LOLLLLLLLLLLLLL
For the blissfully unfamiliar, Mike Lindell is the CEO of My Pillow and a MAGA-pushing election fraud conspiracist who is presumably still healing from the third-degree burns he received while he was being grilled by The Daily Show‘s Jordan Klepper. This man is about as eloquent as the pillows he sells. While he’s not the first voter fraud conspiracist to be publicly owned in a “debate,” he may just be the one that is the most in debt because of one.
Lindell was so convinced that the 2020 election was a hoax that he was willing to bet $5 million dollars on it. A few weeks before a “cyber symposium” he held in August 2021, Lindell said that he had proof of “Chinese interference” in the 2020 election, and he would shell out $5 million big ones to anyone who could prove that his information was wrong. He even had a name for his challenge: “Prove Mike Wrong”.
Unsurprisingly, someone did.
A private arbitration panel ruled that a computer forensics expert and Trump voter named Robert Zeidman was entitled to the winnings. After checking the chamber of Lindell’s “smoking gun,” Zeidman found that it wasn’t even loaded. He discovered that the data set Lindell claimed to be proof Chinese interference in 2020 not only showed no evidence of voter fraud, but had no connection to the election to begin with. Where did Lindell even get this data set? I’ll assume he bought a flashdrive in a brown paper bag labeled “VODER FRUAD PROOF” from some guy in an alley, since he hasn’t provided any better explanation.
Zeidman contacted Lindell Management, who created the contest, and demanded his winnings. After all, he was the only expert who entered. In spite of the proof, Lindell Management refused to pay him.
So Zeidman turned back to the arbitrators, who forced Lindell’s hand.
In a 23-page document, the arbitration panel declared that Lindell’s data “unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data” and ordered Lindell to cough up the cash in 30 days. Lindell was not moved. In a text to the Washington Post, Lindell said that the arbitrators “made a terribly wrong decision” and that the matter will soon be “going to court.”
Except the rules for the contest Lindell himself created state that any disputes will be “resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration”—meaning a court is very likely going to tell him the exact same thing the arbitrators did: Pay up. Only this time, he’ll have legal fees to fork over as well. And this is hardly the worst of his problems. Lindell currently faces a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems in response to the conspiracy theorist’s claims that Dominion engaged in election fraud. On top of that, Lindell has already spent millions financing lawsuits in support of other right-wing election deniers. In short, this man is being bled dry.
Sometimes bad things happen to bad people as consequences of their own bad choices. And I think we can all agree that’s good.
(via Washington Post, featured image: Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
