Mike Lindell's Financial Troubles Just Got Worse

A U.S. District Court on Wednesday upheld a $5 million ruling against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over claims the 2020 election was stolen via widespread voter fraud.

Context

Lindell, a loyal Trump ally, has been a vocal proponent of the former president's unproven claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen via widespread voter fraud. Lindell has said he has spent $40 million of his own money in efforts to try to overturn the election.

In April 2023, Lindell was ordered by an arbitration panel to pay $5 million to a computer forensics expert who debunked his data about the 2020 presidential election. The panel's decision stemmed from a 2021 symposium in which Lindell claimed he possessed data that proved Chinese interference affected the results of the 2020 election. He also offered $5 million to anyone who could prove his data did not correspond to the election.

Computer forensics expert Robert Zeidman, 63, ended up proving Lindell wrong, according to a private arbitration panel. The panel ruled that Zeidman, who The Washington Post said was a Trump voter from Nevada, had successfully examined Lindell's data and found it did not prove that voter fraud occurred in the election. As a result, the panel said, Lindell Management, which created the contest, must give Zeidman $5 million after initially refusing to pay him.

What We Know

In a 12-page order released on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim upheld the $5 million ruling against Lindell, in which he must pay Zeidman.

Zeidman had asked the federal courts to confirm the decision, while Lindell requested that it be overturned.

"The Court's responsibility in reviewing an arbitration award is not to reevaluate the merits but rather ensure that the panel acted appropriately. Lindell LLC's only basis for Court action was that the panel acted outside the scope of its authority in issuing the award," Tunheim wrote in the order.

Tunheim concluded by confirming the arbitration decision.

"Even though the Court may have reached a different outcome given an independent initial review of the information, the Court fails to identify evidence that the panel exceeded its authority. Under the Court's narrow review, it will confirm the arbitration award," Tunherim added.

Views

In response to the first ruling in April, Lindell vowed to fight the panel's ruling.

"Horrible and wrong decision! This will end up in court!" Lindell previously told Newsweek in a text. "We are having the Election Crime Bureau Summit on August 16-17th in Missouri! This is just another attack to try and stop us from getting rid of the Electronic Voting Machines and going to paper ballots! Hand counted!"

Lindell continued: "Zeidman admits that he was unable to decode the files we gave him. How then could he possibly prove that they were not related to the 2020 election? This was all a coverup and an attack!"

Meanwhile, in a statement released by his legal counsel in April, Zeidman said: "I am obviously really happy about the arbitrators' decision. They clearly saw this as I did—that the data we were given at the symposium was not at all what Mr. Lindell said it was. The truth is finally out there."

Newsweek has reached out to Lindell via email for comment.

What's Next?

Thee ruling comes as Lindell claims he has lost another business partner.

Lindell has also lost a number of prominent business partnerships since 2021, with the CEO claiming that it was due to his support of election fraud claims, insisting that he has been the victim of "cancel culture" while others have said his political pursuits have made his brand toxic and unpopular. MyPillow was dropped by major vendors Kohl's and Bed, Bath, & Beyond, which cited market research that showed low demand for the company's products.

Earlier this month Lindell claimed during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room program on Real America's Voice that an unspecified online merchant server company had dropped support for one of his other ventures, the Lindell Recovery Network, which offers aid to struggling addicts, with Lindell himself being a former drug addict who started MyPillow after getting clean.

"This just happened one hour ago, I had to pull over here on the road," Lindell said, phoning into the interview from the seat of a car. "Our merchant server just canceled the Lindell Recovery Network, this is my network for addicts, and I've had [the website] with them, I don't know, five, six years...So now, that's a distraction, I've got to take more of my funds and put in to help [the site]."

Update 2/21/24 2:48 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.

Update 2/21/24 3:20 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.