Litigation fallout from the 2020 election continues, with one of the latest examples being a defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell. But unlike the mass clemency that President Donald Trump issued for scores of Jan. 6 criminal defendants, the president can’t similarly save the MyPillow founder from the civil suit stemming from the lie that the election Trump lost to Joe Biden was stolen.
The suit comes from Eric Coomer, a former director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems. In 2020, the voting machine company was the target of election conspiracy theories — of which Lindell was a prominent purveyor — and has played a key role in post-election litigation, including winning a historic settlement in a defamation case against Fox News.
As Coomer put it in his suit, filed in Colorado, his case arises “from efforts by a wealthy businessman and his multiple media and business entities to target a private individual with false allegations of criminal conduct on a scale unprecedented in American history.” He said Lindell and his related companies “have been among the most prolific vectors of baseless conspiracy theories claiming election fraud in the 2020 election.” He said Lindell has publicly accused him of being “a traitor to the United States” and has claimed, without evidence, that he committed treason and should turn himself in to the authorities.
Claiming Lindell caused immense damage, Coomer said he can no longer work in the elections industry after more than 15 years at the top of the field. He said he “endures frequent credible death threats and the burden of being made the face of an imagined criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope in American history.”
Nonetheless — or perhaps because he feels he can’t concede fault for legal and/or business reasons — Lindell reportedly held to his fraud claims on the stand this week. The Associated Press reported that he “stuck by his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen”; The Denver Post reported that he “remained committed to his crusade against voting machines and his widely debunked conspiracy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.” It remains to be seen what the jury makes of the pillow executive’s testimony. But if Lindell loses this case, not only could it compound his several financial losses in court, but he’ll need to appeal to courts for relief. Unlike the federal criminal cases sparked by the “big lie,” Trump can’t make this one disappear with the stroke of a pardon pen. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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