Since his election loss and subsequent baseless claims of fraud, Donald Trump has unleashed a barrage of legal challenges seeking to cast doubts upon and overturn the results of the presidential election. Now, as his efforts appear to have failed, a legal team comprised of Trump’s personal lawyers and Republican activists close to the White House are attempting a new strategy: identifying an “Election Denial Patient Zero” that Trump’s legal disputes can supposedly trace back to.
Several outlets, including the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, reported that Trump’s legal team is actively searching for evidence of a “patient zero”. This evidence could ostensibly be used to prove that Russian interference was the cause of the election results being overturned.
At the same time, Trump’s lawyers are looking for “vulnerabilities” in the election systems of certain swing states that the Trump Administration has repeatedly accused of voter fraud. The GOP’s efforts to create an “Election Denial Patient Zero” seems to be rooted in the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump by some hidden force— a “deep state.”
These efforts have been met with a number of challenges. Judicial experts have argued that the search for “evidence” to link the election result to a specific entity is doomed for failure. Last week, University of California Law Professor Rick Hasen wrote in an op-ed, “It’s time to recognize that this dangerous and deeply harmful effort by Donald Trump and his enablers to undermine faith in our elections should never have been allowed to get this far”.
Despite widespread criticism, Trump’s lawyers continue to persist in their attempts to blame a “patient zero” for the results of the 2020 election. So far their efforts have yielded no evidence, and have instead been criticized by legal and political experts as an attempt to mire the Trump administration in a dangerous web of conspiracy theories.
For now, it appears that the Trump administration’s pursuit of a “patient zero” is simply an effort at distraction and an attempt to save face. With the 2020 election results now certified, it is unlikely that these latest efforts will have any lasting effect.