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Mike Lindell, also known as the My Pillow Guy, listens to former President Donald Trump speak in July 2024 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Mike Lindell has suffered another self-inflicted loss in long-running litigation over the $5 million he owes to an engineer who proved that data the Minnesota pillow magnate claimed was definitive proof of foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election was nothing of the sort.
A federal magistrate judge in the North Star State on Monday said that the pro-Donald Trump businessman had again failed to provide court-ordered financial information to plaintiff Robert Zeidman as the latter litigates the collection of the multimillion dollar prize he earned by winning the 2020 “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge.
In a brief two-page order, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dulce J. Foster said that Lindell’s company had “not complied with its discovery obligations” to Zeidman, failing to even respond when the engineer’s attorney filed a motion to compel the information from Lindell.
Zeidman previously told the court that Lindell provided him with QuickBooks files that were password protected. He also said that Lindell failed to produce requested documents and respond to certain interrogatory questions.
“Because Lindell did not oppose the Motion [to Compel], the Court finds these discovery requests are reasonable and grants the motion,” Foster wrote.
The documents and information sought by Zeidman deal with identifying any entities that owe Lindell and his company money as well as any debts owed by Lindell and the company.
The case stems from Lindell issuing his disastrous “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge at a 2021 “Cyber Symposium” he hosted in South Dakota with the purpose of showing data that he said proved Chinese interference in the election.
Lindell promised that at the symposium, he would reveal “cyber data and packet captures from the 2020 November election.” The purpose of the challenge, Lindell said at the time, was to “find proof that this cyber data is not valid data from the November [2020] Election.”
In other words, contestants were asked to prove that the data Lindell presented was not “from the 2020 presidential election.” The prize: a not-inconsiderable sum of money.
“For the people who find the evidence, 5 million is their reward,” the challenge announcement said.
Zeidman — himself a Trump supporter — picked up the poly-foam gauntlet thrown down by the one-time QVC star. Despite severe doubts about his own abilities, Zeidman won the contest.
When issuing the challenge, Lindell said his team of experts would provide “cyber data and packet captures from the 2020 November election” and said the upshot of the challenge was to “find proof that this cyber data is not valid data from the November Election.”
Contestants who could prove the data was not from the 2020 election would be awarded $5 million, the announcement promised. The rules of the challenge also provided that any disputes about winning or losing would be decided by mandatory arbitration.
After proving Lindell wrong, the MyPillow founder’s hand-selected three-member panel ruled against the engineer. Arbitration ensued and Zeidman won. Lindell filed in state court to vacate the award. Zeidman appealed in federal court to enforce the award. Both cases were eventually consolidated and removed to federal court.
In February 2024, a Minnesota federal court vindicated the arbitrator’s analysis and Zeidman’s $5 million victory.
“The panel concluded that Zeidman proved that each file did not include packet capture data and thus was not related to the November 2020 election, so he had satisfied the challenge rules, and was entitled to the $5 million reward,” the opinion enforcing the award by U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim reads.
In ruling for Zeidman, the federal court also tacked on post-judgment interest that began to accrue since April 2023 — when the arbitration panel first ruled in his favor.
Since then, the company sustained a steady stream of legal losses. Lindell’s attorneys dropped out of the case — repeatedly. Meanwhile, the court repeatedly ruled in Zeidman’s favor on discovery issues.
In August 2024, Zeidman was awarded attorneys fees over Lindell Management’s discovery-related delinquencies.