The election technology company Smartmatic has now filed a defamation lawsuit against MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell over his lies about the 2020 presidential election that have involved the company, which has been falsely alleged to have been involved in non-existent election-rigging. Smartmatic derisively described Lindell as having “intentionally stoked the fires of xenophobia and party-divide for the noble purpose of selling his pillows.” To this day, Lindell has resisted the facts of the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. Recently, he even claimed that those on his side possessed enough evidence of imaginary election fraud to send hundreds of millions of Americans to jail. Lindell is well off into la la land at this point.
Smartmatic added that Lindell “wants to be seen as a champion of a deceptive message that still sells.” No legitimate evidence has ever emerged — ever — indicating that there was any sort of systematic fraud in the 2020 presidential election process, but ex-President Trump has continued pushing the nonsense anyway, and Republicans (many of them, anyway) have been accepting it. Smartmatic — which is, as of this point, seeking an unspecified amount of money from Lindell and says that its value has dramatically plummeted amidst the campaign of lies targeting it — added as follows in its lawsuit:
‘Crazy like a fox. Mike Lindell knows exactly what he is doing, and it is dangerous… The country will sleep better at night knowing the judicial system holds people like Mr. Lindell accountable for spreading disinformation that deceives and harms others.’
I want everybody in America to be able to watch the debate on the Senate floor and see who stands up to protect voting rights.
We must end the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) January 19, 2022
Lindell has already been sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems, another election technology company that has been the subject of false claims about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. Dominion has also sued attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, and others, while Smartmatic has also brought other defamation litigation targeting interests including Giuliani and Powell. Both Giuliani and Powell have already faced consequences for their lies — Giuliani was suspended from practicing law in New York and D.C., while Powell was sanctioned by a Michigan federal judge. While it’s clear that the whole shtick that these people keep perpetrating is ridiculous, there’s also a documented, real-world danger to it. Lies about the security of the 2020 presidential election fueled the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters last January — and as long as Trump keeps lying, that inspiration for violence on the part of his most reality-disconnected followers remains.
This defamation litigation isn’t the only recently emerging problem for Lindell. He was also apparently recently told by Heartland Financial’s Minnesota Bank & Trust that they’d be pushing him out. Apparently, the bank gave Lindell a set timeframe in which they wanted him to remove his funds from their institution, but predictably, he didn’t exactly take kindly to that. Lindell told Trump ally Steve Bannon that his response to the bank amounted to insisting: “I am not being part of this. I’m not leaving. So you’re going to have to throw me out of your bank.”
If NASA functioned like the United States Senate, they would never get the rocket off the launchpad.
Read my full statement about why I support passing campaign finance and voting rights reforms with a majority vote: https://t.co/0w2zTIxOTX pic.twitter.com/nUUZ0BdWtF
— Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) January 19, 2022
