Strangers have assailed him as a coward and a traitor and have menacingly cautioned him to sleep with one eye open. He was forced to sell his business and his home in Arizona. Fearing for his safety and uncertain of his future, he and his wife moved into a mobile home in the foothills of the Rockies, with all of their belongings crammed into shipping containers in a high-desert meadow, a mile or two away.

“And for what — lies?” Mr. Epps asked the other day with a look of pained exhaustion. “All of this, it’s just been hell.”…

“I am at the center of this thing, and it’s the biggest farce that’s ever been,” he said. “It’s just not right. The American people are being led down a path. I think it should be criminal.”

To that end, Mr. Epps and his wife have been searching for a lawyer to help them file a defamation lawsuit against several of the people who have spread the false accounts. Should they end up doing so, they would join a list of other individuals and companies — most notably, the voting machine producer Dominion Voting Systems — in using the courts to push back on the rampant disinformation that emerged again and again during Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.