File a lawsuit asking the court to:
- reinstate Trump,
- remove Biden and Harris from office,
- remove “the 387 members of Congress who voted to certify Biden’s election,”
- ban all of them and Mike Pence from “ever running again,”
- and award the plaintiff $3 billion of damages for violating his “constitutional right to a fair and honest election.”
Where did this lunacy come from? Answer: Utah. Three brothers: Raland, Loy, and Deron Brunson, who have a certain notoriety in the rightwing fringe (their case was breathlessly followed by survivalist websites and the like, e.g. here).
The Brunson family apparently were a trumpet quartet in the 1970s and 1980s (photo below, see story here). They were contemporaries of the Osmonds, and like them are Mormons and a sibling act, but they didn’t make the big time. Whatever you might have thought then of their music, if you heard them play, they’re political activists today in Utah. Raland is now about 62 years old, so that’s an old photo. His brother Loy is older.
Loy Brunson is a politician of sorts. In 2012 he ran for Utah’s GOP Senate nomination; at the nominating convention, he got 14 of 3,918 votes (see results here); when he ran again in 2018, he got 4 of the 3,328 votes (results here); in 2022 he ran again, and this time got 71 of 3,705 votes (results here). He’s persistent.
His brother Deron made his mark by “suing banks in an attempt to show the corruption in that part of the financial world,” according to this website. His brothers drew on this “experience in the legal field” to file their “complaints” (Loy in a Utah federal district court; Raland in a state court). The Brunsons didn’t use attorneys; they represented themselves.
Raland’s state lawsuit was moved to the federal courts (see order here), where it was ignominiously dismissed by a federal judge, then dunked by a federal court of appeals (see ruling here). He then filed a Supreme Court appeal, which was summarily denied (here, at p.5, third line, item 22-380). Their second big lawsuit — after the banks — was a flop. It falls in the category of “LOL, the Supreme Court doesn’t have time for this nonsense.”
The Supreme Court may be partisan, but it isn’t crazy. The Brunsons? All that time and effort, and all they have to show for it is: “CERTIORARI DENIED … 22-380 BRUNSON, RALAND J. V. ADAMS, ALMA S., ET AL.” They could frame it and hang it on a wall as a reminder of how unserious they are — and that the U.S. Supreme Court, whatever else it is, is still a place where you have to be serious in order to be taken seriously.
