A software engineer on Monday explained why he was taking MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to the U.S. Supreme Court over his 2020 election conspiracy theories.
Lindell offered $5 million in 2021 to anyone who could prove data he released was not valid, and Bob Zeidman submitted a 15-page report that arbitration judges later declared had proven the MAGA businessman wrong. The computer expert wrote a column for Slate explaining why he was now challenging an appeals court ruling that invalidated the award.
"This decision is not only bad for me, but bad for America," Zeidman wrote. "It upends the century-old Federal Arbitration Act and it diverts resources from legitimate investigations for improving our voting system to crazy conspiracies from wealthy plutocrats. I’m hoping the Supreme Court will reconsider this harmful ruling."
Zeidman attended Lindell's "Prove Mike Wrong" symposium at the urging of friends in summer 2021, and he found the task shockingly simple.
"I got myself invited but told them that examining this kind of data would take weeks or months using specialized tools," he wrote. "But I was wrong. It took me three hours to prove that the data was completely bogus. I wrote up a report on my findings, submitted it to Lindell’s symposium director, and waited."
Getting the cash reward hasn't been easy, even after a unanimous decision in his favor from a three-person arbitration panel in April 2023. A federal district court overturned that decision in July on a technicality.
"Their order was essentially based on the fact that the arbitration agreement that Lindell had me sign at the Cyber Symposium stated that to win his $5 million challenge, I must 'prove that the data Lindell provides … unequivocally does NOT reflect information related to the November 2020 election,'" Zeidman wrote.
"Lindell’s lawyers claimed that I had only proven that the data was not a particular kind of data — electronic data known as 'packet' data, which demonstrates something was sent along a network, usually the internet — but that I had not proven that it was not any kind of data related to the election."
Zeidman claimed that Lindell simply restated the same arguments he made in the arbitration hearing to the appeals court without providing any new evidence, and he said the circuit court's decision was factually incorrect and ignored legal precedent.
"My effort to overturn this decision is not about the money," Ziedman wrote. "This case is about our country and its principles. First, I believe that most Americans want voting to be fair and dependable. We also don’t want any foreign government, large corporation, political organization, wealthy individual, extremist activist, or misguided hacker interfering with our voting systems by any means.
"But when a fanatic like Mike Lindell spreads lies about our voting system, we all waste resources and tie up our legal system, distracting us from the real voting issues."
He argued that the appeals court decision also undermined the arbitration system that allows Americans with limited means to pursue legal redress against wealthier individuals.
"We can’t let wealthy plutocrats twist the legal system in this way," he wrote. "If this decision stands, it will be a devastating blow to arbitration in America because it means any 'binding arbitration decision' can be brought to court and litigated at great length and with potential success. Arbitration outcomes will become a war of attrition, with the wealthier party having the resources to wait out a possible victory rather than taking the clear loss. This is not the system as it is designed, nor is it the system we should want."