Tim Canova: Supreme Court Considers Case Seeking to Overturn 2020 Presidential Election

While there has been much public attention on the U.S. Supreme Court’s present consideration of the “independent state legislature” theory in Moore v. Harper involving North Carolina’s redistricting, that case would not immediately upend the 2020 Presidential Election. In contrast, a little-known case that appeared recently on the Court docket could do just that. The case of Brunson v. Adams, not even reported in the mainstream media, was filed pro se by ordinary American citizens – four brothers from Utah — seeking the removal of President Biden and Vice President Harris, along with 291 U.S. Representatives and 94 U.S. Senators who voted to certify the Electors to the Electoral College on January 6, 2021 without first investigating serious allegations of election fraud in half a dozen states and foreign election interference and breach of national security in the 2020 Presidential Election. The outcome of such relief would presumably be to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.

The important national security interests implicated in this case allowed the Brunsons to bypass an appeal that was frozen at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and get the case to the Supreme Court which has now scheduled a hearing for January 6, 2023. The Brunson Petition for a Writ of Certiorari would require the votes of only four Justices to move the case forward.

It seems astounding that the Court would wade into such waters two years to the day after the Congressional vote to install Joe Biden as President. But these are not normal times. Democrats may well push legislation in this month’s lame duck session of Congress to impose term limits and a mandatory retirement age for Justices, and thereby open the door to packing the Court. Such a course would seem to be clear violations of Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution which provides that Justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.” In addition to such institutional threats to the Supreme Court, several Justices and their families have been living under constant threats to their personal security since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Perhaps these institutional and security threats have provided powerful incentives for the Court to put Brunson v. Adams on its dockets as a shield to deter any efforts by the lame duck Congress to infringe on the Court’s independence. Or perhaps conservatives on the Court are serious about using the Brunson case as a sword to remove public officials who they believe have violated their constitutional Oaths of office by rubber-stamping Electors on Jan. 6th without first conducting any investigation of serious allegations of election fraud and foreign election interference.

Moreover, recent weeks have brought a cascade of news suggesting the likelihood of an impending constitutional crisis that could be difficult to resolve without the Court’s intervention. It is now clear that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was colluding with social media giants Twitter and Facebook to censor news of Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election – a most egregious First Amendment violation intended to rig the election outcome and perhaps to install an unaccountable and criminal puppet government. Meanwhile, the January 6th committee may soon send a criminal referral to the Justice Department to arrest President Trump even though his reinstated tweets are a reminder that he was not calling for insurrection but for peaceful protest on January 6th. More recently, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was reportedly working with Big Tech to censor election critics.

More