Pillow salesman, Mike Lindell, has been forced to pay out $5 million after his ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ challenge and conspiracy theories were debunked.
Lindell, 61, is known as the My Pillow Guy, and also for his bizarre beliefs regarding the 2020 presidential election.
In August 2021, Lindell claimed ahead of a 'cyber symposium' in South Dakota, that he had data showing China had interfered with the election of President Joe Biden.
He was so ‘sure’ of his claims, that he announced he would pay anyone a sum of $5 million to anyone who could debunk his theory.
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“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,” he said on the online Glazov Gang show.
Apparently, the data he was ready to reveal were ‘packet captures’. The latter is a type of film that is primarily used to archive internet traffic.
On The Glazov Gang Show, he said: “They were captured in real-time and preserved. They cannot be altered… They’re 100 percent evidence…. This was an attack from China.”
The ‘competition’ of sorts was called the ‘Prove Mike Wrong Challenge’ — and in 2023, we have a winner.
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Computer forensics specialist, Robert Zeidman, 63, signed up for the challenge and managed to debunk the claims that Lindell was making.
The supposed ‘proof’ was reportedly handed to Zeidman in text and PDF files. However, according to a 15-page report written by Zeidman, the data provided did not include the ‘packet data’ that Lindell had previously discussed.
He concluded that in Lindell’s apparent data, there was no proof of voter fraud, nor was there any interference with the 2020 election.
However, Lindell apparently refused to pay Zeidman, a Trump supporter, for beating the ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ challenge.
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Following the denial of prize funds, private arbitration proceedings took place in Minnesota.
At the end of the three-day court hearing, arbitrators agreed that Zeidman had debunked Lindell’s claims and that the material “unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”
Upon discovering that there was no interference in the election results from China, Zeidman told The Washington Post: “[The arbitrators] clearly saw this as I did — that the date we were given at the symposium was not all that Mr Lindell said it was.”
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In a text to The Post, Lindell talked about the arbitrators and said: “They made. Terribly wrong decision! This will be going to court!”
In a statement to Rolling Stone, he doubled down and said: “It will end up in court. Just another attack to try and stop us from getting rid of the electronic voting machines.”
Lindell himself is no stranger to court appearances as in April 2022, he was sued for defamation by a former Dominion Voting employee.
This was due to false claims Lindell had made via serval outlets, including Fox News, surrounding the 2020 election and its apparent ‘fix’.
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The defamation lawsuit was settled for a cool $787.5 million (£632.7 million).
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