Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Monday, claiming that he defamed the company with his repeated allegations that it rigged the election against Donald Trump.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, also accuses media outlets including Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network of giving Lindell a platform to spread “the big lie” because they wanted to stay in the good graces of a major sponsor. None of the media entities are named as defendants in the lawsuit, but Dominion has previously said that it had not ruled out legal action against those who had “recklessly provided a platform for these discredited allegations.”
“After the Big Lie had been repeatedly disproven by hand recounts of paper ballots and after some of Lindell’s allies—like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani—had been deplatformed by Fox News for peddling the lie, several media outlets—including Fox News— continued to give Lindell a global platform because they wanted to receive MyPillow ad dollars,” the lawsuit stated.
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Fox News and Newsmax ran fact checks on Dominion and another voting systems company, Smartmatic, after receiving legal threats. Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News earlier this month, and the network has defended itself by contending that it was well within the bounds of the First Amendment in reporting on items of national interest.
Dominion filed its lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, and it also names Lindell’s company, MyPillow Inc., as a defendant.
Dominion claims that Lindell was peddling the conspiracy theories for his own financial benefit.
“As when MyPillow previously faced legal action for deceptive marketing campaigns, Lindell knew there was no real ‘evidence supporting his claims,” the lawsuit stated. “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’s defamatory marketing campaign—with promo codes like ‘FightforTrump,’ ’45,’ ‘Proof,’ and QAnon’ —has increased MyPillow sales by 30-40% and continues duping people into redirecting their election-lie outrage into pillow purchases.”
MyPillow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dominion already has filed lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who had represented the Trump campaign as it pursued claims of election fraud.
Earlier this month, Lindell purchased time on One America to air a two-hour movie claiming election rigging. While the network included a disclaimer that the statements he made were “opinions,” Dominion’s lawyers said that the network “was content to deceive its viewers in exchange for ad dollars.”
“In a calculated attempt to avoid defamation liability for the lies it was about to knowingly broadcast to a global audience, OAN played a disclaimer effectively admitting that OAN knew Lindell’s claims were false but trying to pass them off as ‘opinions’ and brazenly claiming—contrary to months of OAN’s false reporting on Dominion, which had caused millions of Americans to question the results of the Presidential election—that the assertions in the sham ‘docu-movie’ were not adopted or endorsed by OAN,” the lawsuit stated.
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