Voting-machine maker Dominion Voting Systems has sued Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, for $1.3 billion over his monthslong campaign of false claims about the 2020 election.
Lindell, the founder of a pillow company and one of Trump’s most visible defenders after he lost the election, has spent months sharing a baseless conspiracy theory that Biden only won because of a sprawling conspiracy that includes the Venezuelan government and hacked voting machines.
Dominion is one of the country’s largest voting system vendors, serving 26 states in at least some capacity with voting or vote tabulating equipment.
The lawsuit is Dominion’s third against Trump allies since the election. It previously filed similar suits against lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Another U.S.-based voting vendor that mostly does business internationally, Smartmatic, has similarly sued Fox News and its hosts.
Feb. 22, 202101:22
“Lindell knew there was no real ‘evidence’ supporting his claims,” Dominion’s lawsuit reads. “And he is well aware of the independent audits and paper ballot recounts conclusively disproving the Big Lie. But Lindell — a talented salesman and former professional card counter — sells the lie to this day because the lie sells pillows.”
MyPillow would frequently use promo codes like “QAnon” and “FightforTrump” in order to exploit false claims about the election to sell their product, the suit alleges.
The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but Lindell told The Wall Street Journal that he was “very, very happy” about the lawsuit.
The number of public entities willing to entertain those conspiracy theories has dwindled as Dominion has filed its suits. The far-right news channel NewsMax did an about-face after being threatened with a lawsuit, denying its previous reporting that made those claims and cutting off Lindell when he came on the network and insisted on sharing “100 percent proof” about Dominion’s role in a conspiracy.
In a Zoom press conference with his attorneys Monday morning, Dominion CEO John Poulos suggested additional defamation lawsuits were coming.
“We’re not ruling anyone out. This is the third. It’s by no means the last. We are busily working on several other cases,” Poulos said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
