MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been ordered to pay $5 million to an expert who debunked his claims about the 2020 election, CNN reported.
Lindell, who pushes mass voter fraud conspiracy theories, vowed to award a multimillion-dollar prize to any cyber security expert who could disprove his claims. An arbitration panel awarded software developer Robert Zeidman the $5 million payout on Wednesday after he sued Lindell.
“Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract,” the arbitration panel wrote in its decision. “He proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover.”
Brian Glasser, founder of Bailey & Glasser, LLP, who represented Zeidman, said that the decision marks "another important moment in the ongoing proof that the 2020 election was legal and valid, and the role of cybersecurity in ensuring that integrity."
“Lindell’s claim to have 2020 election data has been definitively disproved," he added.
Lindell hosted a so-called “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2021, where he announced the “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge," where anyone who could prove his data was wrong could get the payout.
“The symposium 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 said in a deposition obtained by CNN.
“I thought, well what if I put up a $5 million challenge out there, then it would get news, which it did,” Lindell said in the deposition. “So, then you got some attention.”
Zeidman signed up for the challenge and found Lindell’s data to be "largely nonsensical," CNN reported.
“The Contest did not require participants to disprove election interference. Thus, the contestants’ task was to prove the data presented to them was not valid data from the November 2020 election,” the arbitration panel wrote.
“The Panel was not asked to decide whether China interfered in the 2020 election. Nor was the Panel asked to decide whether Lindell LLC possessed data that proved such interference, or even whether Lindell LLC had election data in its possession,” according to the arbitration panel. “The focus of the decision is on the 11 files provided to Mr. Zeidman in the context of the Contest rules.”
Read the full report over at CNN.