MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell promised $5 million to anyone who debunked his claims that foreign actors interfered in the 2020 election—then balked when a private arbitration panel ruled he’d have to pay up when a software engineer did just that.
Lindell appealed the panel’s ruling last year and lost on Wednesday when a federal judge upheld the $5 million arbitration award—prompting another round of promises from the bedding mogul to appeal that ruling as well.
“Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming,” Lindell told the Associated Press Wednesday.
The challenge, appropriately titled “Prove Mike Wrong,” was completed in 2021 by a 63-year-old computer forensics expert from Nevada named Robert Zeidman. The challenge was part of a widely mocked “Cyber Symposium” held in August 2021 meant to convince the American public that the 2020 election had been stolen from former President Donald Trump.
Lindell released a vast array of data that included “packet captures” he said proved the election results were illegitimate.
Not only did Zeidman discover that the data provided by Lindell failed to prove the 2020 election had been rigged, he found that the bombshell digital information Lindell had touted didn’t contain any information relating to the 2020 election at all—nor did it contain the “packet capture” data promised.
The two-time Trump voter wrote a 15-page report on his findings, but Lindell and the contest judges refused to honor it as a victory—prompting Zeidman to seek arbitration.
In his ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim admitted that the challenge amounted to a “poorly written contract”—but said that Lindell would have to pay up anyway because courts have little ability to overrule arbitration awards. Lindell was given a deadline of payment, plus interest, within 30 days.
Lindell and his company, MyPillow, are reportedly struggling financially amid a myriad of legal battles prompted by his quixotic quest to prove the 2020 election was fraudulent—with Lindell himself admitting recently that he has “no money.”
MyPillow ads, once ubiquitous on Fox News, disappeared last month amid Lindell’s self-reported financial woes, with the network confirming that they would no longer be airing the spots due to lack of payment.
“As soon as their account is paid, we would be happy to accept their advertising,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily Beast at the time.
Lindell also faces a massive billion-dollar lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems—the same company that took home a $787 million settlement with Fox News over the network’s own false claims about the 2020 election.
A pair of law firms defending Lindell in the case also quit last month after he failed to pay them.
“All the lawyers we have for MyPillow and myself in the lawsuits with Dominion and Smartmatic, they just filed in federal court to drop us as our attorneys,” Lindell said during an interview with Steve Bannon at the time. “We can’t pay the lawyers, there’s no money left to pay them.”
It’s unclear if he has retained new counsel.
