Dominion Voting Systems could end up owning MyPillow after it's finished suing CEO Mike Lindell.
The right-wing pillow magnate has insisted he's "happy" to face the voting tech company's defamation charges for spreading conspiracy theories about Donald Trump's election loss, and he told Insider that he's "not worried" about the $1.3 billion lawsuit -- which he said was meant to silence his voice "by trying to bankrupt Mike Lindell."
"I'm the one that asked them to sue me," Lindell told the website. "I don't care if it's a scrillion, a billion, whatever. It's all just a joke."
However, bankruptcy law experts say Dominion could be adding a pillow company to its business portfolio in one of two ways -- by winning a bankruptcy auction or by seizing its assets if a jury agrees with the lawsuit's allegations and award damages exceeding MyPillow's value or Lindell's net worth.
"What you need to do is you need to go into all the states that MyPillow has assets," said bankruptcy lawyer Eric Snyder. "So they go into Minnesota where MyPillow is, and they file the judgment there, and then they go to the sheriff and say, 'I want you to start seizing the assets of MyPillow — inventory, equipment, everything they own.'"
Dominion could keep seizing assets until the value of the judgement was satisfied, and it could either auction those off themselves or keep them if Lindell refuses to settle -- but neither party seems likely to agree to a settlement.
"It's not in the best interest to settle, they're trying to make a point," Snyder said. "If I'm Dominion, I don't even want the money. It's not what it's about. It's about the reputation."
Lindell doesn't seem interested, either, because he still refuses to concede Trump's election loss and because he doesn't want to lose his company.
"MyPillow is not going to want any of that," Snyder said. "So MyPillow is going to probably file bankruptcy."
Filing for bankruptcy protection would allow MyPillow to liquidate with court-supervised auctions, but Dominion would have to wait in line behind secured creditors, such as lenders and employees, that Lindell's company owes before recovering any damages.
"In a typical corporate bankruptcy, unsecured creditors get 10 cents on the dollar," Edward Adams, a professor of corporate and bankruptcy law at the University of Minnesota's law school. "It's not a great place to be."
Lindell claims his company has no creditors or debts, but Dominion could try to acquire its assets by bidding in a bankruptcy auction -- and a massive judgment would give them a tremendous advantage.
"They can place what's called a credit bid, which basically means they bid not with money but with what's owed them," Adams said. "It's effectively money. Maybe some competitor wants to buy MyPillow, and they're willing to pay $100 million. If their credit is $1.3 billion, I mean, they're going to win."
Lindell, however, insists that state attorneys general would soon file a lawsuit that would result in the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the election and eliminating all voting machines in the country.
"I want to take Dominion, the company, melt down the machines, and use the metal for prison bars and the plastic for the little trays they served breakfast on in prison for all the Dominion people that were involved in this, and all the other criminals like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, the CCP, everyone that was part of the biggest crime in the history of the world," Lindell told Insider.
