Well, it’s not going all that great for Mike Lindell, the head of the bedding company MyPillow who somehow became a key promoter of lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and never proven fraud that some claim affected it.
An arbitration panel in Minnesota has ruled that Lindell — well, what’s apparently a corporate entity of his — is responsible for a payout of $5 million to Robert Zeidman, an experienced computer technology expert who took Lindell up on an offer around an infamous gathering Lindell had in 2021. Lindell said that a financial reward in the amount he’s now been ordered to provide Zeidman would follow if anyone showed that data he’d collected ostensibly showing malfeasance in the 2020 presidential race wasn’t actually from the electoral contest in question. Separately, what Lindell was claiming about the materials involved supposed Chinese interference in the last race for president, and Zeidman, who has identified himself as conservative and a two-time Trump voter across the 2016 and 2020 general elections, found the data evidently didn’t reflect any cognizable attribution at all. It was nonsense.
Zeidman produced a report of more than a dozen pages outlining his findings and sought the $5 million, which Lindell’s team predictably refused. Zeidman subsequently pursued arbitration, where findings, though outside the ordinary judicial process, are generally binding. The process was specifically identified in the rules for the contest as what would likely be the last stop for disputes over what came next, and now, Lindell has lost — again. The Lindell-tied entity behind the contest arrangement is known as Lindell Management, as noted by The Washington Post, which had new details on the developments in the challenge.
Apparently, Zeidman was the only expert who actually submitted a response to the contest, and what he found was rather wide-reaching. Not only did he conclude that materials Lindell’s team had produced weren’t indicative of either Chinese interference in the U.S. elections or the 2020 election at all, he found the data wasn’t even identifiable as the format of the files Lindell claimed he had! It was just nonsensical baloney.
Lindell has also somewhat recently spoken of needing to take out large loans to help finance his side in ongoing defamation litigation he is facing over his part in pushing lies about the 2020 election to Americans. The loans, which Lindell was discussing with longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, apparently reached $10 million. In its similar defamation litigation against Fox, Dominion recently notched a settlement agreement that will see the media giant paying nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars — less than what the company originally sought but still a lot.
