Sean Reyes

Sean David Reyes (born February 16, 1971) is an American lawyer and politician who has been the Attorney General of Utah since 2013.

Appointed to the office by Governor Gary Herbert following the resignation of John Swallow, Reyes was subsequently reelected.

Reyes is a member of the Republican Party and is a vocal and longtime supporter of Donald Trump.

He has served as a county, state, and national delegate for the Republican Party and a member of the Utah Republican Party's State Central Committee.

Reyes was raised in the Los Angeles area.

His father was an immigrant from the Philippines and of half-Filipino and half-Spanish descent.

His mother was of half-Native Hawaiian and half-Japanese descent.

He is a great-nephew of former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay.

Reyes earned his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Brigham Young University in 1994.

He graduated from University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1997.

Reyes spent 14 years working at Utah's largest law firm, Parsons Behle & Latimer, where he became the first person of color to become a partner.

He practiced commercial litigation and employment law.

He later became general counsel for eTAGz, a Springville, Utah-based media and technology company that aimed to develop products for embedding digital files on packaging.

He was also a partner and co-founder of the venture capital firm Accelerate Ventures, a state small claims court judge, and president of the Minority Bar Association.

Reyes ran for state Attorney General in 2012 against Deputy state Attorney General John Swallow.

He lost the primary election by a margin of 68 to 32 percent.

After Swallow resigned amid scandal in December 2013, Reyes was selected by the Utah Republican Party State Central Committee as one of three candidates to fill the vacancy (on December 14, 2013), and Utah Governor Gary Herbert appointed Reyes to the position (on December 23, 2013).

Because of Utah's election laws, Reyes had to run in the 2014 Utah elections to be elected to finish out the remainder of Swallow's term.

He won with 63.06 percent of the vote over his Democratic challenger, Charles A. Stormont, and Libertarian candidate Andrew McCullough.

In 2015, Reyes joined Tim Ballard in a sting operation in Colombia of Ballard´s non-profit Operation Underground Railroad.

As attorney general, Reyes frequently joined other Republican state attorneys general who sued the Obama administration on various issues, ranging from federal lands use to transgender rights.

Immediately after taking office, Reyes appealed U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby's ruling that struck down Amendment 3, the state's same-sex marriage ban.

The estimated $2 million price tag in appealing Shelby's ruling was criticized by The Advocate, Daily Kos, and ThinkProgress.

In response, Reyes stated, "We're willing to spend whatever it takes to protect the laws and the will of the people" and that "everyone benefits from appealing the case."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the district court's ruling; Reyes petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review, but the court denied his request to hear the case.

In 2016, members of the Latter Day Church of Christ, a Mormon fundamentalist denomination, donated to Reyes' campaign for attorney general individually and through Washakie Renewable Energy, a business partially owned by members of the LDCC.

Reyes' representatives indicated in response to these reports that the contributions had been placed in escrow.

In late-January 2017, Reyes was named as a top candidate for the chairmanship of the Federal Trade Commission by officials in the Trump administration.

In 2020, Reyes ran for a third term.

He was challenged for the Republican nomination by Utah County Attorney David Leavitt, but won the Republican renomination in the July 2020 primary election with 54.04% of the vote.

In the November 2020 general election, Reyes was reelected, defeating Democratic nominee Greg Skordas.

During the 2020 presidential election, Reyes was an elector.

Unable to serve because of COVID-19 self-quarantine, Mia Love was nominated as a replacement elector.

In 2020, after the New York Attorney General sued the National Rifle Association of America, asserting that Wayne LaPierre and other NRA officials unlawfully misappropriated NRA funds for personal expenses and self-enrichment, Reyes joined Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge in filing an amicus brief challenging the New York suit.

Reyes asserted that the New York AG was discriminating against the NRA.

Reyes is a vocal and longtime supporter of Donald Trump.

He praised Trump in a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, and Trump endorsed him in his 2020 primary.

Reyes was also named Utah state co-chairman of Trump's reelection campaign.

In September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Reyes appeared in the front row of an indoor Trump rally in Nevada, without social distancing from other attendees and without wearing a face mask, garnering criticism.

In November 2020, Reyes took several days leave to go to Nevada in a bid to bolster the Trump campaign's claims of purported voter fraud in neighboring Nevada.