An arbitration panel ruled that Mike Lindell owes $5 million to a man who disproved one of his election fraud conspiracies, but he doesn’t want to pay. Now it’s up to the courts to decide.
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Spreading lies about the 2020 election comes with a cost. Fox News found this out the hard way earlier this year when it paid Dominion Election Systems $787.5 million to settle a lawsuit on the eve of it going to trial. Now it may be Mike Lindell’s time to learn an expensive lesson in accountability.
In August of 2021, the MyPillow CEO, who is one of the most vocal 2020 election deniers, issued the “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge.” Lindell offered to pay $5 million, through one of his companies (Lindell LLC), to anyone who could disprove one of his many election fraud claims. This one was about supposedly intercepted data, so called packet captures, that, according to Lindell, proved that China switched votes in the election.
Software expert Robert Zeidman took Lindell up on his challenge and submitted a 15-page report. It concluded that the data the MyPillow Guy, as Lindell is also known, provided did not “contain packet data of any kind and [did] not contain any information related to the November 2020 election.”
However, Lindell felt that he should not have to pay, upon which Zeidman once again endeavored to prove Mike wrong — this time by appealing to a private arbitration panel.
On April 19, that panel found that Zeidman “proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”
The arbitrators ruled that the “failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prize was a breach of the contract” and ordered Lindell to pay up within 30 days.
Instead, the MyPillow Guy is trying to get the arbitration panel’s ruling tossed out. He filed a motion in state court in Minnesota on Thursday, arguing that the arbitrators exceeded their power.
In response, Zeidman filed his own motion in federal court on Friday to recover the money he is owed, plus 10 percent interest until he is paid in full.
Lindell, however, vows to fight on.
He may be a loon, but he is not a quitter. Therefore, just like Lindell’s crusade to prove that the 2020 election was stolen in any number of ways, this saga will go on.
“It’s not about payment, it’s wrong. They’re just doing this trying to discredit the evidence and the evidence is all there,” Lindell told The Washington Post. “We’re taking it to court. It’s just all corrupt.”
It’s tough being the MyPillow Guy when the entire world is against you.
As for Zeidman, he better hope that he gets his money before Dominion takes it all. Because, while it settled the Fox News lawsuit, it is also suing Lindell to the tune of $1.3 billion.
And if they prove Mike wrong, there won’t be much left for the software engineer to recover.
