Mike Lindell, the pillow company founder and CEO who somehow became a key figure in pushing baseless conspiracy theories related to the security of the 2020 election, was sanctioned in Michigan court this week and ordered to cover legal costs incurred by Kent County, which was a target of a third-party subpoena he issued demanding elections-related data.
Lindell’s team issued the subpoena — alongside subpoenas targeting several other counties in the state and dozens of counties nationwide — amid an attempt to bulk up his position as he faces extremely high-dollar defamation litigation from Dominion Voting Systems, an elections technology company that has repeatedly figured in baseless conspiracy theories promoted by Lindell and others. Kent County’s side sought to quash — essentially meaning throw out — Lindell’s subpoena, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Phillip Green granted the motion on Tuesday, besides ordering Lindell to cover county costs. “It is eminently demonstrated that the breadth of the subpoena could not be greater,” Green said. In Kent County, Lindell wanted “copies of electronic data storage from county voting machines and servers, including security keys and passwords and Dominion’s proprietary software,” as MLive reported.
Attorney Madelaine Lane, who was representing the Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons in the challenge to Lindell’s subpoena, was colorful in her description of what the pillow company exec is doing, saying: “He is asking this Court to sanction his mission to look under every bed in America, in hopes of finding some monster – even where all evidence tells us that monsters do not exist. Lindell has no evidence to support his conspiracy theories.” Finalizing the precise amount Lindell will be paying will take place across coming weeks, with a breakdown of costs first due from the county, after which point Lindell can respond.
In related news, an Arizona judge has dismissed a lawsuit from Republican candidate for state Attorney General Abe Hamadeh, who was seeking a court finding he was the rightful winner of the race that currently available results show he lost to the Democratic contender by a little over 500 votes. Hamadeh based his push on assumptions — in one example he raised concerns about errors with transposing the selections on unreadable ballots without even pointing to a single piece of documentation showing problems with that process this year. He also raised complaints about the process of adjudication for ballots on which picks were unclear — and pointed to a single example from the governor’s race, without any evidence that any problem was more widespread or also affected his race. The judge concluded Hamadeh’s lawsuit, which was filed before the state completed its certification of the results, was too early, although there is no particular indication he’ll be successful if filing the case later. The RNC itself was onboard.
