Mike Lindell’s Legal Woes Mount as He Shifts Focus to Pursuit of Minnesota Governor’s Office

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell says he will continue to go after electronic voting machine companies even after a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., held him in civil contempt for failing to pay sanctions in connection with filing a frivolous election claims case.Mr. Lindell has repeatedly pushed unsubstantiated claims that voting machines were hacked to steal the 2020 election from President Trump. He has lost several cases related to those claims.In an interview with The New York Sun on Thursday, Mr. Lindell called the cases against him “trivial” and said they amounted to “lawfare” attempts to silence him.Voting machine company Smartmatic sued Mr. Lindell in 2021 and he countersued. A federal judge ruled that Mr. Lindell’s case was frivolous and ordered him to pay the company $56,369. Smartmatic, says Mr. Lindell has yet to pay.Smartmatic, whose own suit against Mr. Lindell is still proceeding, sought last year to have the MyPillow founder held in civil contempt, telling Judge Carl Nichols that he had used delay tactics to avoid paying the sanctions.Mr. Lindell’s legal team claimed he had “inability to pay” the sanctions. Mr. Lindell says his fortune has vanished due to his work investigating claims of election corruption. He testified in one trial that he once had a net worth of $60 million but is now millions of dollars in debt.Smartmatic, however, noted in a court filing that Mr. Lindell’s legal defense fund had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and Mr. Lindell spent more than $185,000 last year to buy copies of his own book to hand out at campaign events. Mr. Lindell is currently running in the Republican primary to become governor of Minnesota.Judge Nichols issued the civil contempt citation in a sealed order on Tuesday, Law and Crime reported. It is not immediately clear what additional sanctions Mr. Lindell faces but Smartmatic had asked for daily penalties until Mr. Lindell pays the original sanctions.“I don’t know what my lawyers are going to do about that case,” Mr. Lindell told the Sun. He vowed to keep fighting “through the courts” to rid the nation of electronic voting machines.In another legal setback for Mr. Lindell on Wednesday, a federal judge in Denver rejected a request to overturn a verdict in another defamation case. Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, had successfully sued Mr. Lindell over “false and defamatory statements” that he participated in efforts to interfere with the 2020 election. Mr. Lindell allowed guests to air the accusations on a show he livestreamed on his Frankspeech company and then amplified the claims against Mr. Coomer.United States District Judge Nina Y. Wang rejected the defense’s argument that Mr. Coomer failed to show actual malice in the case. Judge Wang also rejected a request by Mr. Coomer’s lawyers to amend the final judgment to increase the damages award.The problems are not over for Mr. Lindell’s legal team in the Colorado case. Judge Wang ordered them to return to court next month to face possible sanctions over a citation error in a brief filing. The legal team misattributed a district court case to the Tenth Circuit. Judge Wang said it was “troubling” given that the defense counsel had previously been sanctioned after submitting a brief filled with citation errors produced by artificial intelligence.Each defense attorney was fined $3,000 in the first incident. “It appears that the Court’s prior admonitions and sanctions have had little, if any, remedial impact,” Judge Wang wrote in an order on Wednesday. She is now threatening a new $5,000 fine for the latest error and referring the lawyers to their state bars for disciplinary proceedings.Mr. Lindell announced in December that he would run for governor of Minnesota. He is polling third in a crowded Republican primary field of a dozen candidates.Mr. Lindell says he is shifting his attention from voting machine cases to campaigning. “My focus is on winning governor of Minnesota,” he told the Sun.Mr. Lindell says he plans to start holding statewide rallies next month. “It’s going to be the biggest campaign for governor in history,” he adds.The primary election won’t be held until August. The winner of the Republican primary is expected to face off against Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is polling well ahead of any possible Republican candidate in the race.Governor Tim Walz dropped his campaign to seek a third term after a scandal involving widespread Medicaid fraud in the state received prominent national attention.

Mike Lindell’s Legal Woes Mount as He Shifts Focus to Pursuit of Minnesota Governor’s Office

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