MyPillow, the bedding company founded by infamous far-right agitator Mike Lindell, is holding a company auction amid difficult financial straits. Earlier this year, he said MyPillow had experienced a $100 million drop in sales, which obviously doesn’t sound great for business!
All of these developments connect, of course, to Lindell’s relentless promotion of lies about the 2020 presidential election, a propagation of deception that has left the businessman with lingering defamation challenges in court. (Though the election technology company Dominion Voting Systems reached a settlement in its case against Fox News, other lawsuits that it filed against defendants including Lindell remain active.) And now, the auction of equipment from MyPillow includes items from across the company’s operations, ranging from industrial equipment to office items. A local news outlet in Minneapolis summarized what was made available as including “trucks, heavy-duty equipment, office equipment, sewing machines and more.”
Lindell “said the surplus auction is a reflection of the change from big box and mall store sales to a direct-to-consumer approach,” according to that same outlet, WCCO. His explanation doesn’t entirely make sense, though, because wouldn’t the company still need some of that equipment if sales were simply happening on a direct-to-consumer basis instead of through, well, stores? MyPillow itself has also been named as a defendant in defamation litigation, and you can probably expect that the financial burdens on Lindell and the company of dealing with these court challenges have been significant.
And the hits extend beyond that front, because WCCO noted how Lindell’s team was also compelled to produce $5 million after a tech expert answered the challenge for somebody to prove certain claims about election fraud were wrong in exchange for financial reward. Lindell has also claimed that $10 million in loans were needed to keep his operation afloat. His record is a series of failures, having even helped finance litigation in Arizona challenging the ballot-counting process there that was unsuccessful and featured the involvement of Republicans who went on to lose major races.
