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    Mike Lindell’s Lawyers Say He Owes ‘Millions’ in Fees

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    The disclosure, made in a court filing this week, is a sign that the pillow magnate and leading supporter of the election denial movement is facing financial stress.For nearly three years, the pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell has been one of the leading financial supporters of the election denial movement, a tireless promoter of false claims that Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election and of efforts to change how Americans vote.But recent public records, as well as interviews with Mr. Lindell and others, suggest that he is facing financial troubles.Lawyers defending Mr. Lindell in several defamation lawsuits this week filed to withdraw from the cases, citing “millions” of dollars in unpaid fees. The withdrawal would leave Mr. Lindell without a lawyer in lawsuits where plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 billion in damages.In an interview, Mr. Lindell said he didn’t blame his lawyers for dropping him. “They have to feed their families,” he said. He said that his activism related to the 2020 election had contributed to his financial woes.In a filing late on Friday, Smartmatic, one of the firms suing Mr. Lindell for defamation, said it did not object to the withdrawal of lawyers but expressed concern that he was using the news “as an opportunity to fund-raise for his election fraud campaign.” The voting equipment firm noted that Mr. Lindell had already sent out a fund-raising email seeking $200,000 from supporters that invoked his lawyers’ motion.Since 2021, Mr. Lindell, the chief executive of the bedding company MyPillow and a Trump associate, has financed conferences, legal efforts and even his own digital media venture to further unproven or debunked conspiracy theories regarding the use of voting machines to steal the 2020 election.He has worked with state-level groups across the country, and continues to speak with activists on weekly conference calls. And he has used MyPillow advertising to support a range of conservative and right-wing media, including many outlets that amplify his claims.Mr. Lindell says he has directly spent as much as $60 million on his political endeavors.Days after Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Lindell was photographed entering a brief meeting at the White House with Mr. Trump, carrying notes on which the phrase “martial law if necessary” was visible. That month, MyPillow lost brick-and-mortar distribution contracts with major big-box retailers. (The stores offered a variety of explanations unrelated to Mr. Lindell’s politics.) Last year, after Walmart pulled the company’s products from its stores, it recorded a loss of $7 million, according to Mr. Lindell. MyPillow is a private company, and these figures could not be independently verified.Property records show that one of the two residences he owns through a limited-liability corporation is under an Internal Revenue Service lien for $4.6 million in unpaid taxes from 2020. Mr. Lindell said the lien was related to an ongoing negotiation over a tax write-off for an investment in a pharmaceutical company.In April, an arbitration panel ordered Mr. Lindell to pay $5 million to a software engineer who took up Mr. Lindell’s challenge to debunk data he claims proves that the 2020 election was hacked. Mr. Lindell has refused to pay the engineer, Robert Zeidman, and both men have filed lawsuits over the matter.In August, Mr. Lindell said, American Express cut his line of credit to $100,000 from $1 million, effectively ending his ability to pay his lawyers in the defamation suits. The decision, he said, was an “absolute hit job” related to his political activities, though he said the company had not said as much.American Express did not comment on Mr. Lindell’s credit, but said in a statement that it “does not make customer decisions based on personal views or political affiliations. Our risk and underwriting models take into account a number of financial factors, including business inflows and outflows, and credit history.”On Thursday, Andrew Parker, a lawyer at the Minneapolis firm Parker Daniels Kibort who has represented Mr. Lindell in many of his recent legal battles, filed motions to withdraw from the defamation suits filed by Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic, and Eric Coomer, the former director of product strategy and security at Dominion.Mr. Parker did not respond to requests for comment. In court filings, he stated that Mr. Lindell started falling behind on payments early this year, and on Oct. 2, Mr. Lindell informed the firm that he and his company were “not able to get caught up or make any payment” on the “millions of dollars” owed to the firm.Dominion also sued Fox News on similar grounds, and this April it reached a $787.5 million settlement with the media company. Asked if he had considered settling his own suit, Mr. Lindell said, “Absolutely not.”It remains to be seen how Mr. Lindell’s finances will affect the broader election denial movement or the conservative news media, which he had helped finance on multiple fronts.In emails and interviews, several influential activists said that Mr. Lindell continued to be an important figure in the movement, though some noted that their financial support came from other backers. Other donors contributed about one-third the cost of a conference Mr. Lindell hosted in Missouri in August, Mr. Lindell and other participating activists said.MyPillow’s advertising and revenue-sharing agreements with conservative media have been a major source of support for right-wing figures, such as Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser who has a revenue-sharing agreement to promote MyPillow on his “War Room” podcast. Such promotions have increased slightly in the last year, according to the analytics companies iSpot.tv, which covers television advertising, and Magellan.ai, which covers podcasts.Mr. Bannon has been highlighting Mr. Lindell’s financial woes on his show, portraying Mr. Lindell as the victim of corporate and government overreach and imploring viewers to buy more pillows to support him, which boosts sales. He is planning to host his show from Mr. Lindell’s Minnesota factory in the coming weeks, he said.Susan Beachy More

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      The Pillow Guy and the R.N.C. Chair

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThroughout our reporting inside the Republican Party over the past few months, one person kept showing up: Mike Lindell, MyPillow chief executive and election denier.At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, he ran to unseat the party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel. At the Conservative Political Action Committee in Maryland, he couldn’t walk 10 feet without being cornered for a selfie. And more recently, he was a part of news coverage about the Dominion lawsuit and Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News.While plenty of people don’t take him seriously, Lindell represents, maybe better than anyone else, the challenge facing the Republican Party in this moment: an establishment trying desperately to satisfy its base, despite evidence that their extreme beliefs are costing the party elections.After months of reporting on that dynamic, we talk to Mr. Lindell and Ms. McDaniel, two people who sit at opposite poles of the party.Photo Illustration by The New York Times. Photograph by Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times; Jae C. Hong/Associated PressAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Mike Lindell Loses Arbitration Case and Must Pay $5 Million

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      An arbitration panel ruled that the MyPillow founder had failed to pay a computer software expert who disproved his false election claims as part of a contest.Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and Trump ally who has been a leading voice in pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, must pay $5 million to a software forensics expert who debunked a series of false claims as part of a “Prove Mike Wrong” contest, an arbitration panel said on Wednesday.Mr. Lindell issued the challenge at a “cyber symposium” in South Dakota in 2021, saying he had data that would support his claims that there was Chinese interference in the election and offering the seven-figure prize to anyone who could prove the data had no connection to the 2020 election.Because the software expert Robert Zeidman successfully did so, the panel, composed of three members of the American Arbitration Association, ordered that Mr. Lindell would have to pay up.“Almost everyone there was pro-Trump, and everyone said, ‘This data is nonsense,’” Mr. Zeidman said in an interview on Thursday, identifying himself as a Republican who voted twice for former President Donald J. Trump. “A false narrative about election fraud is just really damaging to this country.”The ruling against Mr. Lindell was earlier reported by The Washington Post.Mr. Zeidman, 63, who is from Las Vegas, filed the arbitration claim against Mr. Lindell in November 2021 after the contest’s organizers rejected his findings. The claim was filed in Minnesota, Mr. Lindell’s home state.The arbitrators ordered him to pay Mr. Zeidman within 30 days.Mr. Lindell, who has spent millions of dollars on partisan reviews of voting data and efforts to bolster election skeptics across the country, vowed in an interview to challenge the panel’s ruling.“This is disgusting,” he said. He questioned Mr. Zeidman’s credentials and mused about how he had been granted admission to the symposium.Mr. Zeidman, who described himself as a “well-known” pioneer in the field of software forensics, said that he used his connections in the Trump world to obtain an invitation to Mr. Lindell’s symposium. “Friends of mine said, ‘You should go because you might win $5 million,’” he said.When conference organizers gave Mr. Zeidman and other attendees data to dissect, he said that he expected it might take weeks to analyze. But once he started going through the files, he said he quickly concluded that the data was bogus. He presented his findings to Mr. Lindell’s representatives in a 15-page report.The $5 million claim against Mr. Lindell is a pittance compared with a pending $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit that the election equipment company Dominion Voting Systems filed against him in 2021 over his assertions that its machines were part of a plot to steal the election. This week, the company reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News as part of a similar defamation lawsuit.Brian Glasser, a lawyer for Mr. Zeidman, cast doubt on whether Mr. Lindell would be able to successfully challenge the arbitration decision in court, saying the bar was particularly high. Mr. Lindell would have to prove “manifest injustice,” a legal term for an unduly harsh outcome, he said.Mr. Glasser also noted that the contest rules set by Mr. Lindell prescribed binding arbitration in the event of a dispute.Still, Mr. Lindell insisted: “It’s going to end up in court.”Mr. Zeidman said he planned to give some of the money to nonprofit groups, use part for a start-up business and spend some supporting a voter integrity project. He does believe there was voter fraud in 2020. “The question is how much and was it actually enough to swing the election? I can’t say that,” Mr. Zeidman said.He has joined the bipartisan political organization No Labels, he said, and won’t be supporting Mr. Trump for president in 2024.“I’d rather see a presidential candidate who is not an extremist,” he said. More

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      How Mike Lindell’s Pillow Business Propels the Election Denial Movement

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      Three days after federal agents seized his cellphone as part of an investigation into voting machine tampering, Mike Lindell seemed energized and ready to sell pillows.He strode onstage at a rally of Trump supporters in western Idaho, defiantly waving a cellphone. Eric Trump greeted him with a hug.“When they start attacking the MyPillow guy,” the former president’s son declared, “you know we have a large problem in this country.”Mr. Lindell, smiling broadly in a blue suit and red tie, leaned into the mic. “Use promo code ‘FBI’ to save up to 66 percent!” he yelled, raising his fist in the air. The crowd roared its approval.And pillows were sold. On Sept. 14, the day after Mr. Lindell’s encounter with the F.B.I., daily direct sales at his bedding business, MyPillow Inc., jumped to nearly $1 million, from $700,000 the day before, according to Mr. Lindell. Propelled by a blizzard of promotions, memes and interviews on right-wing media outlets, sales remained elevated for two days.American entrepreneurs have long mixed their business and political interests. But no one in recent memory has fused the two quite as completely as Mr. Lindell. In less than two years, the infomercial pitchman has transformed his company into an engine of the election denial movement, using his personal wealth and advertising dollars to propel the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump.In the process, Mr. Lindell has secured a platform for his conspiracy theories — and a devoted base of consumers culled from the believers.By his account, Mr. Lindell has spent as much as $40 million on conferences, activist networks, a digital media platform, legal battles and researchers that promote his theory of the case — the particularly outlandish conspiracy theory that the election was stolen through a complex, global plot to hack into voting machines.But a New York Times analysis of advertising data, along with interviews with media executives and personalities, reveal that Mr. Lindell’s influence goes beyond funding activism: He is now at the heart of the right-wing media landscape.Already the largest single advertiser on Fox News’s right-wing opinion prime-time lineup, according to data from the media analytics firm iSpot.tv, MyPillow has since early last year become a critical financial supporter of an expanding universe of right-wing podcasters and influencers, many of whom keep election misinformation coursing through the daily discourse.Mr. Lindell’s promotion of election conspiracy theories have cost him sales at mainstream retailers, he says.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesHis chief vehicle for that support is a sprawling system of promo codes handed out to podcasters, pundits and activists, giving them a stake in each sale and incentive to promote Mr. Lindell’s products — and, in the process, his election theories.Podcasters and advertising executives say the arrangement has cemented Mr. Lindell’s influence. Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser whose “War Room” podcast ranks among the top news shows on Apple, described him in an interview as “the most significant financier in all of conservative media.” Mr. Bannon last year devoted as much as a third of the promotional time on his podcast to MyPillow, although that share has fallen since, according to an analysis by the analytics firm Magellan AI.Mr. Lindell’s message is being received. He has called on his followers to find evidence to back up his claims, and they have inundated election officials with requests for voting records, audits and even access to voting machines. Mr. Lindell and his network of allies are mobilizing right-wing activists to act as self-styled election vigilantes searching for evidence of misconduct in the midterm elections.The Spread of Misinformation and FalsehoodsElection Fraud Claims: A new report says that major social media companies continue to fuel false conspiracies about election fraud despite promises to combat misinformation ahead of the midterm elections.Russian Falsehoods: Kremlin conspiracy theories blaming the West for disrupting the global food supply have bled into right-wing chat rooms and mainstream conservative news media in the United States.Media Literacy Efforts: As young people spend more time online, educators are increasingly trying to offer students tools and strategies to protect themselves from false narratives.Global Threat: New research shows that nearly three-quarters of respondents across 19 countries with advanced economies are very concerned about false information online.Some critics — including the voting machine companies that have sued him for defamation, libel and slander — charge that Mr. Lindell’s operation is simply an enormous grift. “The lie sells pillows,” lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems argued in a still-pending $1.3 billion lawsuit filed against Mr. Lindell last year.Mr. Lindell disputes the allegations and insists that his activism has lost him money.“I didn’t do this to make a profit,” he told The Times in an interview. “I did it to save our country.” He said he pours “every dime I make” into his cause.It is difficult to assess that claim. As a privately held company, MyPillow does not disclose financial information and Mr. Lindell has frequently given conflicting accounts about his spending.Mr. Lindell has spent nearly $80 million on advertising on Fox News’s prime-time lineup of opinion shows since accelerating his activism in January 2021, according to estimates by iSpot.TV. His advertising on podcasts in that same period is valued at more than $10 million, according to estimates from Magellan AI. In addition to the tens of millions he says he has spent on activism and lawsuits, Mr. Lindell has given $200,000 to state and federal political action committees since January 2021, public records show.That investment has built a brand loyalty that goes well beyond appreciation for a rectangle of shredded foam that lists for $49.98 (but sells for as low as $19.98 with a promo code).His customers are “supporting a guy they believe shares their worldview,” said Benjamin Pratt, an advertising executive who focuses on conservative media. They say, said Mr. Pratt, “we’re going to support him, he’s being attacked and they’re trying to silence him. OK, we’ll buy more pillows.”Mr. Lindell says he was disengaged from politics until meeting Donald Trump in 2016. Jordan Vonderhaar For The New York Times/Getty Images North AmericaFinding a MarketMr. Lindell, a 61-year-old recovering crack cocaine and gambling addict who previously managed a string of bars in suburban Minneapolis, says he started MyPillow in 2004 after receiving the idea in a dream.He initially sold his signature pillows directly, through homespun infomercials and in booths at home and garden shows, as well as through cut-rate newspaper ads and radio spots. He perfected a relentlessly high-energy sales pitch. In an effort to squeeze as much value as possible out of these advertising dollars, he began pairing each ad with a distinct promotional code that would allow him to track its performance in inducing direct sales.By 2019, he told The Times, the company had annual revenues of over $300 million. He had also expanded to more conventional distribution deals with large retailers like Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond.MyPillow’s work force, which numbered just 300 in 2012, had grown to more than 1,500 by 2018, according to legal filings, and the company reported having sold more than 40 million pillows since its founding. As he built his company, Mr. Lindell says, he was disengaged from politics — until being called to a meeting with Mr. Trump in 2016, where the then-candidate expressed an interest in MyPillow’s American manufacturing operations. Mr. Lindell became an ardent Trump supporter.In early 2021, he became an integral part of a growing movement to somehow retroactively reverse Mr. Trump’s defeat. On Jan. 15 of that year he was seen entering the White House with a sheaf of papers on which the phrase “martial law” was visible. (Mr. Lindell has insisted he was merely delivering the papers and had not read them.).css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Within days, national retailers carrying MyPillow products dropped the brand. But Mr. Lindell only plunged deeper into election denial, seizing on fanciful theories about “algorithms” manufacturing votes and China hacking into machines.In an interview, Mr. Lindell said losing the big box stores has cost MyPillow 80 percent of its retail sales, which had accounted for a little less than half of its overall sales.MyPillow kept its steady presence on Fox News, which does not promote his election theories. So far this year, its spots have accounted for nearly 8 percent of all ad impressions — more than any other outside advertiser — on the network’s prime-time shows hosted by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, according to iSpot.tv. MyPillow’s strategy of saturating one network with ads, even at risk of annoying viewers, is “an anomaly in television,” Jason Damata, an analyst for iSpot.tv.Starting in early 2021, the company moved aggressively into podcast advertising. In the first quarter of this year, the number of podcasts MyPillow supported jumped to 45, from 29, while the number of spots it aired nearly doubled to more than 1,200, according to Magellan AI, which monitors advertising on the top 3,000 podcasts weekly.Joe Schmieg, MyPillow’s vice president for sales and marketing, said the company’s executives targeted podcasts popular with Christian audiences and conservative women in their 40s and 50s. “They’re typically the ones that are buyers,” he said. It offered the outlets a dedicated promotional code and a share — 25 percent or more — of all sales linked to that code. (Mr. Lindell disputed that the company directly targeted a conservative audience.)The strategy partly offset the loss of the chain stores, Mr. Schmieg said. According to Mr. Lindell, the company’s overall sales dipped only 10 percent in 2021 — though they have fallen further since losing its contract to sell in Walmart stores this year. (Mr. Lindell provided no documentation to support the numbers.)Mr. Lindell, center, with the far-right agitator Jack Posobiec, left, and Stephen Bannon, a former Trump adviser, at a conference this year.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesBuying a MegaphoneThe strategic shift to podcasts put Mr. Lindell on the vanguard of right-leaning media. In this decentralized ecosystem, where audience sizes vary widely and programming spans from the conventionally conservative to the conspiratorial fringe, MyPillow promotions are ubiquitous.A Times analysis that identified 125 codes found the list of affiliates included well-known figures like Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino, whose daily shows are both among Apple’s top 50 news podcasts in the country, as well as Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer.Jack Posobiec, the far-right agitator known for promoting the disinformation campaign “Pizzagate,” had a code, as did Vincent James Foxx, a media entrepreneur who espouses anti-Semitism and white supremacy.(After The Times asked him about his relationship with Mr. Foxx, Mr. Lindell said he was cutting ties with him — not because of Mr. Foxx’s views but because he said Mr. Foxx had misrepresented the terms of his affiliate deal on his show.) Lines between promotion and politics are blurry on MyPillow’s affiliate podcasts. Mr. Lindell regularly appears as a guest on shows, and even when he doesn’t, his pet theories are present.On a recent episode of BardsFM, a podcast that layers Christian nationalism, anti-vaccine beliefs, QAnon and election denialism, the host, Scott Kesterson called the coming election a “a clown show” that would be stolen via an “algorithm.”In 2022, nearly two-thirds of all advertising minutes on BardsFM have been dedicated to MyPillow, according to data from Magellan AI.“Every dollar you spend at MyPillow helps fund Mike Lindell’s efforts for this nation,” Mr. Kesterson said on his podcast in September. “He’s done that as they’ve tried to destroy his company.”By his account, Mr. Lindell has spent as much as $40 million advancing his election theories.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesUsing His LeverageSome on the right have tried to keep a distance from Mr. Lindell and his far-fetched voting machine theories — either out of fear of legal liability or skepticism. He has not made it easy.At times, he has publicly threatened to withhold advertising support from outlets that he doesn’t see as sufficiently supportive. He once carried through on those threats, pulling MyPillow spots from Fox News for nearly two months last year after the network refused to allow him to advertise one of his conferences.Mr. Bannon, who has often called himself “not a machine guy” and said he doesn’t understand the theories about hacking, nonetheless often features Mr. Lindell on “War Room.” He has twice broadcast from Mr. Lindell’s conferences that convene activists to swap conspiracy theories about election machines. In an interview at one in Springfield, Mo., in August, Mr. Bannon said Mr. Lindell had started to convince him.“I do know the machines have to go,” said Mr. Bannon, who on Friday was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress.In November 2021, Mr. Lindell threatened to pull his advertising from Salem Media Group, a publicly traded conservative radio and podcast company with a roster that includes Charlie Kirk, a young right-wing commentator, and Jenna Ellis, a former Trump lawyer. Mr. Lindell claimed the company wasn’t sufficiently covering his particular election theories.“You better at least say something because you might not have products to sell at least from MyPillow,” he warned in a broadcast from his own online video site. “You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too. There will be no more MyPillow if you can’t address the election of 2020.”Mr. Lindell backed off the threat after speaking to a Salem executive, according to a person briefed on the conversation. (Salem did not respond to requests for comment, but at the time an executive told The Daily Beast that there was no policy blocking hosts from discussing any topics.)More recently, Salem was eager to promote Mr. Lindell’s encounter with the F.B.I. After Mr. Lindell went public about the investigation, a Salem executive sent an email urging hosts to talk about it on their shows, according to a person familiar with the email. Mr. Lindell’s supporters would want to know and help him, the email said.Soon, many of Salem’s political commentators were discussing the case at length, portraying Mr. Lindell as an innocent businessman unfairly targeted by federal agents. Mr. Lindell also made the rounds on shows himself, slipping in allegations about voting machines.“When you talk about evidence to get rid of machines, we’ve had that for a year and a half,” Mr. Lindell said on Mr. Kirk’s podcast.Mr. Kirk did not discuss voting machines, but told his listeners that he was buying extra sets of MyPillow’s Giza Dreams sheets himself to support Mr. Lindell. He urged his audience to do the same.“Use promo code: ‘Kirk’,” he said.Tina Peters at an event in June with Mr. Lindell in Colorado. She faces charges in an election plot.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesThe Search for ProofAt MyPillow’s headquarters and factory in the exurbs of Minneapolis, Mr. Lindell’s politics intermingle with his business.In its warehouse, pallets of DVDs of “Absolute Proof,” a feature-length video promoting election conspiracy theories, share floor space with packaged pillows.On a morning last month in Mr. Lindell’s office, a picture of Mr. Trump leaned against a wall, as the executive juggled meetings with company officials and calls from his allies in his election crusade — as well as the lawyers who were crafting his response to the encounter with federal agents the previous week.The investigation involves Tina Peters, the county clerk of Mesa County, Colo., whom state prosecutors have accused of plotting to copy sensitive data from voting machines in an attempt to prove the 2020 election was rigged. Ms. Peters has pleaded not guilty to the state charges. Mr. Lindell, whom prosecutors identified as a potential co-conspirator in a related federal investigation, denies any involvement.He has promoted Ms. Peters and her data. At a conference Mr. Lindell hosted in South Dakota last year, Ms. Peters flew in on Mr. Lindell’s private plane and was celebrated as a hero onstage.Such conferences are a showcase of Mr. Lindell’s organizing power in the movement. At the recent gathering in Springfield, activists from all 50 states, many of whom gather weekly on calls hosted by Mr. Lindell, took turns describing their hunt for evidence of malfeasance in American democracy, notably turning their focus beyond the 2020 election.Activists from Alabama said they had fed fake ballots into machines ahead of the primary election in an attempt to prove how easily they could be tampered with. A county Republican official from Oklahoma urged attendees to be diligent in monitoring voting in midterm elections — even telling them to videotape absentee ballots as they are opened.After hours of presentations, Mr. Lindell bounded onstage: “By the way, if you’re watching from home use that promo code: ‘Truth45’,” he said. More

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      MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Is Served Search Warrant

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      Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of 2020 election misinformation, was served with a search warrant, and his cellphone was seized, by F.B.I. agents who questioned him about his ties to a Colorado county clerk who is accused of tampering with voting machines, Mr. Lindell said.Tina Peters, the county clerk in Mesa County, Colo., is under indictment on state charges related to a scheme to download data from election equipment after the 2020 presidential contest. Ms. Peters has pleaded not guilty to the charges.The search is a sign that a federal investigation into Ms. Peters has reached a prominent figure in the national movement to investigate and overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Lindell, the chief executive and founder of MyPillow, is a major promoter of debunked theories that keep alive the false notion that the election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump.The Mesa County episode is one of several instances in which local officials and activists motivated by those theories have gained access to voting machines in hopes of proving the theories true. Prosecutors in Michigan and Georgia are also investigating whether data was improperly copied from machines.It is not clear if Mr. Lindell is a target of the investigation. The F.B.I. field office in Denver confirmed late Tuesday that the bureau had served Mr. Lindell with a warrant, but Deborah Takahara, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver, said the office had no further comment. It is also unclear whether others were served search warrants on Tuesday.In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday night, Mr. Lindell said that he had been in a drive-through line at a Hardee’s fast food restaurant in Mankato, Minn., on Tuesday afternoon, while returning with a friend from a duck-hunting trip in Iowa, when his vehicle was surrounded by several cars driven by federal agents. The agents presented him with a search and seizure warrant and interviewed him for about 15 minutes.The agents asked him about his relationship to Ms. Peters, he said, and about an image copied from a voting machine in Mesa County that had appeared on Frank Speech, a website and hosting platform that Mr. Lindell operates.A letter handed to Mr. Lindell by the F.B.I. asked that he not tell anyone about the investigation, but he displayed a copy of the letter and the search warrant on his online TV show Tuesday evening, reading portions of it aloud. “Although the law does not require nondisclosure unless a court order is issued, we believe that the impact of any disclosure could be detrimental to the investigation,” read the letter, signed by Aaron Teitelbaum, an assistant U.S. attorney.A copy of the search warrant, parts of which were also read aloud by Mr. Lindell, said the government was seeking “all records and information relating to damage to any Dominion computerized voting system.”Prosecutors have accused Ms. Peters of attempting to extract data from voting machines under her supervision in Mesa County and of enlisting help from a network of activists, some close to Mr. Lindell. The effort was ostensibly an attempt to prove that voting machines had been used to steal the 2020 presidential election. Data that was purported to have come from the machines was later distributed at a conference hosted by Mr. Lindell last year at which Ms. Peters appeared onstage.The F.B.I. agents “asked if I gave her any money after the symposium,” Mr. Lindell said.Mr. Lindell once told a local reporter that he had funded Ms. Peters’s legal efforts directly. He now says he was mistaken about his contributions and that he did not directly contribute to her defense. “I was financing everything back then,” he said, referring to the various lawsuits that had been filed in relation to the 2020 election. “I thought I’d financed hers, too.”Mr. Lindell earlier told The Times that he had funneled as much as $200,000 to her legal defense via his legal fund, the Lindell Legal Offense Fund, through which he had said third-party donors supported various lawsuits and projects. Ms. Peters had directed supporters to donate to that fund.On his web TV show, which is streamed on Facebook and several other platforms, Mr. Lindell claimed that in their brief interview, F.B.I. agents had also asked about his connection with Douglas Frank, an activist who claims to have mathematical proof that the 2020 election was stolen. Lindell said that the F.B.I. had asked him whether he had employed Mr. Frank.Mr. Lindell is the target of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which provides voting machines to Mesa County and other jurisdictions and which Mr. Lindell has claimed was responsible for changing the outcome of the 2020 election. He said the warrant had specifically sought data related to Dominion and its machines.“They think they’re going to intimidate me,” Mr. Lindell told The Times. “That’s disgusting.” More

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      How Lawyer William Olson Pitched Trump on a 2020 Election Plot

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      The role of William J. Olson in advising the president in late 2020, which has not previously been disclosed, shows how fringe figures were influencing him at a critical time.Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call.The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president that Mr. Olson later conceded could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and could even invite comparisons with Watergate. They included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order,” describing their discussions.“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.Read William J. Olson’s Memo to TrumpA memorandum sent in December 2020 to President Donald J. Trump by the right-wing lawyer William J. Olson on how to seek to overturn the election.Read DocumentThat left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust.“In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.”The memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied — at one point almost physically — with outside actors to influence Mr. Trump. In that meeting, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.But the memo suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 8Making a case against Trump. More

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      Fringe Scheme to Reverse 2020 Election Splits Wisconsin G.O.P.

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      False claims that Donald J. Trump can be reinstalled in the White House are picking up steam — and spiraling further from reality as they go.MADISON, Wis. — First, Wisconsin Republicans ordered an audit of the 2020 election. Then they passed a raft of new restrictions on voting. And in June, they authorized the nation’s only special counsel investigation into 2020.Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald J. Trump lost the state by 20,682 votes, an increasingly vocal segment of the Republican Party is getting behind a new scheme: decertifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in hopes of reinstalling Mr. Trump in the White House.Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than the last, but the Republican effort to overturn the election results here is picking up steam rather than fading away — and spiraling further from reality as it goes. The latest turn, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new candidate for governor, is creating chaos in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its push to win the contests this year for governor and the Senate.The situation in Wisconsin may be the most striking example of the struggle by Republican leaders to hold together their party when many of its most animated voters simply will not accept the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss.In Wisconsin, Robin Vos, the Assembly speaker who has allowed vague theories about fraud to spread unchecked, is now struggling to rein them in. Even Mr. Vos’s careful attempts have turned election deniers sharply against him.“This is a real issue,” said Timothy Ramthun, the Republican state representative who has turned his push to decertify the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun has asserted that if the Wisconsin Legislature decertifies the results and rescinds the state’s 10 electoral votes — an action with no basis in state or federal law — it could set off a movement that would oust President Biden from office.“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We’re not fringe.”Although support for the decertification campaign is difficult to measure, it wouldn’t take much to make an impact in a state where elections are regularly decided by narrow margins. Mr. Ramthun is drawing crowds, and his campaign has already revived Republicans’ divisive debate over false claims of fraud in 2020. Nearly two-thirds of Wisconsin Republicans were not confident in the state’s 2020 presidential election results, according to an October poll from the Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee.“This is just not what the Republican Party needs right now,” said Rob Swearingen, a Republican state representative from the conservative Northwoods. “We shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves about what happened, you know, a year and a half ago.”Wisconsin has the nation’s most active decertification effort. In Arizona, a Republican state legislator running for secretary of state along with candidates for Congress have called for recalling the state’s electoral votes. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia officials asking them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory there, but no organized effort materialized.In Wisconsin, the decertification push has Republican politics on its head. After more than a decade of Republican leaders marching in lock-step with their base, the party is hobbled by infighting and it’s Democrats who are aligned behind Gov. Tony Evers, who is seeking a second term in November.“Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not,” Mr. Evers said in an interview on Friday.Mr. Ramthun, a 64-year-old lawmaker who lives in a village of 2,000 people an hour northwest of Milwaukee, has ridden his decertification push to become a sudden folk hero to the party’s Trump wing. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser, has hosted Mr. Ramthun on his podcast. At party events, he shows off a 72-page presentation in which he claims, falsely, that legislators have the power to declare Wisconsin’s election results invalid and recall the state’s electoral votes.Mr. Ramthun has received bigger applause at local Republican gatherings than the leading candidates for governor, and last weekend he joined the race himself, announcing his candidacy at a campaign kickoff where he was introduced by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has financed numerous efforts to undermine and overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Trump offered public words of encouragement.“Who in Wisconsin is leading the charge to decertify this fraudulent election?” the former president said in a statement.It did not take long before the state’s top Republicans were responding to Mr. Ramthun’s election conspiracies. Within days, both of his Republican rivals for governor released new plans to strengthen partisan control of Wisconsin’s elections.During a radio appearance on Thursday, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, the party establishment’s preferred candidate, refused to admit that Mr. Biden won the 2020 election — something she had already conceded last September. Ms. Kleefisch declined to be interviewed.Kevin Nicholson, a former Marine with backing from the right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, declined in an interview to say whether the election was legitimate, but he said there was “no legal path” to decertifying the results.Mr. Vos spent nearly an hour Friday on a Milwaukee conservative talk radio show defending his opposition to decertification from skeptical callers.“It is impossible — it cannot happen,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I can say that.”A Tuesday rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison drew about 250 people who called for decertifying the 2020 presidential election. Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesYet, Mr. Ramthun claims to have the grass-roots energy on his side. On Tuesday, he drew a crowd of about 250 people for a two-hour rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.Terry Brand, the Republican Party chairman in rural Langlade County, chartered a bus for two dozen people for the three-hour ride. Mr. Brand in January oversaw the first county G.O.P. condemnation of Mr. Vos, calling for the leader’s resignation for blocking the decertification effort. At the rally, Mr. Brand stood holding a sign that said “Toss Vos.”“People are foaming at the mouth over this issue,” he said, listening intently as speakers offered both conspiracy theories and assurances to members of the crowd that they were of sound mind.“You’re not crazy,” Janel Brandtjen, the chairwoman of the Assembly’s elections committee, told the crowd.One speaker tied Mr. Vos, through a college roommate and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, to the false claims circulating in right-wing media that Hillary Clinton’s campaign spied on Mr. Trump. Another was introduced under a pseudonym, then promptly announced herself as a candidate for lieutenant governor.The rally closed with remarks from Harry Wait, an organizer of a conservative group in Racine County called HOT Government, an acronym for honest, open and transparent.“I want to remind everybody,” Mr. Wait said, “that yesterday’s conspiracies may be today’s reality.”Mr. Ramthun says he has questioned the result of every presidential election in Wisconsin since 1996. (He does not make an exception for the one Republican victory in that period: Mr. Trump’s in 2016.) He has pledged to consider ending the use of voting machines and to conduct an “independent full forensic physical cyber audit” of the 2020 election — and also of the 2022 election, regardless of how it turns out.Mr. Ramthun has adopted a biblical slogan — “Let there be light” — a reference to his claim that Mr. Vos is hiding the truth from voters. If Wisconsin pulls back its electoral votes, Mr. Ramthun said, other states may follow.(American presidents can be removed from office only by impeachment or by a vote of the cabinet.)Robin Vos, the speaker of Wisconsin State Assembly, told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans aiming to undo Mr. Trump’s loss were wrong to be angry with him.Andy Manis/Associated PressAll of this has become too much for Mr. Vos, who before the Trump era was a steady Republican foot soldier focused on taxes, spending and labor laws.Mr. Vos has often appeased his party’s election conspiracists, expressing his own doubts about who really won in Wisconsin, calling for felony charges against Wisconsin’s top election administrators and authorizing an investigation into the 2020 election, which is still underway.Now, even as he draws the line on decertification, Mr. Vos has tried to placate his base and plead for patience. He announced this week the Assembly plans to vote on a new package of voting bills. (Mr. Evers said in the interview on Friday that he would veto any new restrictions.)“It’s simply a matter of misdirected anger,” he said, of the criticism he’s facing. “They have already assumed that the Democrats are hopeless, and now they are focused on those of us who are trying to get at the truth, hoping we do more.”Other Republicans in the state are also walking a political tightrope — refusing to accept Mr. Biden’s victory while avoiding taking a position on Mr. Ramthun’s decertification effort.“Evidence might be out there, that is something other people are working on,” said Ron Tusler, who sits on the Assembly’s elections committee. “It’s too early to be sure but it’s possible we try it later.”State Senator Kathy Bernier is the only of Wisconsin’s 82 Republican state legislators who has made a public case that Mr. Trump lost the state fairly, without widespread fraud.Ms. Bernier, the chairwoman of the State Senate’s elections committee, in November asked the Wisconsin Legislature’s attorneys to weigh in on the legality of decertifying an election — it is not possible, they said. In December, she called for an end to the Assembly’s investigation into 2020. Three weeks later, she announced she won’t seek re-election this year.“I have no explanation as to why legislators want to pursue voter-fraud conspiracy theories that have not been proven,” Ms. Bernier said in an interview. “They should not do that. It’s dangerous to our democratic republic. They need to step back and only speak about things that they know and understand and can do. And outside of that, they should button it up.”Kitty Bennett contributed research. More

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      MyPillow C.E.O. Mike Lindell Sued Over Election Fraud Claims

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyWhite House Adjusts Rules to Encourage More Loans for Tiny Businesses: Live UpdatesDominion sues Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief, over election fraud claims.Feb. 22, 2021, 8:45 a.m. ETFeb. 22, 2021, 8:45 a.m. ETSeveral retailers have stopped selling MyPillow’s products in recent weeks. Twitter has suspended his account.Credit…Alex Brandon/Associated PressDominion Voting Systems sued Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, on Monday, alleging that he defamed Dominion with baseless claims of election fraud involving its voting machines; it is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Mr. Lindell “exploited” false claims about election fraud to support sales of his own business. Representatives for MyPillow could not immediately be reached to comment on the suit.“Lindell — a talented salesman and former professional card counter — sells the lie to this day because the lie sells pillows,” the suit states, arguing that the company’s “defamatory marketing campaign” — with promo codes like “FightforTrump” and “QAnon” — increased MyPillow sales by 30 percent to 40 percent.The company says it wrote to Mr. Lindell “multiple times,” putting him on “formal written notice of the facts” and informing him of “death threats” its employees have received.“Instead of retracting his lies, Lindell — a multimillionaire with a nearly unlimited ability to broadcast his preferred messages on conservative media — whined that he was being ‘censored’ and ‘attacked’ and produced a ‘docu-movie’ featuring shady characters and fake documents sourced from dark corners of the internet,” the suit states.Several retailers, including Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s have stopped selling the company’s products in recent weeks. Twitter has permanently suspended his account.Defamation suits against individuals and networks who shared former President Donald J. Trump’s election conspiracies have become a new front in the war against misinformation.Dominion also filed defamation suits last month against two of the former president’s lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Another voter technology firm, Smartmatic, filed its defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire in early February, saying its anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro harmed its business and reputation. Fox has filed a motion to dismiss that suit.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Three false claims about the election made in Mike Lindell’s new film.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThree false claims about the election made in Mike Lindell’s new film.One America News ran an extensive disclaimer before the broadcast.Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, has long been a vocal supporter of former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesKellen Browning and Feb. 5, 2021, 7:22 p.m. ETThe 2020 presidential election was three months ago, but one of the biggest backers of the false theory that it was rigged against former President Donald J. Trump has not given up his hope of overturning the results.On Friday, Mike Lindell, the embattled chief executive of MyPillow who helped finance Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to challenge election results, aired a falsehood-laden film about election fraud on One America News.The network promoted the two-hour film, titled “Absolute Proof,” on Twitter Thursday, urging viewers to join Mr. Lindell “for a never-before-seen report breaking down election fraud evidence & showing how the unprecedented level of voter fraud was committed in the 2020 Presidential Election.”There has been no substantial evidence of fraud in the election, which President Biden won. Mr. Lindell’s theories have led to Twitter removing him and MyPillow from its platform and several major retailers cutting ties with the pillow manufacturer.Before showing the film on Friday, the network ran an extensive disclaimer that described Mr. Lindell as “solely and exclusively responsible for its content,” and noted that “this program is not the product of OAN’s reporting” and was “presented at this time as opinions only.”YouTube took down “Absolute Proof” on Friday, saying it violated the company’s presidential election integrity policy, which prohibits false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the vote.Two companies that provide election technology, Dominion and Smartmatic, have filed defamation suits in recent weeks against people and organizations that have made baseless claims about the companies.Here are three much-examined areas that come up in the film. One America and Mr. Lindell did not respond to requests for comment.1. No, Dominion files were not manipulated.The crux of many arguments that election fraud occurred, and repeated in Mr. Lindell’s film, is the unsubstantiated claim that Dominion software was somehow manipulated to delete votes for Mr. Trump, or to hide some sort of conspiracy.Many of these unsubstantiated claims stem from an instance in Antrim County, Mich., when a clerical error in reporting results led the county to initially show a landslide vote in favor of Mr. Biden. The error was soon corrected, but conspiracy theorists have latched onto the incident as evidence that voting was rigged.Files “were deleted from the Dominion system in Antrim County. We know that for a fact,” Matt DePerno, a lawyer who has fought to investigate the incident, told Mr. Lindell in the film. “Wow,” Mr. Lindell responded.There has been no evidence that votes were manipulated in the county, and a hand-counted audit of votes in December affirmed the outcome there.2. No, foreign countries did not interfere with voting machines.Mr. Lindell interviewed retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, another member of the movement that fought to overturn the election. Mr. Waldron, who said his military background involves “information warfare,” pushed the unfounded claim that the Chinese government invested money in Dominion and therefore has access to its files and data.“A lot of movements of votes, direct access to Pennsylvania voting precincts, county tabulation centers, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, all of that coming directly from foreign countries, China being the predominant one,” Mr. Waldron said.He also claimed that overseas servers in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom somehow played a role in manipulating results. The manipulation, Mr. Waldron said, was “part of a coup that was aided and abetted by a foreign-threat nation-state, a peer enemy nation-state: China.”Election officials and cybersecurity experts have said there is no credible evidence that China helped Mr. Biden win the election.3. No, votes for Biden were not counted multiple times.Melissa Carone, an information technology worker who said she was contracted by Dominion for the election, was brought on the show to tell Mr. Lindell that she watched thousands of ballots run through voting machines without ever seeing a single vote for Mr. Trump.Ms. Carone, whose testimony was ruled “not credible” by a Michigan judge in November, told Mr. Lindell that when ballots jammed inside the machine, people tabulating the votes were re-scanning dozens of ballots and counting them twice.“It’s like counting a deck of cards, you could sit there and run the same deck of cards through this tabulator over and over and over again,” Mr. Lindell observed.Michigan election officials have said that ballots were “not scanned multiple times inappropriately.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More