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DENVER (CN) — Mike Lindell told a jury on Monday that he stands by accusing Dominion Voting Systems’ former employee Eric Coomer of being a traitor and a criminal, statements for which the MyPillow CEO faces defamation claims.
“I haven’t done anything to Mr. Coomer’s life,” Lindell said. “I stand by what I said because what they did to MyPillow is criminal.”
Lindell told the jury when he told Coomer to turn himself in, he wasn’t accusing Coomer of stealing the 2020 election from Donald Trump, but that he saw Coomer’s defamation lawsuits as efforts to silence his crusade against electronic voting machines.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Lindell invested millions of dollars into investigating election fraud, efforts that included collecting individual county voter rolls, hiring cyber security analysts and preaching his since-debunked claims of hacking across Fox and Newsmax programs.
In 2021, Lindell’s mission brought him to the Conservative Daily Podcast, hosted by Joe Oltmann, who recalled his own 15 minutes of election fraud. In the months leading up to the election, Oltmann claimed he infiltrated an “antifa” activist call, on which he swore he heard a man called “Eric from Dominion” say he “made f-ing sure” that Trump wouldn’t win the election.
An Internet search of “Eric,” “Dominion” and “Denver, Colorado” led Oltmann to Eric Coomer, a director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems in Denver.
Although Coomer did not in fact rig the 2020 election, the story Oltmann sparked spread like wildfire as it was picked up by YouTube hosts, published on the Gateway Pundit, reported on One America News Network and shared on social media by Trump’s son Eric.
In December 2020, Coomer sued the podcaster, the Donald Trump campaign and others who retold the story. Coomer filed subsequent lawsuits against a conservative talk radio host and other content producers in 2021, as the big lie kept spreading and drove him out of a job.
Newsmax settled with Coomer in January 2021 and issued an on-air redaction, creating tension with Lindell. In addition to buying millions of ad spots, Lindell’s business had been featured in human interest stories on Newsmax, highlighting charitable donations and his rising business career following a drug addiction.
In February 2021, Newsmax invited Lindell to speak about censorship after Twitter blocked his personal and business accounts. Lindell, however, tried to use the platform to speak about voting machines. After the interview, Lindell said he was blacklisted from the network, though they continued to air his paid advertisements.
Because he felt he was being blacklisted and censored, Lindell said he sponsored a Cyber Symposium in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in August 2021, footage of which was streamed to 13 million viewers on the Frank Speech website, which Lindell owns and since renamed Lindell TV.
After Lindell called Coomer a criminal from the conference stage, Coomer filed a defamation suit in 2022, calling the MyPillow CEO “among the most prolific vectors of baseless conspiracy theories claiming election fraud in the 2020 election."
Lindell filed to remove the case to federal court in May 2022. After being sued, Lindell continued to go on podcasts, calling Coomer a criminal and the litigation “lawfare” meant to drain his money and silence his advocacy for replacing voting machines with hand-counted paper ballots.
“After four months of pouring money into this, all I got was blockers, and I didn’t know Dr. Coomer or why he would do this to my company,” Lindell told the jury.
At his peak, Lindell said MyPillow brought him $50 million of net worth. Today, Lindell said he has fallen $10 million in debt, although supporters have donated a collective $350,000 fund his legal defense.
While touting election fraud narratives, Lindell provided promo codes for discounts on MyPillow sales, each unique to a specific ad campaign. Lindell said the codes helped him track the efficacy of specific ads. On the stand, Lindell testified that people listening can get a discount during the trial by using the promo code “jury.”
While examined by Coomer’s attorney, Charlie Cain, Lindell repeatedly asked, “May I explain?” Cain assured Lindell he would be able to speak on redirect. Despite Cain’s efforts to keep Lindell’s unwieldy narrative narrowed to addressing his questions, the MyPillow CEO often delved into critiques of voting machines, boasted the good his company brings to Americans, characterized Coomer as a getaway driver for a diamond heist and called his attorneys criminals.
“Dr. Coomer did not change the election, but he’s a blocker,” Lindell said. “He’s doing things to me directly so I can’t get the word out. He’s breaking me and taking my money.”
Defense attorneys countered that the case is not about whether Lindell’s evidence of voter fraud holds up, but his genuine belief that Coomer and Dominion voting machines perpetuated voter fraud.
Dominion also sued Lindell directly in February 2021, and last year an arbitration panel found he owed $5 million to a software engineer who participated in the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge of 2021.
Lindell’s defense began cross-examining him toward the end of the day and is expected to continue through much of Tuesday.
Joe Biden-appointed U.S. Judge Nina Wang sat eight jurors on Monday. The trial opened on June 2 and is scheduled to run through the end of the week.
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