Conspiracy theorists, pro-Donald Trump election truthers, the ex-president’s campaign legal team, and other far-right grifters relentlessly pushed a hoax asserting election tech manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems engaged in massive voter fraud, handing Joe Biden victory over Donald Trump. In response, Dominion slapped Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani with $US1.3 ($2) billion in defamation lawsuits and warned other liars to back off and retract their claims, or face similar suits in court.
Those who received warnings included Trump-loving networks Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News. The list also included MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, who in what was undoubtedly one of the pillow industry’s more successful power plays managed to insinuate himself as a key player in Trump’s “Stop the Steal Movement” by parroting every conspiracy theory under the sun. Instead of retracting his BS claims, Lindell doubled down on his statements that Dominion rigged the 2020 elections, possibly in concert with China. He expounded on them, at length, in a multi-hour, overconfident, stream-of-consciousness, completely fabricated, and unintentionally hilarious film titled Absolute Proof earlier this month. (Lindell also managed to get both himself and the official MyPillow account banned from Twitter, but not before tweeting numerous potentially actionable lies about Dominion.)
Shocker! Lindell did not provide absolute proof the elections were stolen — because they weren’t — but he did very likely manage to totally screw himself over by providing absolute proof of defamation, as Dominion is now suing him.
Per the Daily Beast, Dominion attorney Tom Clare said that a lawsuit will be coming down the pipeline extremely soon:
“He has doubled down and tripled down. He has made himself a higher public profile with his documentary,” Tom Clare, an attorney representing Dominion, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday afternoon. Clare confirmed in a brief phone call that Dominion would be filing suit against Lindell “imminently.”
MyPillow is privately owned. Lindell has worked to make his face virtually synonymous with the brand and, according to the New York Times, its corporate structure is “tightly knit” and employs many of Lindell’s relatives. So it’s fair to guess that if someone were to, say, sue him for $US1.3 ($2) billion, the controlling stake in MyPillow would be on the line.
The pillow man told the Daily Beast on Tuesday that actually he is very excited to be sued, because Dominion had walked into his clever little trap by opening themselves up to discovery that would prove the (again, nonexistent) fraud occurred.
“That would so make my day, because then they would have to go into discovery, and that would make my job a lot easier,” Lindell said. “It’ll be faster for me to get to the evidence, and to show the people in the public record the evidence we have about these machines…I will not stop until every single person on the planet knows, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, what these machines did to us.”
Lindell added that “If they sue me, I would be so happy.” He also told the Daily Beast he would be releasing yet another video featuring “100%” “hardcore evidence” and that he was sceptical Dominion would actually follow through with a lawsuit.
“I’ve lost 22 retailers already. I am concerned about my employees, but I won’t have a company or a country anyway, if we back down and let this happen again,” Lindell told the Daily Beast.
There’s actually a grain of truth in one of Lindell’s statements for once: He may very well no longer have a company soon. Here’s hoping!