Mike Lindell, the multi-millionaire bedding mogul and enthusiastic MAGA seditionist, was stopped by FBI agents at a Hardee’s drive through in Mankato, MN on Tuesday evening, where he claims government officials confiscated his cell phone as part of an investigation into alleged election tampering.
“They told me not to tell anybody,” he claimed during a legally inadvisable livestream shortly after the incident. Waving what appeared to be a Justice Department form, Lindell smirked “okay, I won’t.” He also claimed he doesn’t own a computer (an interesting admission from someone who has spent the past several years purporting to be an expert in cybersecurity) and that he’d run his bedding empire entirely from his smartphone.
Describing the incident, Lindell claimed he’d been circled by FBI agents while sitting at a Hardee’s drive through. As he described it, the agents — whom he called “pretty nice guys” — told him: “We're taking your cellphone. We have a warrant for your cellphone.”
According to the New York Times, the FBI action is part of a larger investigation into Mesa County, CO clerk Tina Peters, who has been accused of helping facilitate a breach of secure voting machines in the wake of the Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential loss, and his persistent lies (enabled in no small part by Lindell himself) of a “rigged election.” Indeed, within hours of Lindell’s encounter with the FBI, Trump was busy decrying the perfectly ordinary warrant service as proof of a “Weaponized Police State” targeting “THE Pillow Guy.”
Hardee’s, in whose drive-through the incident took place, took a different approach to the whole thing:
The confiscation of Lindell’s phone caps off a particularly lousy week for the bedding magnate, who saw his last remaining “MyPillow” mall store shuttered just seven days earlier, which raises the question: if Lindell wants to remain “THE Pillow Guy,” should he perhaps stop spending his time ranting and raving about the FBI, and dedicate a little more energy to actually doing... y’know, pillow stuff?
