Nine of Hearts: ‘MyPillow Guy’ Mike Lindell: Falsely Promoted Trump’s Big Election Lies, Financed Fake State Audits

Voting Machine Conspiracies Persist

election subversion risk, voting technology

NYT:

Nearly four years later, zealous supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged its machines to rob him of the 2020 election are still at it.

Even though Dominion has aggressively defended itself in court, a network of pro-Trump activists has continued to push false claims against the company, often by seeking to use information gleaned from the very defamation lawsuits the firm has filed against them.

The network includes wealthy business executives like Patrick Byrne, who once ran Overstock.com, and Mike Lindell, the founder of the bedding company MyPillow. Both have sought without credible evidence to put Dominion at the heart of a vast conspiracy to deny Mr. Trump a victory. [Boldface added]

 

“Supreme Court rejects Kari Lake, Mark Finchem in machine voting lawsuit, ending legal challenge”

Arizona Republic. No surprise: “Legal experts had predicted the court would not exercise its discretion to add the case to its docket, citing well-established legal precedent and the court’s low acceptance rate.” Moreover:

“U.S. District Judge John Tuchi dismissed their claims and what he called their “frivolous complaint” in Aug. 2022, saying they did not have standing — a legal precedent that requires an individual who files a case is directly impacted by the conduct they are suing over. Tuchi later ordered their legal team to pay six figures in sanctions to deter “similarly baseless suits in the future.” 

“The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in October upheld Tuchi’s ruling and agreed the case rested on hypotheticals. The case was funded by Mike Lindell, founder of MyPillow and a fervent ally of Trump who promotes false claims that elections are rigged.”

Dominion’s Fox News Case Was Just the Beginning

“The truth was in Fox’s inbox,” says one lawyer behind the blockbuster April settlement, as the company’s suits against Rudy Giuliani, Newsmax, and more keep moving through the courts.

BY BRIAN STELTER

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/11/dominion-fox-news-case-was-just-the-beginning

The 2024 presidential contest is well underway, but teams of lawyers are still poring over the 2020 election, and for a very good reason: They are trying to hold Donald Trump’s allies accountable for the damage done by their election lies. Civil lawsuits by companies like Dominion Voting Systems are progressing at the same time that Trump is facing criminal trials in multiple jurisdictions. “We have so much work ahead of us,” Stephen Shackelford says on this week’s episode of Inside the Hive.

Shackelford was one of the lead attorneys in Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News, which resulted in the media giant paying $787.5 million in April to settle that case. According to Davida Brook, another one of the lead attorneys, Dominion has “lawsuits pending against Newsmax, One America News, Mike Lindell and MyPillow, Sidney Powell and her law firm, Rudy Giuliani, and Patrick Byrne.” Those cases, she says, are “all proceeding towards trial.”

Host Brian Stelter interviewed Shackelford and Brook multiple times for his new book, Network of Lies, which hits shelves November 14. (Vanity Fair recently published an excerpt from the book about Tucker Carlson’s abrupt exit.) On Inside the Hive, Stelter shares some of his reporting from the book and asks the attorneys about the pending cases. Shackelford says Dominion was “put through hell” by Trump’s election lies in 2020—“hell that continues to this day.”

Brook says the ongoing litigation is about “setting the record straight”—which is what Dominion’s PR representatives called their fact-checking emails that Fox received in November 2020. “The truth was in Fox’s inbox,” Shackelford says. And yet Fox stars like Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs hyped conspiracy theories about Dominion instead.

The lawyers are now preparing for depositions. The suits are moving more slowly than the Fox case “because most of them are in DC, and the DC courts are very busy, still to this day, with a lot of the January 6 cases,” Shackelford says. The courts in Delaware, where Dominion sued Fox, “have traditionally moved at a quicker pace.” Dominion’s case against Newsmax is poised for a September 2024 trial in Delaware—if there is no settlement first. “We’ve got a long road ahead to finish up this work for Dominion,” Shackelford says.

Another election technology company, Smartmatic, is also suing Fox, Newsmax, and other defendants. “Smartmatic is a global company that was injured on a global scale,” attorney J. Erik Connolly told Stelter for the book. “The damages are much bigger.” Fox, which denies any wrongdoing, has dismissed Smartmatic’s damages claims as “implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

This article has been updated.

 

What Sidney Powell’s Deal Could Mean for the Fulton County Case Against Trump

“I think there are a lot of people who are in more trouble than they were before.”

By David A. Graham

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/sidney-powell-guilty-plea-trump-fulton-county-case

Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Daysha Young read aloud in court the facts prosecutors would have presented against Powell at trial, describing how Powell entered into a conspiracy with several co-defendants in the case. The purpose of the conspiracy, Young said, was to unlawfully access election machines in Coffee County. At the center of the conspiracy, Young argued, was Powell’s move to retain Sullivan Strickler, an Atlanta-based cyber-forensics firm — an effort that was first publicly revealed by the Post.

Her testimony could reveal whether others in Trump’s orbit were involved with or aware of the scheme. There are some clues about ways Powell may be able to link members of Trump’s inner circle to the far-fetched effort. In a December 2020 email — which was read aloud during a deposition taken by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack — Powell seems to have kept Meadows — another defendant in the Georgia case — apprised of efforts to access voting software in various states.

“Georgia machine access promised in meeting Friday night,” part of the email read. A lawyer for Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.

[Boldface added]

The disclosure, made in a court filing this week, is a sign that the pillow magnate and leading supporter of the election denial movement is facing financial stress.

By Charles Homans, Alexandra Berzon and Ken Bensinger

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/us/politics/mike-lindell-mypillow-elections-lawsuit

[Excerpt:]

For nearly three years, the pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell has been one of the leading financial supporters of the election denial movement, a tireless promoter of false claims that Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election and of efforts to change how Americans vote.

But recent public records, as well as interviews with Mr. Lindell and others, suggest that he is facing financial troubles.

Lawyers defending Mr. Lindell in several defamation lawsuits this week filed to withdraw from the cases, citing “millions” of dollars in unpaid fees. The withdrawal would leave Mr. Lindell without a lawyer in lawsuits where plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson 
July 13, 2023

In April the Fox Corporation settled a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for defamation after Fox News personalities falsely claimed the voting machine system had switched votes meant for Trump. Fox paid $787.5 million. Fox and several of its on-air personalities are still facing a $2.7 billion lawsuit from another voting company, Smartmatic, for their disinformation campaign involving that company. 

Both Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic are also suing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who used his fortune to promote the idea that the election was stolen. Lindell vowed, “I’ll spend everything I have to save the country I love.” Tuesday, James Bickerton of Newsweek reported that Lindell claims he has lost $100 million and is selling off equipment after major retailers stopped carrying his products. (Boldface added)

In Reliable Sources, CNN journalist Oliver Darcy reported today that three men associated with Rupert Murdoch in the early days of creating the Fox Corporation expressed their “deep disappointment for helping to give birth to Fox Broadcasting Company.” Preston Padden, Ken Solomon, and Bill Reyner wrote that they “never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become.” 

In emails, Murdoch made it “very clear” to Padden “that he understood that the 2020 election had not been stolen,” but “Fox continued to perpetuate the ‘Big Lie’ and promote the Jan 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in D.C.” The men claimed that others who worked with them to establish Fox “share our resentment that the reputation of the Fox brand we helped to build has been ruined by false news.” 

Padden told Darcy that he sees an “obvious connection between January 6 and Fox News.”

Despite the costs of their past false allegations, the Fox News Channel continues to be a conduit for Trump’s misinformation. As Judd Legum wrote today in Popular Information, some of the same figures who pushed the Big Lie are continuing to push the story that President Biden took money from China, despite the fact the “informant” who provided that story has now been indicted as a Chinese spy and is on the run from U.S. authorities.

“A responsible news organization would respond to the indictment of a key source with self-reflection and incorporate new facts into their reporting,” Legum writes. “But not Fox News. When facts arise that cut against their narrative, Fox News simply enlarges their conspiracy theory to accommodate them.” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have called for an investigation into whether the Republicans on the committee have been duped by Chinese operatives.

How I Won $5 Million From the MyPillow Guy and Saved DemocracyMike Lindell dared anyone to disprove his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. For this software forensics expert, it was almost too easy.By BOB ZEIDMAN05/26/2023 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/26/my-pillow-mike-lindell-investigation-00097903[Excerpts:]Bob Zeidman is the creator of the field of software forensics and the founder of several successful high-tech Silicon Valley firms including Zeidman Consulting and Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering. His latest venture is Good Beat Poker, a new way to play and watch poker online. He is the author of textbooks on engineering and intellectual property as well as award-winning screenplays and novels. His latest novel is Animal Lab, an update of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.If you watch TV, especially conservative TV, you know Mike Lindell. He’s the guy who comes on every 10 minutes or so to sell his pillows for “the best night’s sleep in the whole wide world.” He’s also the guy who has sunk tens of millions of dollars into supporting investigations and lawsuits that claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.And I just took him for $5 million.

You may have read a little about it. In the summer of 2021, Lindell announced that he was going to hold a “Cyber Symposium” in Sioux Falls, S.D., to release data that proved that U.S. voting machines were hacked by China. He said he would even pay $5 million to anyone who could disprove his data.

Right away, friends started calling to ask me if I was planning to go. After all, I invented the field of software forensics, the science of analyzing software source code for intellectual property infringement or theft. Still, I wasn’t sure. There are a lot of experts that could analyze data. And no one in their right mind would offer $5 million if the data wasn’t real and verified, right? Anyway, the symposium ran three days — not nearly long enough to analyze and verify any data.

But I’m also a tournament poker player. I love a good challenge. And as the calls and emails kept coming in, I started to think, I should go, just to be there when history was made. I voted for Trump twice. If Lindell’s data was correct, maybe a presidential election would be overturned. I’d at least get to meet some really interesting people. So I flew to Sioux Falls.

In the summer of 2021, Lindell announced that he was going to hold a “Cyber Symposium” in Sioux Falls, S.D., to release data that proved U.S. voting machines were hacked by China. | Bob Zeidman

At the symposium, I saw the competition, about 40 or 50 of them. Some were highly qualified hackers and experienced cyber experts like me. Others were just interested parties with some experience in information technology.

We gathered in two small rooms that looked like stark public-school classrooms. After introducing ourselves, we began downloading Lindell’s Holy Grail — his “proof of election fraud” that came from an unspecified source — which consisted of seven files comprising over 23 gigabytes of data.

Two of the files were generic information about voting machines. Another file was a meaningless one minute, 20 second silent video of a computer screen showing some unknown program being debugged. A fourth file was a 23 gigabyte binary file containing ones and zeroes, allegedly containing packet capture data, or “PCAPs.”

If you’re not familiar with any of that language, packets are the small chunks of information that are sent over a network like the Internet and then reassembled at the receiving end as pictures of your grandkids or cute cat movies from YouTube. PCAPs are records of those packets as they flew around a network.

In numerous interviews, Lindell had claimed that his data showed packet captures of votes flowing outside the U.S. to China where they were modified to switch votes from Trump to Biden, and then sent back to U.S. voting machines.

We used a variety of forensic tools designed to understand and analyze PCAPs, but found this mysterious file didn’t contain any of the 37 standard PCAP formats. I even used the CodeSuite forensics tool I had developed to try to gain any information from the file. Nada.

So I decided to focus on the three remaining files, which were simple text files that could be opened up with any text editor like Notepad that comes preinstalled on every Windows computer. The contents were text representations of hex numbers, which are base 16 numbers used by computers as opposed to base 10 numbers, decimal, used by people.

I started with the ominously named file Chinese_SourceIP_HEX.txt. Having programmed computers for about 50 years, I recognized that each of these hex numbers seemed to represent a code for alphanumeric characters known as ASCII code. So I took a software tool I’d written years ago and ran this text file through it to turn the text representation of numbers into actual numbers.

Next, I opened the resulting file in the Notepad text editor. Sure enough, I saw letters and numbers representing some other kind of code — Rich Text Format code, a very old and simple way of coding word processor documents. (It turns out that it’s sometimes good to be old, wise, and experienced like me.)

I opened this converted file with Microsoft Word and… voila… a table with hundreds of rows of numbers appeared — numbers that looked like IP addresses (that is, the numbers associated with devices connected to a network).

58.250.125.174 7
49.7.20.81 7
58.53.128.88 7
39.103.227.160 7
49.7.21.119 7

With no other information, they were about as meaningful as a list of random words. At that point, it was obvious that the data in these text files were not anything related to the 2020 election. That’s when I knew I had stumbled onto the key. Not the key to showing election fraud, but the key to showing Lindell’s nonsense.

I repeated the same process on the other text files and found even stranger stuff. These files were also obfuscated word processor documents, but contained thousands of lines of gibberish — nothing more than random characters and numbers.

My eureka moment had arrived. While everyone else was looking at the sky, I had found the golden ticket on the ground; while they were trying to find packet data in the files, the truth was that it wasn’t packet data at all. I said something out loud like, “I’m going to take this back to my hotel room and work on it there,” to no one in particular. I quietly and deliberately packed up my laptop and strolled out of the room and out of the venue. On the way back to the hotel, I called my wife. “Start thinking about what you want to do with 5 million dollars,” I told her.

Back in my room, I wrote up my report and registered a copy online with the U.S. Copyright Office as proof that I had written it by the contest deadline. Just in case.

But Lindell’s game wasn’t over yet. The next day, a little before noon, I strolled into the cyber workroom and found everyone still going at it. It turns out there was more data to analyze — Lindell had given us about 50 gigabytes of additional data to plow through. There were four new files, but when I looked at them, they were essentially the same types as the first day’s files except with a spreadsheet containing 121,128 lines of generic information about internet service providers around the world plus their locations, their latitudes and longitudes, their IP addresses, and other miscellaneous information. I determined that nothing in the file was related to the 2020 presidential election, and wondered what my competitors were seeing.

Then came another giant batch of 509 files, comprising many more gigabytes. This was how Lindell planned to keep anyone from winning the challenge, I figured. Just inundate us with files and not nearly enough time to analyze them. That $5 million suddenly seemed to have slipped through my fingers in a way that felt very unfair.

But I had come too far to give up. On the third and final day of the symposium, an idea hit me. I decided to scan the file modification dates for all of the latest files we’d been given and, lo and behold, most of the dates were August 2021, right before the symposium.

In other words, the data were obviously modified right before we examined them. They could not possibly accurately represent data from the November 2020 election.

My flight was leaving early that evening, so I needed to be quick. I ran back to the hotel, added this new information to my report, double checked it, triple checked it, and saved it onto a flash drive. I hurriedly packed my things, rushed to the symposium as it was ending, handed my report on a flash drive to an official-looking person, and ran out to the Uber or Lyft waiting for me by the door. I made it to the airport just in time for my flight home to Vegas.

I guess the rest is history, as they say. I never talked to Lindell after the symposium; he never responded to my findings. So I hired great lawyers at Bailey Glasser and filed an arbitration lawsuit against him. It dragged on for a year and a half, during which his law firm quit and he hired a new one. During the leadup to the hearing with the three-person arbitration panel, his witnesses gave conflicting answers to critical questions like “What exactly was in the data you provided to the experts and how was it related to the November 2020 U.S. presidential election?”

In January 2023, the hearing was finally held. We presented our case. Lindell presented his case, though he only was there for about one hour — to testify — out of the four-day hearing. In April 2023, the decision was handed down, awarding me $5 million.

“Mr. Zeidman,” the arbitrators stated, “proved the data Lindell LLC provided … unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”

Last week, Lindell filed an appeal of the decision, though to win that appeal he needs to show that the arbitrators were corrupt. He also claimed that I was part of “a big cover-up to a much bigger picture” and should never have been allowed to enter the contest. My lawyers and I will continue to fight him in court. When and if I see the money, I plan to donate to a nonprofit to legitimately support voter integrity laws and processes.

Lately, people have been saying to me that I “saved democracy in America.” I’m really flattered, though I think that’s an exaggeration. But if more people sought truth, even when that truth is contrary to their beliefs — such as when a Republican like me destroys a Republican myth — then I think we really can save democracy in America. In fact, I think that’s the only way.

 

“Column: Mike Lindell is helping a California county dump voting machines. You should worry”

election subversion risk, fraudulent fraud squad

Anita Chabria LAT column.

MICHELLE GOLDBERG

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/opinion/fox-news-dominion

[Excerpts:]

The brief, a motion for summary judgment in a case stemming from Fox’s egregiously false claims of Dominion-abetted election fraud, offers a portrait of extravagant cynicism. It reveals how obsessed Carlson and other leading Fox News figures were with audience share, and their fear of being outflanked by even further-right outlets like Newsmax.

“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” Bill Sammon, a Fox senior vice president until 2021, is quoted as saying. It’s a line that would fall flat on “Succession” because it’s too absurdly on the nose.

As the Dominion filing lays out, there was panic at Fox News over viewer backlash to the network correctly calling Arizona for Joe Biden on election night. Despite its accuracy, the call was viewed, internally, as a catastrophe.

“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Carlson texted his producer. He added, “An alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.” Sean Hannity, in an exchange with fellow hosts Carlson and Laura Ingraham, fretted about the “incalculable” damage the Arizona projection did to the Fox News brand and worried about a competitor emerging: “Serious $$ with serious distribution could be a real problem.”

Hyping false claims about election fraud was a way for Fox to win its audience back. While the Arizona call was “damaging,” Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott wrote in a text to Fox executive Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son, “We will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”

When Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked Trump’s wild claims about Dominion on Twitter, Carlson was enraged and tried to get her fired. “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight,” he texted Hannity. “It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” (Heinrich kept her job but deleted the tweet.)

The network knew, of course, that Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell, a chief promoter of Dominion conspiracy theories, was a delusional fantasist. The legal brief reveals that some of her claims about Dominion were based on an email Powell had received from someone who claimed to be capable of “time travel in a semiconscious state.” On Nov. 18, 2020, Carlson told Ingraham: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. Caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham wrote back that Powell was a “complete nut.”

But according to the Dominion brief, an analysis by Ron Mitchell, the senior vice president for prime-time programming and analytics, found that “Fox viewers were switching the channel specifically to watch Sidney Powell as a guest” on Newsmax. A few days after this analysis, Powell was a guest on Hannity’s show.

At one point, Carlson did express skepticism of Powell on-air, noting on Nov. 19 that she had never produced evidence for her claims. “Maybe Sidney Powell will come forward soon with details on exactly how this happened, and precisely who did it,” he said, adding, “We are certainly hopeful that she will.”

Even this gentle note of doubt produced viewer pushback, though most of a message about it from Fox executive Raj Shah is redacted. Afterward, Carlson seems to have given up trying to steer his audience away from total credulity about Trump’s stolen election claims, even though he privately called Trump a “demonic force.”

On Jan. 26, Carlson hosted MyPillow founder Mike Lindell on his show and let him sound off about Dominion without resistance. In fairness, Carlson may have had a motive for indulging Lindell besides grubbing for ratings. As Media Matters for America pointed out, MyPillow at the time was Carlson’s single biggest advertiser.

“Respecting this audience whether we agree or not is critical,” Hannity texted on Nov. 24. It’s a version of respect indistinguishable from contempt.

 

Mike Lindell Swore He’d Win the RNC Chair Race. He Got Smothered.

Jake Lahut and Zachary Petrizzo, Politics Reporters

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mike-lindell-swore-hed-win-rnc-chair-he-got-destroyed?

[Excerpts:]

Mike Lindell never really had more than an elementary understanding of how the Republican National Committee operated. Nevertheless, he insisted it was only a matter of time before he’d be in the GOP’s corner office.

The pillow magnate’s fledgling bid to take over the RNC ended Friday when he lost in overwhelming fashion on the first ballot, with just four votes out of 167 cast. (Ronna McDaniel won the election with 111 votes.)

Despite his countless appearances on Steve Bannon’s “WarRoom” podcast, the 168 members wanted little to do with the self-praising businessman, as he earned himself a measly four votes.

 

5 Unfounded Claims About Voting in the Midterm Elections

Here are some of the main falsehoods and rumors that have spread on social media in the lead-up to Election Day.

By Cecilia Kang

Nov. 2, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/technology/midterm-elections-falsehoods.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[Excerpts:]

No, voting machines aren’t rigged.

President Donald J. Trump and his allies falsely claimed in 2020 that ballot-tabulating machines had changed votes for him to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. They claimed the voting machines were connected to the internet, allowing corrupt election officials and outsiders to tamper with the equipment.

While voting machines sometimes encounter programming errors, they are rare, and the equipment is tested before and after Election Day, election officials said. For example, in Maricopa County, Ariz., a political battleground and focal point of conspiracy theorists around the 2020 election, four independent auditors check the security of the equipment, which does not connect to the internet.

Even so, falsehoods about the machines have picked up online in recent weeks.

Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a Trump supporter, was featured last week in several interviews on the video-sharing site Rumble saying that voting machines were connected to the internet and had been tampered with to steal elections. One of his interviews on Rumble was viewed more than 20,000 times.

 

Inside the secretive effort by Trump allies to access voting machines

How rural Coffee County, Ga., became an early target in the multistate search for purported evidence of fraud after the 2020 election

By Emma Brown and Jon Swaine

October 28, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/10/28/coffee-county-georgia-voting-trump/

 

DOJ investigating Mike Lindell over potential identity theft, damage to protected computer

BY JULIA SHAPERO
09/21/22 

[Excerpts:]

DOJ investigating Mike Lindell over potential identity theft, damage to protected computer

The warrant for the search, which was filed by Lindell’s team on Wednesday as part of his lawsuit to the United States District Court in Minnesota, showed that the DOJ is investigating Lindell for identity theft, intentional damage to a protected computer and conspiracy to commit identity theft or intentionally damage a protected computer.

The warrant was approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Tony Leung on Sept. 7, according to document. Law enforcement were required to execute the search warrant before Wednesday, Sept. 21.

The magistrate approved the search and seizure warrant on the basis of probable cause that Lindell may have violated federal law.

Agents searched for records or information connected to Mesa County election clerk Tina Peters’s alleged scheme to breach voting machines during the 2020 election.

Peters was indicted on state criminal charges in March.

Officials first became aware of the breach after passwords and hard drive copies from Mesa County voting machines were presented at an event hosted by Lindell.

Lindell, who has frequently made unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen, is currently facing defamation lawsuits from two election technology companies, Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems Inc., over his claims of election fraud.

Opinion: Putting the ‘big lie’ to bed — in plush, luxurious comfort

By 

Columnist

September 16, 2022

[Excerpt:]

The feds seized [Lindell’s] phone in a probe into Trump allies’ breach of voting machines in Colorado, which state authorities are also investigating.

In case you’ve been hitting the snooze button for the past two years, Donald Trump super-fan Lindell is also facing lawsuits by voting-technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. His phone records were subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 committee. And his own defamation suits against Dominion and Smartmatic were dismissed as “frivolous.”

He has also spent a self-reported $35 million promoting Trump’s election lie in movies, social media and conferences, and he’s a popular warm-up act at Trump rallies.

There is something exquisite about a former professional gambler, recovering crack cocaine addict, showy evangelical (Lindell often wears a cross outside his collar, like an amulet) and pillow kingpin organizing the undoing of democracy. Then consider the assortment of strange bedfellows involved with him in the Colorado scheme: a former professional surfer who claims to be a data expert, a county clerk who used to sell nutritional supplements, an owner of a hair and makeup business, and a high school math teacher who claims to have a secret algorithm.

Drama is brewing in the MAGAverse as pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood goes after MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and QAnon John

Cheryl Teh
Jun 2, 2022

https://www.businessinsider.com/magaverse-civil-war-brews-lin-wood-mike-lindell-qanon-john-2022-6?

[Excerpt:]

A series of Telegram posts by Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer, appears to indicate that the MAGAverse may be fracturing from within.

 

Lin Wood Sours Hard on Pal Mike Lindell as Election Audit Falls Apart

Zachary Petrizzo

Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood has turned on longtime friend and fellow election truther Mike Lindell. “I no longer follow him. I have no use for his products,” Wood told The Daily Beast of the MyPillow CEO on Sunday night. “I don’t like what he is selling.”

Building the “Big Lie”: Inside the Creation of Trump’s Stolen Election Myth — ProPublica

by Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Kirsten Berg

Internal emails and interviews with key participants reveal for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the rigged election theory touted evidence they knew to be disproven, disputed or dismissed as dubious.

[Excerpt:]

ProPublica has obtained a trove of internal emails and other documentation that, taken together, tell the inside story of a group of people who propagated a number of the most pervasive theories about how the election was stolen, especially that voting machines were to blame, and helped move them from the far-right fringe to the center of the Republican Party.

Those records, as well as interviews with key participants, show for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the stolen-election theory touted evidence that they knew to be disproven or that had been credibly disputed or dismissed as dubious by operatives within their own camp. Some members of the coalition presented this mix of unreliable witnesses, unconfirmed rumor and suspect analyses as fact in published reports, talking points and court documents. In several cases, their assertions became the basis for Trump’s claims that the election had been rigged.

Our examination of their actions from the 2020 election to the present day reveals a pattern. Many members of the coalition would advance a theory based on evidence that was never vetted or that they’d been told was flawed; then, when the theory was debunked, they’d move on to the next alternative and then the next.

 

Follow disclosure of Lindell’s promotion of the Big Lie through these news accounts:

“MyPillow, CEO sticks by Trump, baselessly blames Antifa for Capitol violence. Business Journal” bizjournals.com, Jan. 8 2021

Liddell on Twitter claimed Trump won by an historic landslide and blamed his loss on “one of the biggest foreign attacks in our country ever!” 

 

newsweek.com, Feb. 2, 2021

Tuesday “social media censorship” segment on Newsmax ended in dramatic fashion as MyPillow founder and ardent President Donald Trump supporter Mike Lindell ranted about election fraud until one of the anchors walked off the set.

One of Newsmax’s live broadcast anchors, Bob Sellers, appealed to the show’s producers “can we get out of here please,” after he asked Lindell whether he should be permanently or temporarily banned fromTwitter. Instead of responding to the question, Lindell launched into a tirade about voting machine fraud and other false conspiracies that pulled several TV networksinto legal problemslate last year. Sellers could be seen removing his microphones and physically departing the set as Lindell continued yelling. newsweek.com, Feb. 2, 2021

Why Mike Lindell Can’t Stop

The MyPillow tycoon has lost business pumping up Trump conspiracy theories, and probably lost his chance at a political future. But he believes he’s on a divine mission to overturn the election—and he’s not alone.

By DAVID SIDERS

David Siders is a national political correspondent for POLITICO.

06/15/2021 [Excerpts]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/06/15/mike-lindell-mypillow-trump-election-conspiracy-494302

For people like Lindell, the belief that Trump didn’t lose is an invitation to replace grief with something more comforting: a sense of purpose.

Read More

“Lindell found Jesus, right? He got sober. That’s the real important piece to me. He found truth. He’d been making money … and doing drugs and all of that stuff. That’s all emptiness,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project before stepping down in December. “What gave him the certainty he was looking for was evangelical Christianity. He was born again. … He needs the rigidity of a social structure to say this is right and that is wrong and that’s what keeps me straight.”

Talk-show host Eric Metaxas told Lindell that visiting the MyPillow headquarters felt like a “pilgrimage to something more than what it is. It represents something.”Madrid said, “You upset that, and you start to become a little unhinged. … I don’t think he’s a bad man. I think he’s a lost man.” In the election conspiracy, he said, “He found something he could hold onto.”

Judging by public opinion polling, lots of Republicans seem to be in this camp. They believed Trump. Or they believed pastors who told them that he was chosen by God, and it makes no sense to them that he didn’t win. For those people, Lindell offers a special kind of reassurance. Here’s a man who not only says Trump won and will be reinstated, but whose own redemption story—quitting crack, building a business and amassing a fortune, gradually finding God before making a “full surrender to Jesus Christ” while at a religious retreat at Lake Tahoe in 2017—was so unlikely that if he believes Trump might come back, it just might happen.

 

The MyPillow Guy Really Could Destroy Democracy

Anne Applebaum

July 29, 2021

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/mike-lindells-plot-destroy-america/619593/

In the time I spent with Mike Lindell, I came to learn that he is affable, devout, philanthropic—and a clear threat to the nation.

[Except:]

In the cases of Aschberg and Ford, this had tragic, real-world consequences. Lindell hasn’t created Ford-level havoc yet, but the potential is there. Along with Bannon, Giuliani, and the rest of the conspiracy posse, he is helping create profound distrust in the American electoral system, in the American political system, in the American public-health system, and ultimately in American democracy. The eventual consequences of their actions may well be a genuinely stolen or disputed election in 2024, and political violence on a scale the U.S. hasn’t seen in decades. You can mock Lindell, dismiss him, or call him a crackhead, but none of this will seem particularly funny when we truly have an illegitimate president in the White House and a total breakdown of law and order.

 

Election Law Blog

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=123748

MyPillow’s CEO is at it again

July 30, 2021, election subversion risk NED FOLEY

WSJ reports that My Pillow is pulling all its ads from Fox News because of controversy over an ad that CEO Mike Lindell wanted to run to promote a “cyber symposium” he’s organized to propagate his conspiracy theories about how China hacked the 2020 election. (The Hill also has a follow-on report.) 

Meanwhile, in The Atlantic Anne Applebaum has an extensive piece on Lindell with the ominous title “THE MYPILLOW GUY REALLY COULD DESTROY DEMOCRACY.” You’ll want to read it just for its description of the lunch Applebaum had with Lindell. But its significance is its description of the sheer zealotry by which Lindell holds his bizarre beliefs about how China managed to steal the election for Biden. 

Read More

What has been so astounding to me since these claims surfaced (and the similar one about Venezuela) is how demonstrably false based on the kind of statewide manual recount that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered in Georgia. It doesn’t matter what software is inside a state’s voting machines once all the ballots have been hand counted and the initial machine count is confirmed. Chris Krebs made this point to Applebaum when she asked him about Lindell’s latest claims:

When I called Chris Krebs, the Trump administration’s director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, he refused even to get into the question of whether Lindell has authentic data, because the whole proposal is absurd. The heavy use of paper ballots, plus all of the postelection audits and recounts, mean that any issues with mechanized voting systems would have been quickly revealed. “It’s all part of the grift,” Krebs told me. “They’re exploiting the aggrieved audience’s confirmation bias and using scary yet unintelligible imagery to keep the Big Lie alive, despite the absence of any legitimate evidence.”

If Lindell and his demonstrably false claims are really as dangerous to American democracy as Applebaum argue, the crucial question is how to counteract this threat. The defamation lawsuits by the voting machine companies against Lindell and others may help. If the judiciary requires Lindell to pay punitive damages for deliberate or reckless falsities that are beyond First Amendment protection under New York Times v. Sullivan, that might have a deterrent effect against the future propagation of similar electoral disinformation. 

But should the legal remedy for Lindell’s threat to democracy go beyond private party civil defamation suits? I’ve raised the possibility of invoking 18 U.S. Code § 371 against Trump for his incessant repetition of the demonstrably false claim that he was robbed of a reelection victory. Once AG Barr called it “b__s__”, Trump and his team were on notice that repetition of this false claim was beyond First Amendment protection. Lindell was part of Trump’s team, going to the White House as part of their mutual effort to undo Biden’s victory.

One should at least explore the question whether Lindell warrants prosecution for attempting to “defraud the United States” through his orchestrated disinformation campaign. If this statute can be properly invoked against Russian disinformation aimed at undermining US elections, can it not also be used (although cautiously so) against US citizens aiming to destroy America’s democracy through blatant falsity that is clearly reckless (if not deliberate) under New York Times v. Sullivan? One goal of prosecuting Lindell under this statute might be a plea agreement pursuant to which he publicly and widely renounces his disinformation campaign. Then Lindell would be paying for messages, not that Trump lost, but that it was all “b__s__” all along, just as Barr said.

 

In the months since Trump’s failed coup, government documents have further revealed the extent of attorney Kurt Olsen’s behind-the-scenes crusade to try to keep him in power. 

Adam Rawnsley

Asawin Suebsaeng

Aug. 15, 2021

https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/asawin-suebsaeng

[Excerpts:]

Emails released by the House Oversight Committee and reporting by Politico show that after the election, the Maryland attorney rose from relative obscurity in conservative politics to capture the ear of then-President Trump. Despite his access, several lawyers and administration officials intimately involved with the anti-democratic effort did not know or simply couldn’t remember Olsen—a reflection of the disjointed and chaotic state of post-election MAGA politics as different factions pushed competing authoritarian ideas and fought amongst themselves

Out of six knowledgeable Trumpworld sources contacted for this story, several said they hadn’t directly dealt at all with Olsen, though they knew Trump was enamored by the ideas he was selling. One former senior Trump aide said they purposely avoided contact or involvement with Olsen, describing his legal theories as pure “nonsense.”

Furthermore, Olsen’s name also appeared on a memo that was hand-delivered to Trump in his very last days in office—a memo that also appeared to include a recommendation on resorting to “martial law if necessary.”

When pillow magnate and staunch Trump ally Mike Lindell visited the White House to brief Trump and administration officials and attorneys on his wild claims of Chinese hacking efforts in the 2020 election, Olsen’s name even appeared in a photo of documents Lindell brought to Trump, next to figures like Sidney Powell and Kash Patel, as suggestions for who Trump should appoint to senior positions during his quest to stay in power.

Lindell’s fondness for Olsen continued into the post-Trump era. As Lindell’s “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was ongoing last week, Olsen commented on a Washington Times story and was referred to as a member of the MyPillow CEO’s team of lawyers.

 

“Mike Lindell lashes out as cyber expert demands $5M reward for debunking election data”

August 19, 2021, 9:41 pmfraudulent fraud squadRICK HASEN

Salon:

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is scrambling to defend his claims of election fraud after a cybersecurity expert demanded his cut of the $5 million reward Lindell had promised to anyone who could disprove the accuracy of his alleged election data. 

Bill Alderson is a longtime cybersecurity professional specializing in packet captures — the exact type of data Lindell claimed to be in possession of — and attended the pillow maven’s “cyber symposium out of a legitimate desire to “discover the truth.” A longtime Republican, Alderson said he supported Donald Trump in 2020 and told Lindell when he was invited to the event, “I’d love to prove you right.”

Only, he couldn’t. 

Lindell has long claimed to be in possession of a large set of network data from the 2020 election, saved as packet captures, or .pcap files. He’s even claimed that it contained every vote cast last November. 

Not so, says Alderson. It took roughly 45 minutes for him to see that the data given to him and the dozens of other experts in attendance was bunk — not only did it fail to prove anything about the accuracy of the 2020 election, but the files weren’t even in the right format. (Boldface added)

 

Matt Shuham, The Franchise, from TPM, October 4, 2021

 

The Franchise from TPM, OCTOBER 18, 2021 || ISSUE NO. 23

 

The Fallout Continues From Mike Lindell’s ‘Cyber Symposium’
A state judge this week prohibited Mesa County, COLORADO Clerk Tina Peters from administering the upcoming November elections, the result of Peters allowing an unauthorized man into a software update for voting machines, after which digital images of the election machines were leaked online.

The digital images were then presented at Mike Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” in August, with Peters in attendance.

But that’s not all: As we’ve reported, Lindell’s symposium also included digital images of voting machines from Antrim County, Michigan, where Big Liars pursued a lawsuit alleging widespread election fraud.

The judge in that case allowed the plaintiffs to view the machines’ code, but only under a judicial seal. How it ended up on the big screen at Lindell’s event remains unclear. 

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Matthew DePerno, is also now a Trump-endorsed contender for attorney general. According to newly reported court filings, DePerno sent Lindell a cease-and-desist email in the middle of the conference. 

The digital images reached Lindell in suspicious fashion: Two “expert” witnesses in DePerno’s suit were also speakers at the symposium.

 

At the Willard and the White House, the Jan. 6 Panel Widens Its Net

What went on at a five-star hotel near the White House the day before the riot could be a window into how a Trump-directed plot to upend the election ended in violence at the Capitol.

By Luke Broadwater and Mark Mazzetti

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/us/politics/jan-6-subpoena.html?referringSource=articleShare
[Excerpt]
Mr. Flynn was also present at the Trump International Hotel on Jan. 5 for a meeting that included about 15 people, where the discussion centered on “how to put pressure on more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results,” according to one attendee, Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska.

Among those in attendance, according to Mr. Herbster, were Mr. Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr.; Mr. Giuliani; Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; the Trump advisers Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie; and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and conspiracy theorist. (Boldface added)

 

Mike Lindell Finally Reveals His Supreme Court Complaint, And Critics Have Notes

The plaintiff on the MyPillow magnate’s Supreme Court complaint was listed as “[Insert your state].”
Josephine Harvey

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-lindell-supreme-court-complaint_n_619d93b9e4b0451e5500c684

[Excerpts:]

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Tuesday released a copy of his long-promised Supreme Court complaint to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though it had not actually been filed and it listed the plaintiff as “[insert your state].”

The pillow magnate turned conspiracy theorist has vowed again and again that he would file an election fraud complaint directly to the U.S. Supreme Court that would somehow reinstate Donald Trump as president.

He had predicted this fantastical reinstatement would take place in August, then September and then by the end of the year.

“We will have this before the Supreme Court before Thanksgiving,” he promised in September. “That’s my promise to the people of this country.”

On Tuesday evening, he published a copy of the complaint on his website, though it appeared to be missing some essential components and he had apparently failed to get any state attorneys general to sign on to it.

“We are in unchartered territory as a Nation. The November 2020 election was stolen,” the complaint begins, before launching into a series of false and debunked allegations about supposed illegal voting in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Earlier this month, Lindell claimed that he had “tons” of state attorneys general signing on to the complaint, though he refused to name any. He said all of them would sign the complaint together on Nov. 23 before its 9 a.m. filing with the court.

But as 9 a.m. came and went Tuesday, no lawsuit had been filed, and Lindell offered a fresh batch of conspiracy theories to explain away his broken promise.

Nobody had signed because of a pressure campaign orchestrated by Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, he claimed in a livestream Monday night. On Tuesday morning, he blamed coronavirus vaccine mandates, declaring that he had met “many AGs,” but they were too busy “fighting these mandates where kids had to take the vaccine.”

Legal experts and critics offered bemused commentary on the document: [See above link to article]

 

Mike Lindell Blames a Vast GOP Conspiracy for His Supreme Court Failure

Zachary Petrizzo

[Excerpts:]

It was a last-minute pressure campaign orchestrated by the RNC and McDaniel that prevented his case from moving forward and “saving the country,” Lindell now alleges.

“We believe that they have reached out to multiple [attorneys general] and put pressure on them, not to sign the Supreme Court complaint,” Lindell said Monday on his evening livestream, this time from aboard his private plane as he scrambled to lock down the signatures required to file his complaint with the high court.

With a poor WiFi connection marring his live-streamed rant, Lindell blasted McDaniel, alleging she orchestrated a vast Republican conspiracy against him when she finally acknowledged late last week that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

“How dare the RNC try and stop this case from getting to the Supreme Court. Shame on you, RNC! You are worse than Fox [News] now!” he stated, referencing his claims that the cable giant has silenced him. “You can’t tell me why Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC, made a statement saying Biden won three days before this Supreme Court complaint was supposed to go to the Supreme Court.”

“What about the timing of that, America!” he continued. “Why would she say that at that moment in time? She didn’t have to say that. What, is she trying to get more donor money? Is she trying to get donor money from Democrats? She is as RINO as they come!” McDaniel did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

 

Judge rejects Fox News request to dismiss Dominion Voting’s defamation lawsuit over election claims

By Timothy Bella

December 17, 2021 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/17/judge-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-election/

[Excerpts:]

A judge on Thursday rejected a request from Fox News to dismiss a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems over baseless claims made against the company during the 2020 presidential election, allowing the suit to move forward.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis said it was “reasonably conceivable” for the Denver-based voting-machine company to have a defamation claim.

“The Court can infer that Fox intended to avoid the truth,” Davis wrote in a 52-page ruling. “Whether Dominion ultimately will prove Fox’s actual malice by clear and convincing evidence is irrelevant on a motion to dismiss. … Accordingly, Fox’s Motion should be denied.”

Dominion filed the lawsuit against Fox News earlier this year, claiming that some of its highest-profile on-air talent helped elevate false charges that the company had changed votes to favor Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump.

The lawsuit claims that hosts such as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro brought Trump allies onto their shows to spread lies asserting that Dominion was using algorithms in voting machines that were created in Venezuela to rig multiple elections for Hugo Chávez, the late president.

Dominion alerted Fox News and its anchors to information disproving the false claims being broadcast against the company, according to the judge. The allegations from Dominion in the lawsuit show that Fox was given “signs indicating the reports were false,” Davis wrote.

“Fox possessed countervailing evidence of election fraud from the Department of Justice, election experts, and Dominion at the time it had been making its statements,” the judge wrote. “The fact that, despite this evidence, Fox continued to publish its allegations against Dominion, suggests Fox knew the allegations were probably false.”

The judge’s ruling, considered a major win for Dominion, comes about a year after the company was the subject of many baseless accusations about election fraud following November 2020. After his loss, Trump and his allies spread false claims that, as he put it, voting software is “used in states where tens of thousands of votes were stolen from us and given to Biden.” When he was still on Twitter, Trump, who described Dominion as “horrible, inaccurate and anything but secure,” retweeted a baseless report that the voting-machine system had “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.”Election results under attack: Here are the facts

There is no evidence that any voting systems were compromised, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Trump’s attorney general, William P. Barr, also confirmed that he had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

The lawsuit specifies how Trump allies such as Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell were given platforms on shows hosted by Carlson, Hannity and Pirro to spread the false claims of election fraud. Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, whose show was canceled earlier this year, are also mentioned in the lawsuit.

Dominion pointed to how Hannity and Dobbs “brought on Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell to assert their claims that Dominion rigged the election by changing votes in its machines.” Another instance mentioned in the lawsuit involved when Carlson brought Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, onto his show to talk about his ban from Twitter, only for him to spread false claims of election fraud against Dominion.

“Carlson endorsed Mr. Lindell’s claim that Mr. Lindell found the machine fraud and had all the evidence,” according to the complaint.

Dominion eventually sent an email to Fox personalities and producers titled, “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: FACTS & RUMORS,” the judge noted. Election officials and experts also went on the network to emphasize how there was “absolutely no evidence” that Dominion changed votes during the election.

“Despite these efforts, Fox continued to promote known lies on its broadcasts, websites, social media accounts and subscription service platforms,” Davis wrote. “Mr. Dobbs, Ms. Bartiromo, and Mr. Hannity also continued to give Ms. Powell and Mr. Giuliani a platform to disseminate lies about Dominion by hosting them on their shows. Mr. Dobbs, Ms. Bartiromo and Mr. Hannity likewise endorsed and repeated those lies.”

The lawsuit claimed that Bartiromo “continued promoting lies even though she had been specifically notified that independent fact-checkers, government officials and election security experts debunked those lies about Dominion.”

“Moreover, Ms. Bartiromo had actual knowledge that Georgia conducted a hand recount of every paper ballot,” Davis wrote.

The network has defended its coverage, arguing that media must be able to fully report a story that involves claims that hit at the core of U.S. democracy. The judge rejected Fox’s argument that some of its top personalities were reporting the news with flair, saying that “Fox’s reporting comprised opinion ‘mixed’ with false facts.”

“Although Fox classifies its reporters’ remarks as ‘commentary’ that used ‘loose and hyperbolic rhetoric’ for entertainment value, even loose and hyperbolic language can be actionable if it rests on false statements of fact undisclosed to viewers,” the judge said.

The lawsuit against Fox is one of several that Dominion has brought stemming from false claims after the election. Separate defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion against Powell, a former Trump campaign lawyer, and Giuliani, Trump’s former attorney, previously survived motions to dismiss in federal court in Washington.

Dominion isn’t the only election technology company to sue Fox over its election coverage. Smartmatic Corp. is suing the network for $2.7 billion in damages, as part of a lawsuit that also names Pirro, Bartiromo and Dobbs as defendants. Fox has also requested to dismiss that lawsuit.

The Dominion defamation lawsuit against Fox will continue toward a final judgment, with both sides gathering evidence in the case.

[Boldface added]

 

 

Mike Lindell’s lawyers are dodging meetings for Dominion’s defamation lawsuit and refusing to hand over discovery material, court documents show

January 25, 2022

https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-lindell-wont-give-dominion-discovery-material-in-defamation-suit-2022-1

Lawyers for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell are dodging requests to hand over discovery material for Dominion’s $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit, according to a court filing in the sprawling defamation case.

In a filing submitted to the judge Monday night, the other lawyers in the case say that Lindell’s lawyers stopped showing up to meetings designed to hash out a schedule for the case the day after Dominion’s lawyers served them with a request for documents.

“Lindell and MyPillow’s change in position on whether the Court ordered and the Parties engaged in a [scheduling] conference presumably reflects their effort to avoid responding to requests for production Plaintiffs served the day before,” the filing says.

The filing was signed by attorneys representing every other party in the case, including Dominion, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Smartmatic. Attorneys for Mike Lindell and MyPillow didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Dominion sued Lindell and his pillow company in February 2021, alleging he damaged the company when he pushed false conspiracy theories about the election technology company’s role in the 2020 election.

Around the same time, Dominion also sued Giuliani and Powell, two attorneys who worked for former President Donald Trump and who also pushed false theories that the election was rigged for the benefit of now-President Joe Biden.

In the intervening months, US District Judge Carl J. Nichols, who is overseeing the lawsuits, denied motions from Lindell, Powell, and Giuliani to dismiss the lawsuits. Nichols also consolidated them into one case that will move to trial in tandem. Lindell has unsuccessfully tried to convince Nichols that he and MyPillow should be considered separate entities, and has counter-sued Dominion, its public relations company Hamilton Place Strategies, and Smartmatic, a separate election technology company also ensnared in election conspiracy theories.

To move the cases forward, in September Nichols ordered all the parties to meet and hash out a schedule for the discovery process and additional motions. According to the new filing, Dominion wants Lindell, Giuliani, and Powell to hand over documents related to the statements they made about Dominion in media interviews, as well as depositions.

But, after attending a few scheduling meetings, Lindell’s lawyers informed the others on January 6 that they didn’t want to participate in the scheduling conferences anymore. Lindell’s lawyers said they’re planning to appeal Nichols’s rejection of their motion to dismiss all the way to the Supreme Court, and that they wouldn’t participate in discovery until then.

“Lindell and MyPillow’s position is that they will refuse to participate in consolidated discovery unless and until they have fully exhausted their appeal of the Court’s denial of their Motions to Dismiss,” the new filing says, adding: “Lindell and MyPillow also said they are seriously taking appeals from both orders all the way to the United States Supreme Court, if need be.”

Powell and Giuliani have not appealed Nichols’s ruling. Their attorneys said in the new filing that they believe they will win their cases through summary judgment, a procedure by which the judge issues a ruling on the case without a jury trial.

Until then, Dominion has asked Nichols for a deadline of September 29 for each party to hand over discovery material ahead of a trial anticipated for 2023.

 

A Reuters Special Report: Trump Allies Breach U.S. Voting Systems in Search of 2020 Fraud ‘Evidence’

Chasing proof of vote-rigging conspiracy theories, Republican officials and activists in eight U.S. locales have plotted to gain illegal access to balloting systems, undermining the security of elections they claim to protect.

By ALEXANDRA ULMER and NATHAN LAYNE

Filed April 28, 2022

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-breaches?

[Excerpts:]

The rise of what election-security officials describe as “insider threats” – officeholders who leak confidential election data or sabotage voting machines – coincides with the national pressure campaign by Lindell-backed groups and other Trump allies who are traveling the country and lobbying local officials to replace electronic voting systems with hand-counted paper ballots. The push comes ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of the U.S. Congress, now narrowly held by Democrats, and the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump has indicated he could seek a second White House term.

County and town clerks are in the thick of things, in some cases as targets of the pressure, in others as the alleged actors. Clerks in the United States are often key election administrators, in addition to managing vital records, such as marriage licenses.

The American right’s fixation with voting machines intensified in the days after Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump. The defeated incumbent and his lawyers, including former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, started making outlandish claims of rigged machines. The accusations were soon deemed bogus by courts and Trump’s own election-security chief, and spurred ongoing defamation lawsuits against Giuliani and others from a prime target of the Trump camp, voting-machine provider Dominion Voting Systems.

Dominion’s machines have been the focus of multiple baseless election conspiracy theories, including that financier George Soros and the family of Venezuela’s late socialist President Hugo Chavez conspired with Denver-based Dominion to steal the election.

Dominion said statements by Lindell and others “about Dominion have been repeatedly debunked, including by bipartisan government officials.”

Despite the lack of evidence, many Trump allies continue to insist that electronic voting machines were rigged in 2020 and argue for a return to paper ballots. Election officials from both parties warn such a change would make voting less secure. They say electronic voting machines provide more fraud safeguards than paper ballots by reducing human errors and preventing delays that could be exploited by bad actors seeking to block the certification of results.

——–

Griswold, who did not attend the meeting, said she would not be “intimidated.”

“These threats are being fueled by extreme elected officials and political insiders who are spreading the Big Lie” – that 2020 vote was stolen – “to further suppress the vote, destabilize American elections, and undermine voter confidence,” she said in a statement.

Lindell told Reuters that Cause of America is just a small part of his overall effort to prove the 2020 election was stolen and to change election rules. He said he funds South Dakota-registered Cause of America and pays other election-focused employees through Lindell Management, a Minnesota -based LLC registered in 2018.

“I have over probably 50 to 70 people that I pay, that all they’re doing is on this election,” Lindell, 60, said in an interview. “I guess Cause of America would be a little piece of that.” The group helps connect other groups with lawyers.

Lindell, who says he is a former cocaine addict and attributes his reform to his Christian faith, has said he believes God chose Trump to be president. Now Lindell says God endorses his pursuit of election-fraud claims.

“God has given me an amazing platform,” he said. “I’m using it the best I can.”

Lindell has publicly praised Tina Peters, the Republican clerk of Colorado’s Mesa County, who has been charged in connection with one of the most invasive breaches of voting systems. In an interview, Lindell said of the allegations against Peters: “She backed up her computers. She did her job.”

He told Reuters he was paying her legal fees. “I’m sure it’s in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. In a subsequent interview, however, Lindell said he was mistaken: “I thought I put money towards it, but I never had.”

 

 

Lin Wood Sours Hard on Pal Mike Lindell as Election Audit Falls Apart

Zachary Petrizzo

Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood has turned on longtime friend and fellow election truther Mike Lindell. “I no longer follow him. I have no use for his products,” Wood told The Daily Beast of the MyPillow CEO on Sunday night. “I don’t like what he is selling.”

At issue are state audits of the 2020 presidential election, which are crumbling and sparking a war of words between 2020 election truthers. After one Wood-backed audit venture fell apart, the lawyer has called pillow executive ally David Clements an agent of the so-called “deep state,” poked fun at his necktie selection, and even alleged a “Red Shoe Club” association. (The Daily Beast’s Kelly Weill noted that the “Red Shoe Club” is a “bogus conspiracy theory that claims people who wear red shoes secretly torture children.”) On Sunday, Wood further shared a meme depicting him cutting off the head of Clements.

Lindell didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment. Last year, Salon reported on a secret meeting Clements attended where the pillow tycoon’s closest allies met with former President Donald Trump.

 

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson

May 20, 2022

And the [Big Lie] conspirators are not faring well in court: today, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols sanctioned Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has thrown his lot in with Trump and fought hard to overturn the election. Nichols called at least some of Lindell’s claims against the Smartmatic Corporation, a voting systems company, “groundless” and “frivolous.”

Nichols threw out Lindell’s lawsuits against Smartmatic and other voting systems companies, and ordered Lindell to pay some of the costs Smartmatic has run up defending itself.

Lindell told Bloomberg News: “Whatever the judge thinks, that’s his opinion. I’ve got lawyers doing more important things like removing these machines from every state.”

“The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.”

— Louis Brandeis
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