Global Courant 2023-05-20 03:21:32
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Mike Lindell owes Robert Zeidman $5 million for a contest to disprove that the 2020 election was rigged.
Zeidman is asking a court to enforce an arbitration panel decision awarding him the $5 million.
Lindell told Insider that Zeidman, a computer scientist, “isn’t even a cyber guy.”
In August 2021, far-right conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell held a “Prove Mike Wrong” contest.
Five million dollars, Lindell said, would go to any person who could look at his trove of “cyber data and packet recordings from the November 2020 election” — which he says show that the 2020 presidential election was rigged — and prove it to be so” no valid data from the November elections.”
Robert Zeidman, a computer scientist who entered the competition, did just that.
Lindell refused to pay him. Now he is suing Lindell to get the $5 million.
“Mr. Zeidman followed everything to the last detail,” Zeidman’s lawyer Cary Joshi told Insider Friday. “He is a meticulous man.”
This is evident from an arbitration panel ruling in AprilZeidman successfully demonstrated that the data contained generic information about polling places, had nothing to do with the election at all, or was just plain gibberish.
Lindell’s competition judges refused to declare him the winner. In an interview with Insider on Friday, MyPillow’s CEO claimed that Zeidman was part of “a big cover for a much bigger picture” and shouldn’t have entered the contest in the first place. The 2020 presidential elections have not been stolen or manipulated.
“Zeidman isn’t even a cyberman. He didn’t even have the qualifications to compete,” Lindell said. “This is all a sham, and we’re going to court.”
After Lindell refused to award Zeidman the money, he sued the pillow tycoon for a binding arbitration, in accordance with the contest rules. A panel agreed that Zeidman won the competition grant with his analysis of the data, and told Lindell to pay.
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Lindell refused, to Insider in April that the arbitration panel made a “terrible decision”. Lindell asked a state court to overturn the arbitration panel’s decisionsaying the panel has “exceeded its powers”.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell at a rally for former President Donald Trump.Stephen Ripen/Getty Images
MyPillow’s CEO told Insider on Friday that the arbitration decision was “a big sham” and “a big setup” and that his lawyers were “in the process of collecting the evidence to prove it.”
“These three arbitrators unanimously ruled in our favor on every point,” Joshi said. “The fact that their petition says nothing is really surprising. They have such a huge hurdle to overcome.”
In a petition filed in federal court in Minnesota, first reported by the Washington Post, Zeidman sought a $5 million judgment against Lindell. A verdict would allow Zeidman’s lawyers to go to the financial institutions backing Lindell’s company Lindell Management LLC and get the money directly from them.
The petition also calls for an additional 10% annual interest on the $5 million award, consistent with Minnesota law.
Joshi told Insider that there is no basis for Lindell’s claim that Zeidman should not have competed in the “Prove Mike Wrong” contest.
“It’s just a total misunderstanding of the facts in the case,” Joshi, Zeidman’s attorney, said. “At no point during our legal process have they ever challenged the idea that Mr. Zeidman did not meet the eligibility requirements to enter the competition.”
Lindell insisted his own petition, filed Thursday in state court, would reveal the truth.
“Mike Lindell is not going to put up with this big sham,” he told Insider, speaking in the third person.
Lindell is facing separate libel suits from Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, two election technology companies he falsely claimed rigged the 2020 presidential election.
Last month, Fox Corp. and Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle Dominion’s separate lawsuit against them, the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history. Part of the lawsuit involved false statements Lindell made on Fox News broadcasts.
Lindell told Insider Friday that he was frustrated that Fox News was giving in.
“Whatever backdoor deal they made with Dominion, it was disgusting,” he said.
Read the original article Business Insider
