A high-profile court filing from the election technology company Dominion Voting Systems singles out — among others — Mike Lindell, a reporter at The Daily Beast noted. Lindell, of course, is behind the pillow company MyPillow and somehow became one of the top promoters of nonsense claims about what supposedly happened during the 2020 presidential election.
In the filing, Dominion says emails indicated concern among top figures at Fox about criticism from Lindell of their network. Lindell’s company has a history of pouring substantial amounts of money into advertisements on Fox, and in line with that concern, Dominion claimed Fox sent Lindell a “gift” and a note from Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, who other details have depicted as evidently not onboard with the lies about the election. After Lindell “made negative comments about Fox on Newsmax, Fox’s executives exchanged worried emails about alienating him and sent him a gift along with a handwritten note from Suzanne Scott,” Dominion claimed. That company previously collected large amounts of evidence from Fox in the form of emails and depositions of figures both prominent and less well-known as it sues the network over its role in promoting false claims about the tech firm’s part in imaginary voter fraud in 2020.
Lindell says he never got the claimed gift, according to the Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo, although just about anything Lindell says obviously isn’t exactly the most credible. It was made even less credible because Lindell didn’t even acknowledge the possibility that a gift was sent. “That’s 100% a lie. I never got some handwritten note, and I was never, ever welcomed on air at Fox,” Lindell claimed. “Since Fox News got sued on February 4th, 2021, Fox News has never ever, ever, ever let me on there again.” Lindell was directly responding to a question about whether the alleged gift was simply lost once received.
Lindell is the target of defamation claims from Dominion and fellow election tech company Smartmatic, both of which somehow became central players in pro-Trump conspiracy theories about what supposedly happened in the disputed presidential race. The companies were sometimes tied together in pro-Trump conspiracy theories, even though they’re separate entities and not under the control of some kind of unified corporate schemer. Smartmatic was barely even used in the U.S. — at all, anywhere — in 2020’s elections.
Elsewhere in what Dominion outlined were messages from figures like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and even Rupert Murdoch disparaging the premises pushed by Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, both of whom went on air at Fox anyway. The details could help Dominion with proving actual malice at Fox potentially in line with profit concerns and regardless of the impacts to the tech company, where staff have faced threats to their lives connected to the blatant lies.
