ST. PAUL, Minn. (CN) — A federal judge has ruled that pillow magnate and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell must pay out a $5 million prize he offered to anyone who could disprove his dispute of the 2020 election results.
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim of the District of Minnesota confirmed an arbitration award in a brief order Wednesday, ordering Lindell to pay out the $5 million plus ten months’ worth of post-judgment interest to contest winner Robert Zeidman within a month.
Zeidman, an electrical engineer, software developer and inventor, entered the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge at Lindell’s 2021 Cyber Symposium, where Lindell offered a $5 million prize to anyone who could prove that data he claimed supported his election result denials was not genuinely from the 2020 election.
After Lindell failed to pay out in response to Zeidman’s 15-page report on the data — which found that the data did not contain any information related to the election — the engineer filed for arbitration under the contest’s rules. An arbitration panel conducted an evidentiary hearing early in 2023, and awarded Zeidman the requested $5 million in April 2023. Lindell fought Zeidman’s motion to confirm the award, leading to another nine months of litigation in Minnesota’s federal court.
“It’s going to end up in court,” Lindell said at the time. “I’m not going to pay anything ... He didn’t prove anything.”
In court, Lindell argued that the arbitration panel had acted outside the scope of its authority and modified the rules of his challenge by accepting Zeidman’s contention that genuine election data would have to be packet capture data and by placing the burden of proof on Lindell and his companies rather than on Zeidman.
Tunheim was not convinced.
“The panel’s conclusion that the contract referred to data specifically from the election process considered the fact that anything even remotely connected to the election, as Lindell LLC proposed, could include newspaper articles and broadcast news,” he wrote, “which would effectively negate the purpose of having a challenge to begin with. The court finds this step in the interpretation to logically honor and harmonize the contract.”
Since packet captured live from the internet, as Lindell’s source claimed it was, would have to be packet data, Tunheim continued, the panel’s conclusion that proving Lindell’s data was not packet data would be adequate to win the contest was a valid interpretation of the “poorly written” contract.
“The court finds it to be quite a leap that the only possible data that could constitute ‘election data’ would be packet capture data,” Tunheim wrote. “However, the court’s potential disagreement with the outcome is not the standard upon which to review an arbitration award.”
Tunheim was also skeptical that the panel could have arrived at this conclusion without extrinsic evidence.
“It is possible that the insertion of packet capture data was simply an application of the law to the facts in this case,” he wrote. “More likely, although the panel and parties agreed the language was unambiguous, the panel used extrinsic evidence.”
While such use of extrinsic evidence is not permitted under Minnesota contract law, he said, “even a serious legal error is not a reason to vacate the award.”
Lindell’s burden-shifting argument also did not prevail.
“LIndell LLC argues that the panel’s decision that Zeidman need only insert doubt about the data Lindell LLC presented is not the same as proving that the data is unequivocally not from the election thus shifting the burden and modifying the contract,” Tunheim wrote.
“Lindell LLC’s argument may be a compelling alternative interpretation,” he continued, "but the standard for reviewing an arbitration award does not weigh competing interpretations.”
Zeidman’s attorney, Brian Glasser of Bailey Glasser, said the ruling was good news and would allow Zeidman to pursue collection efforts should Lindell fail to pay.
“I’m not operating on the supposition that he will, in fact, pay,” Glasser quipped.
Asked about Tunheim’s qualms, Glasser was unconcerned. “I think it’s a clear ruling in our favor, and it’s everything we need for collections, so we’re very pleased,” he said.
Lindell, a suburban Minnesotan who rose to wealth and national prominence with the infomercial-heavy success of his “My Pillow” company in the early 2010s, bet the proverbial farm on Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection campaign and on disputing Trump’s loss after the election.
Those decisions have been costly for Lindell and his companies — he is now a defendant in defamation suits brought by voting-machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, and had to find new counsel late last year in the Smartmatic case after his attorneys withdrew, citing millions in unpaid legal bills. My Pillow, meanwhile, has been dropped by several major retailers since the 2020 election, leading to losses in revenue that Lindell claims reached some $100 million annually.
Lindell has also attracted the attention of federal law enforcement. He sued the FBI late in 2022 after agents seized his cell phone in a southern Minnesota Hardee’s drive-thru, but neither U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud nor an 8th Circuit panel saw merit in his claims. The FBI was seeking communications between Lindell and former Mesa County, Colorado clerk Tina Peters, who is accused of leaking voting machine passwords in furtherance of her own election-dispute claims.
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