MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told The Daily Beast on Tuesday night that the FBI seized his cellphone while he was at a Hardee’s restaurant.
Lindell also posted on social media a grand jury subpoena from a federal prosecutor in Colorado and what appears to be a search warrant related to a federal investigation into breached voting machines in Mesa County, Colorado.
The warrant requests “all records and information on the LINDELL CELLPHONE that constitute fruits, evidence, or instrumentalities of violations” relating to identity theft, intentional damage to a protected computer, and conspiracy to commit the previous two crimes. The warrant cites violations “involving Tina Peters, Conan James Hayes, Belinda Knisley, Sandra Brown, Sherronna Bishop, Michael Lindell, and/or Douglas Frank, among other co-conspirators known and unknown to the government.”
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The Denver FBI field office told The Daily Beast that it does not comment on individual cases but, “without commenting on this specific matter, I can confirm that the FBI was at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Colorado, which issued the subpoena, declined to comment.
The case appears to stem from a 2021 breach of voting machines in Mesa County, allegedly by the county’s clerk Tina Peters and her associates. Peters is facing state felony charges in the alleged breach, alongside her former clerk’s office colleagues Belinda Knisley and Sandra Brown. Hayes, a professional surfer turned conspiracy theorist, is accused of impersonating a local tech worker to help breach the machines under Peters’ direction.
In November, the home of Sheronna Bishop, an acquaintance of Lindell and Peters and a former campaign manager for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), was believed to be the subject of a search warrant related to the Mesa County breach.
Now the investigation appears to include Lindell.
The search warrant requests data from Lindell’s phone, including any information it contains about damage to Dominion voting machines, information about Hayes’ alleged impersonation of a tech worker, and the phone’s internet activity, geographical location, and information on whether it could be controlled remotely via “viruses, Trojan horses, and other forms of malicious software.”
“They took my phone,” Lindell told The Daily Beast on Tuesday evening via phone. “The FBI did!”
Lindell claimed the FBI was looking for information on fellow election fraud conspiracy theorist Dennis Montgomery.
“They are looking for the terabytes from Dennis Montgomery,” Lindell further told The Daily Beast. “I hope they lift the gag order.”
Lindell also expounded on his legal situation in a Tuesday night video.
“The FBI came after me and took my phone,” he said on Facebook. “They surrounded me in a Hardee’s and took my phone that I run all my business, everything with. What they’ve done is weaponize—the FBI, it’s disgusting. I don’t have a computer. Everything I do [is] off that phone. Everything was on there. And they told me not to tell anybody. Here’s an order: ‘Don’t tell anybody!’ ‘OK, I won’t!’ Well, I am.”
“Absolutely unnecessary,” pillow tycoon sidekick and Lindell TV host Brannon Howse added when reached by The Daily Beast.
Lindell also showed a copy of a subpoena, dated Sept. 7 and signed by an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado.
“An official criminal investigation of a suspected felony is being conducted by an agency of the United States and a Federal Grand Jury in the District of Colorado,” a document that Lindell said was a subpoena on his nightly show said. “As a subpoena recipient, you are not under an obligation of secrecy. However, we request that you not disclose the existence of this subpoena for an indefinite period of time.”
Lindell has previously been linked to multiple ongoing investigations in the state, most related to Peters. Shortly after allegedly breaching her own county’s voting machines and leaking the data to conspiracy theorists, Peters attended Lindell’s August 2021 “Cyber Symposium” on supposed voter fraud, after which she went into hiding in a series of Lindell’s “safe houses.” In April, following Peters’ arrest, Lindell told The Daily Beast that investigators had not approached him about the breach.
Peters is facing state-level charges, whereas Lindell’s subpoena originates from a federal grand jury.
Lindell has repeatedly claimed to have given Peters significant gifts, including a flight to the Cyber Symposium on his private jet, as well as campaign contributions up to $800,000, which exceed Colorado’s limit of $65 for gifts to public officials.
Peters’ campaign contributions are under investigation, the state’s Independent Ethics Commission confirmed earlier this year, although it did not comment on whether Lindell’s contributions were part of that investigation.
Lindell is also tangentially linked to a similar breach of election equipment in Elbert County, Colorado, where a second clerk claims to have made unauthorized copies of voting machines, with assistance from two men who have promoted election fraud conspiracy theories on Lindell’s web show. One of the men describes his activist group, Cause of America, as being funded by Lindell.
