Dominion has sued MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over his election fraud claims. The voting machine company is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages.
Dominion Voting Systems #DominionVotingSystems
© MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images US President Donald Trump listens as Michael J. Lindell, CEO of MyPillow Inc., speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 30, 2020. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Dominion Voting Systems sued both MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell on Monday, after he spread baseless claims that Dominion’s voting machines helped rig the 2020 US presidential election.
Dominion is seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages. Lindell is a staunch ally of former president Donald Trump and a major GOP donor. He has repeatedly supported Trump’s claims challenging the integrity of the election.
In December, Lindell said that “the biggest fraud is the Dominion machines.” The conspiracy theory that Dominion’s technology switched votes from Trump to President Joe Biden has been thoroughly debunked.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.
The lawsuit accuses Lindell of repeatedly making false allegations that Dominion’s voting machines had “stolen” votes from Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Lindell knew there was no credible evidence to support his claims, Dominion added.
“Lindell knowingly lied about Dominion to sell more pillows to people who continued tuning in to hear what they wanted to hear about the election,” the company wrote in the lawsuit.
Lindell “sells the lie to this day because the lie sells pillows,” it added.
“As a result of the defamatory marketing campaign against Dominion, MyPillow sales are up 30 to 40% and MyPillow is the busiest it has ever been,” Dominion said.
Lindell spread the “Big Lie,” as Dominions calls the election-fraud theory, by speaking at rallies including events hosted by Women for America First, which Lindell got MyPillow to sponsor, Dominion said.
Lindell also told the Conservative Business Journal in December that Trump got so many votes in the election he “broke the algorithm” in the Dominion machines that he claimed had been programmed to give “1.3 to Biden and 0.7 to the president” for each vote cast, the company said in the lawsuit.
In a televised interview with RSBN on January 16, Lindell claimed that the voting machines “are corrupt, they built them to cheat.” He then plugged a 66% MyPillow discount with the code “RSBN.”
Lindell also tweeted that “Millions of votes were stolen by dominion machines!” and called it “the biggest crime ever.” His Twitter account has since been suspended.
On Trump’s final Friday in office, he met with Lindell. Their meeting notes were photographed by a Washington Post photographer, Jabin Botsford, and included references to investigating the 2020 election.
The next day, Lindell tweeted a photo of a document he claimed proved “Trump got around 79m votes to 68m votes for Biden.” Twitter labeled the tweet as a “disputed” claim of election fraud and prevented it from being replied to, liked, or retweeted.
Dominion has already filed defamations lawsuit against pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, also seeking at least $1.3 billion in damages in both cases.
Dominion had told Lindell in January to expect “imminent” litigation.
“Mike Lindell is begging to be sued, and at some point we may well oblige him,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for Dominion, told CNN on February 7.