Government

Mike Lindell: Pillow Pumper. Patriot. Pro Se Litigant.

[Crazy intensifies]

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US-POLITICS-ELECTION

(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Hosanna! The Pillow Fluffer has once again delivered! Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Mike Lindell has delivered exactly once, because nothing ever came of his dozens of promises to reinstall Donald Trump in the White House, get rid of all voting machines, and hand over $5 million to anyone who could prove his digital “proof” of election fraud was garbage.

But recently he’s dangled the possibility that he’ll be representing himself pro se in his various election defamation suits. And now, at least for one shining moment, he is.

It started last week when news broke that Lindell’s lawyers were seeking to withdraw from representation because he had stopped paying them. Naturally the Pillow CEO made a beeline for Steve Bannon, to tell his tale of woe.

“I have to protect my company,” he railed, depicting his decision to stiff his attorneys for millions of dollars of legal work as a noble quest to save his business from woke cancel culture.

Later on Lindell’s Free Speech website, he promised his trusty sidekick Brannon Howse that he’d soldier on with the litigation, even if he had to represent himself.

“As far as myself, if I have to go in there by myself and go before those twelve jurors and say, ‘Um, hullo jurors! No, I did not — this was not a big marketing plan to make money,'” he laughed.

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Motions to GTFO by his lead attorney Andrew Parker and colleagues from the firm Parker, Daniels, Kibort are still pending in Colorado and DC. But on Monday federal Magistrate Judge John Docherty approved Parker’s petition to withdraw from the defamation case filed against Lindell by voting machine company Smartmatic.

“To require counsel to continue representing Defendants in this case, under these circumstances, would require counsel to finance the litigation, which would be an ‘unreasonable financial burden,'” the court wrote, citing the state’s Rules of Professional Conduct. Smartmatic, did not oppose the motion to withdraw, although it cautions that the the trial should not be delayed because Lindell couldn’t be bothered to pay his lawyers.

So as of today, Lindell and his My Pillow company are both technically pro se. Although, as the court notes, “Unlike Mr. Lindell, My Pillow, Inc., cannot represent itself in federal court because it is a corporation. … If My Pillow, Inc. fails to obtain new counsel, it risks default.”

Lindell has been making noise about lawyers calling him from around the country to offer their services. And perhaps someone will step up to play pro bono counsel for a man who flies around on a private plane. The court has given Lindell until the end of the month to say who the lucky attorney is who’ll be subsidizing this litigation going forward.

But it should be noted that Lindell was represented by counsel during the entire pendency of these suits. He had lawyers when he responded to a defamation suit by Dominion in DC by filing a counterclaim alleging RICO in Minnesota. That was under his prior attorneys, who impleaded Smartmatic and accused it of witness intimidation because it sent cease and desist letters to people who defamed it. Judge Carl Nichols described the claim as “frivolous” and imposed Rule 11 sanctions on Lindell’s lawyers. Lindell’s lawyers went all the way to the Supreme Court trying to argue that appealing a (non-appealable) denial of a motion to dismiss DOES TOO stay discovery. He’s currently trying to subpoena George W. Bush’s former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte for … REASONS.

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Lindell had lawyers with him when he was deposed by counsel for Eric Coomer, a former Dominion employee who was falsely accused of having rigged the vote against Trump. That did not prevent him from calling opposing counsel an “ambulance chasing asshole,” leaving in the middle to record a podcast with Steve Bannon, and behaving so aggressively that the court reporter refused to come back and had to be replaced.

All of which is to say that Lindell’s defense was batshit before his lawyers noped out. So whatever is about to happen is going to be AMAZING.

US Dominion Inc. v. MyPillow Inc. [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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