Oh, Mike Lindell—one of the more awkward, inept denizens of the 2020 election fraud jamboree that circled President Donald Trump in his fruitless, violent quest to maintain power.
And his post-2020 life has been, well, not so hot—and it’s not getting any better, as Lindell just lost another defamation lawsuit.
Which lawsuit is this, you might be asking? The one where Smartmatic sued Lindell in Minnesota federal court, saying that he defamed the company with his unhinged conspiracy theories about how the company’s voting machines rigged the 2020 presidential election.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan found that Lindell made 51 false statements about Smartmatic rigging election results.
Mike Lindell speaks at a rally for President Donald Trump in 2022.
These were claims about the 2020 election results in Los Angeles County, where Lindell alleged that Smartmatic voting machines flipped votes from Trump to Joe Biden because they were connected to the internet, allowing them to be hacked.
But Smartmatic machines were not connected to the internet, and they also weren’t the machines used to count or tabulate votes. Nonetheless, Lindell couldn’t stop himself from spouting these lies on every television show, radio broadcast, and podcast that would have him.
Similarly, Bryan found that there was no evidence to support Lindell’s claim that Smartmatic built its voting machines to manipulate votes, either here or overseas.
And the case doesn’t end here.
While the judge ruled that Lindell’s statements were defamatory, there’s still the question of whether they were made with “actual malice.” Because the 2020 election was a matter of public concern, Smartmatic still has to prove that Lindell knew that his claims were false or made with reckless disregard to collect damages.
Lindell called Bryan’s decision “the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard,” but he also claimed that he hadn’t seen it and then defamed Smartmatic some more, calling it “one of the most corrupt companies in the world.”
Lindell is already on the hook for $2.3 million to Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems employee who was one of Lindell’s fixations in his attacks against the company. Lindell publicly urged Coomer to turn himself in for his role in helping Dominion manipulate election results.
“Eric Coomer, you are a criminal. Eric Coomer, your lawyers better look out. I’m not putting up with this. You’ve been a part of the biggest crime this world has ever seen,” Lindell said.
It didn’t seem like Lindell really had a sound defense in that suit. Before the trial, he said that Satan had assembled a coalition of “the uniparty, the Deep State, Globalists, and the [Chinese Communist Party]” to rig the 2020 election. Huh. So weird that didn’t work out for him.
To be fair, Lindell did get out of paying the $5 million prize he promised to anyone who could prove to him that his claims about the rigged election were false.
Mike Lindell thinks he stands a chance at defeating incumbent Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
It isn’t clear how much money Lindell has to pay for any of this. Back in 2023, Lindell’s lawyers asked the courts to release them from representing him because he stopped paying them, which doesn’t really bode well for collecting damages.
Of all of the zany, loyal characters from the 2020 election fraud jamboree, Lindell seems to be the one most left out in the cold. Though he claims that he regularly meets with Trump about election security, there’s no evidence that’s true.
But since Trump hasn’t given him a position in his administration, Lindell appears to be taking matters into his own hands, kicking around the idea of running for governor of Minnesota. He says he’s “about 99% there” in taking on Gov. Tim Walz, who’s running for a third term.
Hilariously, he’s running on a platform of “secure elections” and “common sense.”
“I love the state, I love the country, and if I’m the only one that can win, that would be a shame if that opportunity slipped by,” he said.
In reality, Lindell’s platform will be a howling whine about 2020, an incoherent mess where he ends up stiffing vendors and bowing out before the primary even happens.
At least it will be entertaining to watch him flame out for a while.
