One man who successfully took up MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on his “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge will now be $5 million richer for disproving Lindell’s claims of election fraud, in a case that follows in the footsteps of Fox News, which paid a hefty price for making similar claims.
Mike Lindell, an unapologetic Donald Trump supporter who sells pillows, had the not-so-bright idea of announcing in 2021 that he would pay $5 million dollars to any cybersecurity expert who could disprove presumably-damning information he possessed that allegedly proved that the Chinese government had interfered with the 2020 election.
Enter Robert Zeidman. The 63-year old software developer actually twice voted for Trump, but was heavily skeptical of Lindell’s allegations. What was this so-called proof?
It turns out Lindell’s “proof” consisted of random data that proved nothing about his 2020 election claims. Zeidman was given access to the data after he signed a contract agreeing to the terms, and quickly deduced it was mostly utter nonsense. An arbitration panel in the case agreed, and stated that Zeidman fulfilled the contractual terms of the challenge, which was simply to prove that Lindell’s data failed to substantiate election fraud.
In a deposition detailed by CNN, Lindell explained that the challenge was designed to get attention, which implies that he likely figured the challenge would not be taken up by anyone in his audience, since they were all Trump supporters. About the symposium held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where he offered the challenge, Lindell stated “it was to get the big audience and have all the media there and then they — the cyber guys — saying, ‘yes this data is from the 2020 election and you better look at how they intruded into our machines, our computers,’ and that was the whole purpose.”
Lindell even later admitted, “I thought, well what if I put up a $5 million challenge out there, then it would get news, which it did. So, then you get some attention.”
What Lindell failed to realize, evidently, is that $5 million dollars will pique the interest of even those who agree with you. Zeidman told The Washington Post about the decision, “They clearly saw this as I did — that the data we were given at the symposium was not at all what Mr. Lindell said it was. The truth is finally out there.”
Lindell disagrees, however, and although his firm has been ordered to pay Zeidman within 30 days, he insists that the panel “made a terribly wrong decision. This will be going to court.”
Despite his pillows, it sounds like Lindell might not sleep well at night.
Published: Apr 20, 2023 01:43 pm