Pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell’s phone seized in FBI raid, reports say

Mike Lindell, the pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theorist, said Tuesday that the FBI has seized his cell phone.

Mr Lindell, the Minnesota-born CEO of My Pillow and a staunch supporter of the former president who rose to national prominence for his long-running attempts to help overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, said that his cell phone was seized in Minnesota.

In an appearance on the programme The Lindell Report, Mr Lindell said that he was returning from a hunting trip in Iowa when his car was surrounded at a Hardee’s drive-thru in his hometown of Mankato in southern Minnesota.

“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us, and behind us and I said those are either bad guys or the FBI,” Mr Lindell said. “Well, it turns out they were the FBI.”

The execution of a search warrant on Mr Lindell represents another strike by the FBI against a member of Mr Trump’s circle. Mr Lindell advised Mr Trump as president, including on a pseudoscientific Covid cure, and has been one the most ardent promoters of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. His major claims about election fruad are entirely unsubstantiated.

“The FBI came after me and took my phone,” Mr Lindell said is another clip posted to social media. “They surrounded me at a Hardee’s and took my phone that I run all my business, everything with. What they have done is weaponise the FBI, it’s disgusting. I don’t have a computer, that phone, everything was on everybody.”

Mr Lindell then flashed for the camera a piece of paper that he claimed is an order not to tell anyone about the search.

The Post Millennial reported that Mr Lindell said FBI officials asked him questions about the Colorado and Dominion voting machines before informing him of their warrant to take his phone. Mr Lindell then said he consulted with a lawyer before ultimately surrendering his phone.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson was displeased by the news — announcing that the raid confirmed the “Soviet” nature of the Biden administration’s FBI.

“We told you last night that the Biden administration has politicised law enforcement to the point where it feels Soviet — and we were not overstating it,” Carlson said on his programme. “The FBI has just raided the guy who sells pillows on this channel, not because the pillows were bad, but because they didn’t like who he voted for.”

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