MyPillow CEO Turned the Big Lie into Big Bucks, Lawsuit Alleges

Dominion suit claims Mike Lindell paid pro-Trump outlets to air lies and reel in gullible customers for his company.

In the latest legal fallout from the post-election debacle, Dominion Voting Systems filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday against Michael Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow. The lawsuit claims that Lindell engaged in a defamatory marketing campaign against the election-technology company by spending months—including after Joe Biden was inaugurated—peddling the “Big Lie” about the election being stolen, and falsely accusing Dominion of manipulating algorithms to steal votes from former President Donald Trump.

Dominion filed separate suits in the same court last month against Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, while its competitor, Smartmatic, filed a suit in New York’s state supreme court earlier this month against Fox News and three of its anchors. One obvious hint that these suits—which each seek damages of over $1 billion—have merit is the way that some Trump-friendly TV outlets have, after receiving legal threats, aired incredibly awkward retractions and disclaimers regarding claims they had broadcast about the two companies.

The suit filed on Monday tells the tale of a twenty-first-century snake-oil salesman who capitalized on Trump’s pathological need to pretend he won the 2020 election in order to sell pillows to gullible Trump supporters—victims of yet another scam at the behest of their dear leader. The story reads like a slimy mix of greed, lies, and false victimhood—a fitting culmination of the failed presidency of Donald J. Trump, himself a reality TV star who faked a successful career in business all the way to the White House.

The big losers here, yet again, are the regular Americans who forked over money to Lindell, whom one consumer called “a hero, he’s a hardworking brilliant American Patriot who has risked everything and made incredible sacrifices for the sake of this country.” Another supporter wrote: “Made an executive decision today. IF another stimulus check is sent out, no matter how much it is, it’s going to buy me a MyPillow Mattress Topper! Going to use some of that money to support Mike!”

Among a litany of public statements against Dominion, the complaint alleges that Lindell knowingly lied on air about having “raw data analytics” that would demonstrate “a cyber footprint from inside [Dominion’s] machines” that was “going to show that Donald Trump won.” Worse, Lindell complained that he was being attacked by the left for speaking the truth, a lie-upon-a-lie that duped Trump supporters into buying pillows as an act of compassion, retaliation, and/or patriotism.

We all know why this is bad stuff. Even Mitch McConnell has acknowledged that the Big Lie harmed American democracy. But Dominion’s lawsuit makes clear that the Big Lie is also a cash cow for scam artists—after all, in the eight short weeks following the November 3 election, it moved $255.4 million from the bank accounts of Trump supporters into the coffers of the Trump campaign and the Republican party. For this lurid reason, the Big Lie is not going away anytime soon.

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