A federal judge in Minnesota is holding MyPillow founder and MAGA election-denier Mike Lindell in contempt of court for failing to hand over financial documents and other discovery material in the defamation lawsuit brought by voting software firm Smartmatic.
“We haven’t held back anything. This is all corruption,” Lindell told The Independent. “They want me to stop talking about our election platforms. They’re not going to silence me. I will keep going until we get to paper ballots hand-counted and melt these machines down and turn them into prison bars.”
In a court filing on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan granted Smartmatic’s motion for contempt, which argued that Lindell had failed to produce analytics data from his website as well as personal tax returns for the years 2022 and 2023.
“If Defendants do not comply, Smartmatic is invited to bring another motion for an order to show cause or to seek further relief,” Bryan wrote in his court order.
Smartmatic, which settled a similar case with far-right cable channel One America News last year, sued Lindell for defamation in January 2022 over his relentless and baseless claims that the company’s software flipped votes from Donald Trump to Biden in the 2020 election. Smartmatic has argued that Lindell’s election conspiracies have considerably depressed the value of the firm.
The MyPillow chief claims that he and his attorneys have already turned over everything required by the court, saying that he has “nothing to hide.” Instead, Lindell insisted, this contempt finding is part of a continued effort to silence him on the issue of elections and voting machines.
“It’s not true. It’s a big lie,” he told The Independent.
“I don’t know what this judge is doing, or what or why he would say or believe them that there was nothing turned in,” he insisted. “I have full disclosure. I've given them everything. This is just a continued attack on myself and [his] MyPillow [company] so that I quit talking about these voting machines. There will never be a settlement with them. I stand by 100 percent that we have to get rid of these electronic voting machines.”
Among required disclosures demanded by the court, the judge gave Lindell until March 27 to turn over six data points for his company’s website that cover the period of February 1, 2021 through August 31, 2021. The data is to include tracked and unique page views, average time on page, entrances, bounce rate, and exit percent. Bryan also noted that if the analytics aren’t retrievable, the defendants must submit an affidavit from a reliable party explaining why the data was irretrievable.
As for the tax returns, Lindell has only until March 13 to hand over all documents that were given to tax preparers. Once the returns are complete, they shall be provided to the plaintiffs. If they are still not completed by April 3, an affidavit must be filed explaining the delay.
Earlier this year, a separate U.S. district judge ordered Lindell to pay nearly $60,000 to Smartmatic over “frivolous” claims he made in his countersuit against the company. Having already lost the case, Lindell was forced to pay a portion of Smartmatic’s legal fees after the firm demanded sanctions over his lawsuit.
One of the loudest purveyors of the false allegations that the 2020 election was “rigged,” Lindell is also facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems that is currently awaiting trial.
Despite the losses piling up in court and his legal team bailing on him due to millions of dollars in unpaid fees, Lindell hasn’t budged from his baseless claim that voting machines “stole” the election for Biden.
The MAGA pillow salesman’s years-long election-denying crusade has apparently resulted in debilitating financial struggles for him and his business. In recent months, Lindell has been sued by vendors and lenders over accusations that he has stiffed them on substantial payments.
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