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Tag: mike lindell
Mike Lindell

Lindell's Financial Woes Lead To My Pillow Eviction From Warehouse

At a time when he's struggling with major legal bills, far-right conspiracy theorist and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has received some more bad news. MyPillow, according to The New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, is being evicted from a warehouse it has been renting in Shakopee, Minnesota.

The eviction, Houghtaling reports, is the result of MyPillow's failure to pay $217,000 in rent for one of two warehouses. The property is owned by the company First Industrial, whose attorney, Sara Filo, appeared during a courtroom hearing on Tuesday, March 26.

Filo told the court, "MyPillow has more or less vacated, but we'd like to do this by the book. At this point, there's a representation that no further payment is going to be made under this lease, so we'd like to go ahead with finding a new tenant."

Many of Lindell's financial and legal problems stem from his efforts to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results.

Lindell claimed, without evidence, that Dominion Voting Systems and its competitor Smartmatic — both providers of voting equipment — helped now-President Joe Biden steal the election from Trump. And those companies have sued Lindell for defamation.

Lindell's legal bills are also the result of his "Prove Mike Wrong" challenge of 2021.

That year, at this "Cyber Symposium" event in South Dakota, Lindell offered to pay $5 million to anyone who could disprove his claim that Chinese government officials helped Biden steal the election. Software developer and computer forensics expert Robert Zeidman accepted the challenge and went about debunking Lindell's claim.

According to Zeidman, Lindell now owes him $5 million. The MyPillow CEO has tried to get out of paying him, but U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim upheld Zeidman's victory as perfectly legitimate in a February 21 ruling and agreed that Lindell needs to pay him the money owed.

Lindell, however, has maintained that Trump really won the 2020 election and that Zeidman didn't disprove his conspiracy theory involving Chinese officials.

Houghtaling notes, "The beleaguered conspiracy theorist has, all in all, been struggling with cash flow for some time. Earlier this month, Lindell joined Steve Bannon's podcast to advertise a new Arizona lawsuit he underwrote for Kari Lake — and to ask if listeners would be willing to spare some change to help him out.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Mike Lindell

'Put Up Or Shut Up': Cyber Expert Asks Court To Enforce Lindell's $5 Million Forfeit

MyPillow Chief Executive Officer and prominent election denier Mike Lindell was ordered in April to pay $5 million to the cyber security expert who debunked his 2020 election fraud claims — but the CEO has yet to make the payment, CNN reports.

The conspiracy theorist previously "vowed to award a multimillion-dollar prize to any cyber security expert who could disprove his claims," and when software developer Robert Zeidman did just that, an arbitration panel awarded him a whopping $5 million.

Zeidman is asking a federal court to "force" the CEO to pay him, according to CNN.

Now, Lindell is calling it all "a complete sham."

The right-winger told CNN Friday, “The bottom line is this thing is wrong, and I'm not stopping until we prove him wrong."

However, earlier this month, the CEO said during a Right Side Broadcasting (RSB) Network interview he spent over $40 million "trying to overturn the election," and as a result, is now asking the pubic to buy stock in his business, Lindell TV.

CNN reports:

The pricey battle began in 2021 when Lindell convened what he called a 'cyber symposium' to showcase data he claimed to have related to the 2020 election. The MyPillow CEO invited cybersecurity experts to participate in the 'Prove Mike Wrong Challenge.' If the experts could prove Lindell's data wasn’t related to the 2020 election, they could win a multimillion-dollar payout.

Regarding the CEO's repeated false election claims, Zeidman said last month, "The data was just so obviously bogus. It surprised me."

Also last month, Glasser told CNN the court's order Brian Glasser confirms "another important moment in the ongoing proof that the 2020 election was legal and valid, and the role of cybersecurity in ensuring that integrity."

On Friday, Glasser told the publication, "It's kind of put up or shut up time for Mr. Lindell," adding,"If Lindell is not a complete fraudster, he should have the ability to pay."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Roger Stone

Roger Stone Warns Trump Will Beat 'Cold Fish' DeSantis 'Like A Drum' (VIDEO)

Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone appeared on The Lindell Report, a nightly webcast from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and his co-host Brannon Howse, in part to discuss Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ undeclared campaign for president on March 22. Stone denounced DeSantis’ “globalist money” and lack of “the common touch,” predicting that the “cold fish who doesn’t like people” would meet his political end for stepping to Trump.

Although Trump has been the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 nominee since losing the 2020 election, rumors have swirled about DeSantis running for president for months, prompting waves of criticism from the former president and his media allies. DeSantis largely avoided responding, until his recent mockery of Trump’s hush money payment to a former porn actor and later his March 22 interview with Fox’s Piers Morgan, in which he essentially called Trump a chaotic leader with many character failings.

Stone came on Lindell’s show and responded to DeSantis’ comments: “Gee Governor, you didn't seem to care much about his moral character when he endorsed you for governor and thus -- and therefore gave you a one-way ticket to the Republican nomination, … because in all honesty, Ron DeSantis is a cold fish who doesn’t like people.”

Later in the interview, Stone speculated that DeSantis might avoid interacting with people because he is “on the spectrum”: “He does not have the common touch. I don’t know if he is an introvert in an extrovert’s business, whether he may be on the spectrum, I don’t know. But he’s a very odd fellow. … He wears earbuds so he can avoid human contact, so people don’t speak to him. At rallies he doesn’t press the flesh. All of those rituals of politics that Donald Trump seems to love, because I think Trump gets strength from people, the governor doesn’t seem to like to do.”

Stone also attacked DeSantis’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “When you examine what you think he did in Florida, and what he actually did in Florida, people will find out they’re two different things.” He complained that despite DeSantis’ reputation for opposing mask mandates in schools, “he left it up to each county, and the seven largest counties in Florida refused to comply with the governor’s order, and 3.6 million schoolchildren were still required to wear masks long after the governor was in Las Vegas saying the Florida school system was mask-free.”

Stone declared that DeSantis “made perhaps the greatest single error I’ve ever seen in 43 years in American politics by attacking Donald Trump” with his Fox interview, because “the people who like DeSantis like him because they think he is like Trump.” Denouncing his support from establishment Republicans and “globalist money,” Stone said DeSantis “talks a better game than reality,” but “if he runs, Trump will beat him like a drum, and it’ll be the end of Ron’s political career.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Mike Lindell

Fox Lawyer Throws MyPillow Sponsor Under The Bus In Dominion Case

A lawyer for Fox News and Fox Corp. told a judge in Delaware that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a top advertiser for the network, was not a reliable source of information when he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show in January of 2021, during a hearing held earlier this week. It is rare for a broadcaster to publicly disparage a top sponsor, and could be a signal of growing tensions between Fox and Lindell.

Erin Murphy, the lawyer, was defending Fox against a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems in response to the network’s post-2020 election coverage. Dominion alleges that Fox knowingly and deliberately aired false information about the company’s voting machines and software, in a bid to win back viewers who were fleeing to right-wing competitor Newsmax.

Dominion claims that Fox attempted to draw those viewers in by indulging their incorrect belief that the 2020 election was rigged, a position held by former President Donald Trump and his lawyers. Private communications at Fox News revealed through the lawsuit show that on-air talent and top executives – including Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch– knew that Trump’s conspiracy theories about the hacked election were false, but aired them anyway.

Much of Murphy’s defense of Fox rested on her argument that a “reasonable viewer” could discern that Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and others at the network who provided a platform for Trump’s lawyers were merely covering newsworthy allegations, rather than presenting the false claims as statements of fact.

But Murphy’s defense of an interview that top star Tucker Carlson conducted with Lindell took a different tack. Lindell’s appearance on Carlson’s January 26, 2021, program, she argued, was so incoherent that Fox News’ audience would be confused enough to find him inherently unreliable.

A “reasonable viewer would be puzzled on anything he is talking about,” Murphy told Judge Eric Davis, who is presiding over the case.

Murphy told the judge that Carlson invited Lindell on his show to discuss “cancel culture,” rather than Dominion machines specifically. She acknowledged that Lindell did bring up Dominion voting machines, but argued his comments were so disjointed that a viewer wouldn’t be able to follow his train of thought.

Murphy additionally presented Lindell’s commentary as absurd on its face. At one point in the interview, “he dares Dominion to sue him,” she said, exasperated.

Murphy argued that, contrary to Dominion’s claims that Carlson endorsed Lindell’s false allegations, he in fact treated them as “conspiracy theories” and signaled to his audience that they shouldn’t believe anything his guest was saying. In reality, Carlson made a much more couched statement, that mainstream outlets who ostracized Lindell were “not making conspiracy theories go away."

Dominion’s position is that Carlson knew Lindell would bring up baseless allegations about voter fraud, and that Fox wanted to “assuage” a major advertiser. Providing Lindell with a platform to spread known falsehoods, Dominion argued, served as a de facto endorsement of them. That argument is supported by Carlson’s own deposition in the case. “As far as I know, Mike Lindell makes that same claim every single day of the year on his website and any interview that he does,” Carlson said in sworn testimony.

Rupert Murdoch later acknowledged under questioning from Dominion lawyers that it was “wrong” for Carlson to have had Lindell on his show in the weeks after January 6.

Last month, Lindell addressed the issue on his own show, telling his viewers that he “had to tell the truth” about Dominion on Carlson's show.

Lindell and Fox have had public feuds in the recent past. In July of 2021, Lindell threatened to pull his ads from Fox News because the network wouldn’t air a spot for his bogus cyber symposium. (The Dominion case has already revealed that Fox News' CEO sent Lindell a gift to woo him back after that; by mid-2022 Fox News was running more MyPillow ads than ever.)

Whether Fox’s legal strategy of characterizing him as an unreliable conspiracy theorist will further inflame those tensions remains to be seen.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.