MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, speaks to reporters in Washington on June 24, 2021.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
- A judge has dismissed Mike Lindell’s appeal to get Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against him tossed.
- Lindell had appealed a ruling stating that the $1.3 billion lawsuit against him should proceed.
- Lindell told Insider that he plans to bring new claims against Dominion, and launch a class-action lawsuit against all voting technology companies.
A judge has dismissed MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s latest attempt to get voting technology company Dominion’s $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him thrown out.
In a judgment filed on Tuesday, District Judge Carl J. Nichols denied Lindell’s appeal to have Dominion’s defamation claims dismissed. Instead, the judge wrote that litigation against MyPillow would continue.
Per the filing, Nichols wrote that MyPillow “has not made a serious argument that a court is required, at the motion to dismiss stage in a defamation case, to consider and weigh factual materials outside the pleadings and relied on by the defendant.”
The judge also wrote that the questions raised by Lindell’s team were “far from exceptional.”
Dominion sued Lindell and his pillow company in February 2021, alleging that he damaged them when he pushed false conspiracy theories about the election-technology company’s role in the 2020 election.
Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell — both lawyers linked to former President Donald Trump — were also sued at the same time for touting baseless theories that the election was stolen from Trump for President Joe Biden.
Nichols previously denied motions from Lindell, Powell, and Giuliani to dismiss the lawsuits and consolidated the three separate lawsuits into one case that will move to trial in tandem.
However, Lindell’s lawyers have dodged meetings for Dominion’s defamation lawsuit and refused to hand over discovery material. Lindell told Insider in January that his team was waiting to see if their appeal would be successful before participating in these meetings.
In February, Dominion and Lindell’s legal teams said that they have no intention of settling their cases.
Lindell is also facing a defamation lawsuit from voting company Smartmatic, which has alleged that Lindell is “crazy like a fox” and accused him of “intentionally (stoking) the fires of xenophobia and party divide for the noble purpose of selling his pillows.”
For his part, Lindell has countersued Dominion, its public-relations company Hamilton Place Strategies, and Smartmatic.
When asked about his appeal’s dismissal, Lindell told Insider that he was planning to move ahead with his fight against Dominion and other election technology companies.
“Here’s the thing — we’re bringing all the evidence that they did not preserve evidence,” Lindell said. He also accused Dominion of “deleting” records from the 2020 election.
Lindell added that he has been working on a class-action lawsuit for over five months, claiming that he has amassed testimonies from “hundreds” of county clerks and commissioners against “all” the voting technology companies — including Dominion and Smartmatic.
He added that the lawsuit would likely be filed within the next two weeks and that wants to get “more and more plaintiffs” added to it. Lindell also expressed hope that election technology company ES&S would sue him, too.
“All of them, they’re all defective products. It’s like having bad brakes on a car, that’s defective,” Lindell said. “When you purchase these machines, these people that purchase them in the states and counties, the machines didn’t do what they were supposed to do.”
Nichols ordered that the defamation lawsuit lodged by Dominion against Lindell, Giuliani, and Powell proceed in full, per a separate filing on Tuesday. Initial disclosures are set to be exchanged on March 25, with discovery scheduled for completion by January 12, 2023.
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