MAGA pillow magnate Mike Lindell predicted on Tuesday that the courts will toss out the billion-dollar defamation lawsuits he’s facing from voting software firms in a scene reminiscent of the 1990s comedy My Cousin Vinny.
Lindell also told The Daily Beast that while his company MyPillow has taken a significant financial hit since a number of big-box retailers now refuse to carry his products on their shelves over his election lies, he believes that Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy is the result of the store yanking his pillows off shelves.
The Star Tribune reported on Monday that Lindell’s company is auctioning off hundreds of pieces of “surplus equipment” and subleasing manufacturing space amid the ongoing boycott of MyPillow products from major retailers and cable shopping channels. Stores such as Walmart, Costco, and Bed Bath & Beyond all stopped selling the company’s merchandise in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection and Lindell’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
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“It was a massive, massive cancellation,” Lindell told the Star Tribune. “We lost $100 million from attacks by the box stores, the shopping networks, the shopping channels, all of them did cancel culture on us.”
In his conversation with The Daily Beast, Lindell confirmed that his company has taken a significant financial hit due to major retailers no longer carrying his products, noting that he’s unable to “make up for the loss” of revenue. At the same time, he said MyPillow has largely shifted its focus to direct marketing and online sales, noting that they now account for 95 percent of the company’s revenue.
“We were able to expand into our direct sales, which is your radio, TV, podcast, direct mailers in your marketing, digital marketing, you know we do all that in-house so we just had to move people and shift our work,” he said. “The box stores used to be 45 percent of our business and the shopping channels but now they're like 5 percent.”
Lindell also boasted that MyPillow, which he says is largely employee-owned, hasn’t had to lay off any workers despite the loss of a huge chunk of sales. Instead, he stated that employees who were affected by the big box boycott were shifted to other roles in the company.
While criticizing the “cancel culture” that led to major retailers dropping his products, Lindell appeared to take credit for one large store going out of business because it stopped selling his pillows.
“And now we have all this equipment and stuff that we won’t use unless the box stores say, hey, MyPillow was our number one seller ever we'd like to welcome them back,” he said. “You see what happened to Bed Bath & Beyond and places like that when they took out their number one selling product.”
Asked if he was specifically blaming the retailer’s bankruptcy on its cancellation of MyPillow products, Lindell first demurred before suggesting that it was indeed the case.
“No, no, no. But if you look at the history, you can draw your own conclusion,” he declared, adding, “All I know is that Bed Bath & Beyond, and I feel bad for them that they went out of business, was it in part because they didn't sell MyPillow? You know, I guess use your own thing. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.”
The majority of The Daily Beast’s 25-minute conversation with Lindell, of course, centered on his unwavering belief that voting machines flipped millions of votes during the 2020 election. According to Lindell, he isn’t trying to overturn any elections, but instead has “put over $40 million into helping this country and trying to fix our election platform.”
This has resulted in a $1.3-billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, who allege that Lindell defamed the company with his nonstop campaign to accuse the company of rigging the election with its machines and software. Smartmatic, another voting software company, also has a pending lawsuit against Lindell.
However, in Lindell’s eyes, he will eventually be vindicated and hailed as a hero when his long-promised evidence of malfeasance finally comes to light via the court system. The Trump-boosting pillow salesman has hosted multiple events over the years in which he vowed to show proof to support his claims, only for experts to decry his so-called evidence as “bogus” and “nonsense.”
In fact, an arbitrator recently ruled that Lindell must pay $5 million to a man who disproved Lindell’s election fraud conspiracy at his 2021 “Cyber Symposium.” The dispute has since gone to court, where Lindell told The Daily Beast he’d “absolutely” come out victorious, dismissing it as “frivolous.”
Yet, Lindell is set to host yet another event next month, which he promises will lead the way to “fix the elections” and “everyone is gonna love this” while asking why this wasn’t done before. And he seems to believe that this upcoming event, along with evidence he’s submitted to Dominion and Smartmatic in his cases, will lead to a cinematic ending to this whole affair.
“Have you ever seen the movie My Cousin Vinny?” Lindell asked The Daily Beast. “Remember at the end when the cop said I took it upon myself to say he found the gun and all this stuff? And the two guys that looked like the [defendants], right? And then in light of the new evidence, case dismissed. I mean, this is what you're gonna see. When all this comes to light with the evidence I have!”
Claiming this was the first time he was revealing this, Lindell then said that the “32 terabytes from Dennis Montgomery” has now been turned over to the attorneys for Dominion and Smartmatic. Furthermore, he asserted that his attorneys have “put in a motion to compel Dennis Montgomery to testify and that his evidence gets put out to the public,” adding that there is a “gag order” from the government that it can’t be released.
Montgomery, meanwhile, is a central figure in the election-denying theory that there are supercomputers flipping votes, known as Hammer and Scorecard. Lindell ultimately bought data from Montgomery and was set to unveil it at his symposium in 2021, but the evidence he revealed to cyber experts at the time was denounced as junk.
Since then, Lindell has repeatedly promised to release the full data publicly, only to inevitably backtrack due to what he has claimed is a court order preventing Montgomery from divulging information related to his intelligence contracting.
