Republican judges throw out $5 million judgment against Mike Lindell in election dispute

One of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, is trying to get out of owing $5 million to an engineer who proved him wrong about his 2020 election conspiracy theories.

Robert “Bob” Zeidman, an engineer who in a 2021 contest successfully proved Lindell relied on junk science to claim China meddled in the 2020 election to steal it from Trump, filed a motion for a rehearing “by the original arbitration” panel that awarded him a $5 million settlement. Although those judges determined that Zeidman had proved Lindell wrong beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore Lindell owed him money, three Republican-appointed judges from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the settlement. The Supreme Court, also controlled by Republicans, refused to intervene.

Despite Zeidman wanting the settlement restored, Lindell’s attorneys are arguing that the decision to throw out his claims should remain final.

“In an April 30 filing, Lindell Management LLC attorney Barbara Podlucky Berens asked Senior U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim, a Bill Clinton appointee, to agree that Zeidman should get no such rehearing because he would have ‘no viable theory’ to collect the $5 million upon a ‘second bite of the apple’ before the arbitration panel,” Law and Crime’s Matt Naham reported on Wednesday.

The filing argued that "Zeidman's alleged successful demonstration regarding the data at issue was based solely on the absence of capture packet data. Thus, in order to succeed, this claim, like the breach of contract claim, is contingent on the validity of the extracontractual data-format requirement imposed by the Pane. And like the breach of contract claim, the Eighth Circuit's express reversal of the Panel's capture packet data requirement defeats this claim as a matter of law."

Lindell’s legal team concluded, "Any rehearing would thus be futile.”

Despite Trump, Lindell and others in the MAGA movement insisting the 2020 election was stolen, conservative columnist George F. Will recently noted that the Republicans’ claims have been thoroughly litigated and debunked.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”