Mike Lindell’s firm told to pay $5 million in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ election-fraud challenge
MyPillow founder and prominent election denier Mike Lindell made a bold offer ahead of a “cyber symposium” he held in August 2021 in South Dakota: He claimed he had data showing Chinese interference and said he would pay $5 million to anyone who could prove the material was not from the previous year’s U.S. election.
He called the challenge “Prove Mike Wrong.”
On Wednesday, a private arbitration panel ruled that someone had.
The panel said Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert and 63-year-old Trump voter from Nevada, was entitled to the $5 million payout.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/04/20/mike-lindell-prove-wrong-contest/
It seems the claims of election fraud keep costing people money. First Fox and now Lindell.
The funniest part of this is that the person he has to pay is a Trump voter.
In the months after Trump’s 2020 election loss, Lindell spent millions of dollars to finance lawsuits, support right-wing activists nationwide and launch a streaming television station dedicated to amplifying election-fraud falsehoods.
During frequent media appearances, he had advertised his three-day symposium as the event where he would finally provide data proving his claims. And he issued his high-stakes challenge.
“There’s a $5 million prize for anybody that can prove the election data that I have from the 2020 election was false, is not from the 2020 election,” Lindell said on the conservative show “The Glazov Gang,” which streams online.
The packet captures Lindell had promised were nowhere to be found, according to Zeidman.
Zeidman laid out his findings in a 15-page report. “I have proven that the data Lindell provides … unequivocally does not contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election,” he wrote.
Six weeks after the symposium, Zeidman sent a letter to Lindell Management to claim the prize. He got back a denial, and the following month he filed for arbitration, a type of proceeding that allows parties to resolve disputes outside of the court system.