Government

MyPillow Guy Sues Dominion For ... Defamatory RICO???

How very dare they call him crazy!

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(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Yesterday Mike Lindell, the infamous pillow fluffing CEO, told USA Today’s Brad Heath that he was about to drop a new lawsuit that would force the Supreme Court to spontaneously declare the 2020 election null and void and restore Trump to the White House.

“There’s going to be stuff in this lawsuit that is going to … stuff that’s not been done before,” he promised.

The first part seems highly doubtful, particularly since the only remedy sought is monetary damages against Dominion Voting Systems and its competitor in the election technology market, Smartmatic International. But that second bit was dead on the money.

The defamation-RICO-libelslander suit Lindell filed yesterday is indeed chock full of “stuff that’s not been done before.” And certainly not by a Biglaw firm with a heretofore spotless reputation like Barnes & Thornburg, which is currently getting dragged on every social media platform known to man and has already fired Minneapolis partner Alec Beck, its lawyer responsible for this PR nightmare.

“Late last night, firm management became aware of the filing of the complaint, which was done without receiving firm authorization pursuant to internal firm approval procedures,” a Barnes & Thornburg spokesperson told Law.com. “While the firm cannot comment substantively on pending matters, the firm is immediately taking the requisite steps to withdraw as local counsel in this matter and end the client relationship. The attorney representing the client in this matter is no longer with the firm.”

Oh, noes! Cancel culture run amok!

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Although B&T may have to wait a few days to extricate itself as local counsel, since Lindell’s Texas attorneys seem not to have submitted their pro hac vice paperwork yet.

Honestly, it’s hard to know where to start with this complaint. There’s the civil rights claim, resting on the assertion that voting machine vendors are actually the government.

“By contracting with governmental jurisdictions to provide comprehensive voting solutions for public elections, Dominion is a governmental actor,” and thus when they send Mike Lindell nasty letters demanding that he stop saying they stole the election for Joe Biden it violates his Free Screech rights.

There’s the conspiracy allegation, which requires you accept that Smartmatic and Dominion only appear to compete against each other on the open market and have totally different owners. According to Lindell’s Pepe Silvia-style stringboard, they share “DNA.”

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Venezuela! And also, China!

UHHHHH ….

The defamation claim arises out of Dominion’s own defamation suit against Lindell and his company, filed in DC back in February. Lindell moved to dismiss that case, but far be it from a go-getter like the Pillow Man to sit around waiting for U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to rule. Instead he’d like U.S District Judge Christian Tostrud, whose docket was blessed with this steaming turd, to reach across the country from Minnesota and rule that the DC case constitutes abuse of process.

So Lindell filed this complaint in Minnesota alleging that the accusations lobbed in Dominion’s DC suit constitute defamation per se.

The Dominion Defendants have defamed Plaintiff Lindell per se by calling him a “liar” and a purveyor of “the Big Lie” in the D.C. Lawsuit. In fact, everything Lindell has publicly stated about the vulnerability of voting machines to cyberattacks and hacking (including the Dominion Defendants’ voting machines) is substantively true, and the Dominion Defendants know it.

Labeling a private citizen a “liar” or purveyor of lies is defamation per se, and therefore Lindell is entitled to monetary relief even in the absence of proof of economic loss or special damages.

Which makes complete sense if you disregard the litigation privilege; the actual malice requirement for public figures; that defamation per se requires an allegation that the plaintiff is unfit for his occupation; and that Dominion didn’t sue Lindell for saying their machines were vulnerable to hacking — they sued him for saying that they deliberately threw the election to Joe Biden.

As opposed to Smartmatic, which never sued Lindell at all. But Smartmatic did sue Fox, which is evidence that it conspired with Dominion to scare Mike Lindell into shutting up — something he hasn’t done for ten seconds in the past six months.

At the time Lindell said he was thrilled to be sued by Dominion, because it would give him a chance to discovery the company SO HARD. Wonder what changed?

But the pièce de résistance is the RICO claim. The theory appears to be that Dominion, Smartmatic, and Dominion’s lawyer Thomas Clare formed an association to stop people saying that the companies stole the election.

And protecting your brand isn’t an illegal plot, unless you are the government trying to suppress free speech. Which these companies are, at least according to the voices in Mike Lindell’s fillings.

What’s the predicate for this RICO conspiracy, you are wondering? That would be extortion of Dominion and Smartmatic’s critics, including Lindell. Which they accomplished by means of firing off dozens of cease and desist and preservation letters. (Oh, hey, didn’t Lindell himself just sic Charles Harder on the Daily Mail?)

And so Mike Lindell would like somewhere north of $2 billion dollars to make him whole. Plus punitive damages. And a pony. And Donald Trump back in the White House, which should happen any second now. Just as soon as those SCOTUS Justices boot up their computers and get a look at this amazing filing.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. And so is a legal career.

Lindell v. US Dominion, Inc. [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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