Amid a court dispute involving Trump ally Mike Lindell and his unfulfilled promise to pay $5 million if someone made certain inroads against data he presented in tandem with claims of extensive election fraud in 2020, a federal judge has rebuked those fraud allegations — refusing, he said, to even “entertain” the notions.
The dispute reached federal Judge John R. Tunheim after an arbitration panel’s earlier decision demanding that Lindell pay up.
Tunheim explained in an order that a federal court’s legal leeway for intervening after such decisions is extremely limited, though he suggested disagreement with the panel on the procedural supports they used for their conclusion. He suggested a possible break with the relevant legal standards for interpreting contracts should the panel have used “extrinsic evidence” in concluding that Lindell’s arguments the examined data was from the 2020 presidential election necessitated a very specific type of data, which a computer programming professional on the other side of all of this found wasn’t present.
“To be clear, the Court’s disagreement with the panel is limited to the technical matter of contract interpretation. It will not entertain any unproven theories of election fraud or interference and its position here should not be understood as even the slightest endorsement of Lindell’s broader election related claims,” Tunheim said in a footnote, seemingly anticipating the penchant of election conspiracy theorists to seize upon even the slightest perceived opportunity.
Tunheim upheld the panel’s decision, directing that payment for the experienced programmer — Robert Zeidman — be produced within 30 days of his order, which was dated February 21. It’s been a dismal period for Trump’s allies in his election claims, as attorney Sidney Powell also recently saw sanctions that followed a failed 2020 election lawsuit effectively upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Powell was also charged alongside Trump himself in a Georgia case alleging an election-targeting conspiracy. She pleaded guilty, receiving no jail time.
