Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of My Pillow, was ordered by an arbitration panel to pay $5 million to an expert who debunked his data related to the 2020 election.
Lindell has long pushed election conspiracies. In July 2021 he offered to pay $5 million to anyone who could disprove his allegations of voter fraud if they showed up to a cyber symposium he hosted that August.
He also announced a “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” in which anyone who could prove his data was unrelated to the 2020 election could win the multimillion payout.
Software developer Robert Zeidman took Lindell up on his challenge, agreed to its contractual terms and discovered Lindell’s data to be largely outlandish and unproven.
On Wednesday, an arbitration panel awarded Robert Zeidman the $5 million payout after he sued Lindell over the prize money.
“Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract,” the arbitration panel wrote in its decision. “He proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover.”
It’s not the first time Lindell’s bogus election claims have gotten him into legal hot water. In September, the DOJ had served Lindell a grand jury subpoena and seized the cell phone as part its investigation into the deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection and attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential election.
And in November, a federal judge in Michigan sanctioned Lindell for going on an election ballot “fishing expedition”—filing over-broad subpoenas seeking Kent County’s voting data—in a failed attempt to defend himself from Dominion Voting Systems’ upcoming $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him.
