A Tuesday rally by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was supposed to lend support to an embattled conspiracy theorist. But by the rally’s end, Lindell and his colleague were facing new legal peril.
A linens salesman by trade, Lindell has become one of the biggest backers of election fraud hoaxes. The pro-Trump conspiracy theory has landed Lindell and his allies in legal trouble. One associate, Tina Peters—clerk for Mesa County Colorado—is facing ten criminal charges over allegations that she helped leak data from voting machines that were under her office’s supervision. Separately, Peters is facing an ethics investigation over her opaque “legal defense fund.” Speaking to reporters before a pro-Peters rally on Tuesday, Lindell claimed to have donated up to $800,000 to that fund—wildly over the state’s gift limit of $65 for public officials.
Before he could reach the stage, Lindell was also served with a lawsuit, this time from a man who has become the subject of baseless voter fraud conspiracy theories.
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The Tuesday rally outside Colorado’s capitol building doubled as a campaign event and a legal defense rally for Peters, who is running for Colorado Secretary of State. Her longshot bid, if successful, would result in her overseeing the state’s elections.
Meanwhile, Peters is accused of mismanaging the local elections she oversaw as Mesa County Clerk. After her office allegedly failed to count ballots in a pair of recent elections, Peters became involved in a criminal case for allegedly impersonating a local man and using his identity to breach Mesa County voting machines. Peters is accused of passing information from that breach to conspiracy theorists, who wrongly claimed that it showed election malfeasance. In August, Peters joined those conspiracy theorists in person, flying on Lindell’s private plane to his “cyber symposium” on supposed election fraud. She subsequently spent more than a month hiding in “safe houses” Lindell provided for her.
Speaking to reporters before the Tuesday rally, Lindell appeared to confirm that Peters flew on his private jet. He also claimed to have donated jaw-dropping sums to Peters’ legal defense.
“I just put all the money in myself,” Lindell said, according to Colorado’s 9News. “I don’t know, I probably put in three, four, five, maybe 800,000 [dollars] of my own money.”
Those admissions, if true, could spell trouble for Peters. Colorado state law prohibits elected officials from accepting gifts worth more than $65, unless received from family or close friends—and by his own admission, Lindell is neither. The MyPillow mogul told reporters that he first met Peters at his cyber symposium, at which point he had already paid for her to fly on his plane.
Neither Lindell nor Peters returned requests for comment. Anne Landman, a Mesa County resident who blogs about local politics and who first filed an ethics complaint about Peters’ fundraiser, said Lindell’s comments further underscore concerns about Peters’ fundraisers.
“I think it’s very damning of the whole situation,” Landman told The Daily Beast. “He’s implicated not just himself for giving it, but Tina Peters, more importantly, for accepting the money. That is going to have a very significant effect on her ethics violation case.”
Landman filed a complaint about the fund in January, accusing Peters of using the fund to skirt state rules on gifts and campaign finance. Peters has personally promoted the fund, Landman notes in her complaint, pointing to campaign events where Peters asked attendees to donate to the fundraiser.
Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission, which is investigating Landman’s complaint, declined to comment on Lindell’s statement, due to the ongoing review, but pointed to the state’s laws on gifts for public officials.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said Lindell’s comments might suggest a violation of either state campaign finance laws or laws against gifts for Colorado officials. (Griswold, whom Peters is challenging for office, does not oversee the investigation into Peters’ fundraisers.).
“The question is, is it a violation? And if so, is it of the gift ban or the campaign finance limit,” Griswold told The Daily Beast. She noted that Peters’ conspiracy theories were part of an ongoing broadside against confidence in elections.
“The Big Lie has been spreading, both with Tina Peters and many other domestic actors,” Griswold said. “The extreme right has been using the Big Lie as a way to destabilize American elections. We can see that play out in the massive amount of voter suppression laws last year, or that are under consideration this year.”
Late last month, weeks after Peters was slapped with 10 charges in the voting machine breach, the controversial legal defense fund website went offline, 9News first reported.
Peters now appears to be running her donations through Mike Lindell, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported earlier this month. Web searches for “Tina Peters legal defense fund” result in advertisements for Lindell’s “Lindel Legal Fund” website. The site’s ad for Peters (“Help Mike Lindell and others support Tina Peters and help save our country! Donate Online.”) redirects to a general donations page for Lindell, with no method of earmarking donations for Peters or any other specific recipient. (Donors will “receive a copy of Mike's memoir with any donation,” the site notes.)
Lindell also hosted a post-rally fundraiser for Peters, charging up to $1,250 for meet-and-greets, Colorado Public Radio reported.
Peters was not the only speaker to leave Tuesday’s rally in greater legal jeopardy. Before his speech, Lindell was served with a new lawsuit from Eric Coomer, a former employee for Dominion voting systems. Coomer and his former employer have become subjects of wild, debunked election fraud conspiracy theories, especially after a Colorado-based conspiracy theorist spread a discredited rumor about a Dominion employee named Eric.
In his new lawsuit against Lindell, Coomer accuses the MyPillow man of defamation. “Lindell has publicly accused Dr. Coomer of being a ‘traitor to the United States,’” the lawsuit reads. “ He has claimed, without evidence, that Dr. Coomer committed treason and that he should turn himself into the authorities.”
The suit goes on to accuse Lindell of helping destroy Coomer’s career. “After more than fifteen years as a respected professional at the top of his field, Dr. Coomer’s reputation has been irreparably tarnished,” the suit alleges. “He can no longer work in the elections industry on account of the unwarranted distrust inspired by Defendants’ lies, and instead now endures frequent credible death threats and the burden of being made the face of an imagined criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope in American history.”
Lindell is also currently facing a $1.3 billion lawsuit from Dominion, as well as unspecified damages from the voting technology company Smartmatic, which Lindell also referenced in his conspiracy theories.
Shortly after receiving a copy of the lawsuit on Tuesday, Lindell took the stage, where he made fresh threats against Coomer.
“I just got papers. Thanks, Eric. Now Eric will be the first one behind bars when we melt down the [voting] machines,” Lindell told the crowd.
