MyPillow founder and prominent election denier Mike Lindell made a bold offer ahead of a “cyber symposium” he held in August 2021 in South Dakota: He claimed he had data showing Chinese interference and said he would pay $5 million to anyone who could prove the material was not from the previous year’s U.S. election.
He called the challenge “Prove Mike Wrong.”
On Wednesday, a private arbitration panel ruled that someone did.
MyPillow founder Mike Lindell was ordered to pay $5 million to Robert Zeidman, a software engineer and Trump voter from Nevada after the computer forensics expert showed that the Fox News advertiser did not prove voter fraud using data that had no connection to the 2020 election.
Zeidman turned to arbitrators when Lindell Management refused to pay him, and the panel ruled in his favor, stating that he had proved that Lindell’s material “unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”
Lindell’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment, but the businessman said the decision would be contested in court.
Lindell is already facing a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems, and his streaming TV station has been dedicated to amplifying election-fraud falsehoods.
Mike Lindell’s firm, Lindell Management, has been ordered by a private arbitration panel to pay $5 million to a computer forensics expert who proved that Lindell’s data did not reflect the November 2020 election data.
Zeidman, a Trump voter from Nevada, was the only expert who submitted a claim.
Zeidman’s attorney, Brian Glasser, said the panel’s decision serves as a warning to others who have made wild allegations about election fraud.
Lindell, however, has expressed disagreement with the decision and said that it will be going to court. Lindell’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
The contest rules submitted in the arbitration stated that disputes would be “resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration” and noted that arbitration “is subject to very limited review by courts.”
Glasser said that while the decision cannot be directly appealed, Lindell could ask a federal court to quash it on the basis of “manifest injustice.”
However, the statutory grounds for such a claim are narrow, and it is “extremely rare” for such a claim to succeed, according to Glasser.
Lindell, who has been a prominent election denier, faces a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems and a defamation lawsuit from one of Dominion’s former executives.
In the months following Trump’s 2020 election loss, Lindell spent millions of dollars to finance lawsuits, support right-wing activists nationwide, and launch a streaming television station dedicated to amplifying election-fraud falsehoods.
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