Federal judge affirms MyPillow's Mike Lindell must pay $5M in election data dispute
A federal judge has affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in favor of a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden.
Lindell said he plans to appeal. Asked if he can afford to pay, he pointed out that the breach-of-contract lawsuit was against one of his companies, Lindell Management LLC, and not against him personally.
“Of course we're going to appeal it. This guy doesn't have a dime coming,” Lindell said.
Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 election, launched his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” as part of a “Cyber Symposium” he hosted in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in August 2021. Lindell offered a $5 million reward through Lindell Management for anyone who could prove that “packet captures” and other data he released there were not valid data “from the November 2020 election.”
Robert Zeidman entered the challenge with a 15-page report that concluded the data from Lindell don't “contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election.” A panel of contest judges that included a Lindell attorney declined to declare Zeidman a winner. So Zeidman filed for arbitration under the contest rules.
A panel of three arbitrators last April unanimously ordered Lindell to pay Zeidman $5 million, concluding that he had satisfied the contest rules. In Wednesday's ruling, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim expressed concern about how the
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