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Trump Allies Continue Legal Drive to Erase His Loss, Stoking Election Doubts
A group of President Donald Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner.
Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed.
In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Trump — including lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Joe Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president.
The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Trump to office.
But just as Eastman’s original plan to use Congress’ final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election was seen as far-fetched in the run-up to the deadly Capitol riot, the continued efforts are fueling a false narrative that has resonated with Trump’s supporters and stoked their grievances. They are keeping alive the same combustible stew of conspiracy theory and misinformation that threatens to undermine faith in democracy by nurturing the lie that the election was corrupt.
The efforts have fed a cottage industry of podcasts and television appearances centered around not only false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020, but the notion that the results can still be altered after the fact — and Trump returned to power, an idea that he continues to push privately as he looks toward a probable reelection run in 2024.
By Maggie Haberman, Alexandra Berzon and Michael S. Schmidt
