are in power to serve us,” Daron wrote in an email response to The Tribune.

They’re also asking for a minimum $2 donation from each supporter, which, they say, covers the cost of print and mailing the letters.

Update: Feb. 21, 1:20 p.m. • This story has been updated to include a statement from the Brunson brothers.