Lindell has been instrumental in promoting Trump’s baseless conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen by Democrats. The CEO is being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion, after Lindell claimed repeatedly that the company was involved with a widespread voter fraud plot. Trump and Lindell have not provided any evidence to substantiate their allegations.
In connection with the defamation lawsuit, Lindell’s attorneys filed a motion last week asking a judge to allow the MyPillow founder not to reveal his address publicly in the legal battle, Business Insider first reported on Friday morning. The lawyers said that Lindell was concerned about his safety because of a series of death threats he has received. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., ruled in the defendants’ favor regarding the address.
“Lindell reasonably believes that publicizing his residential address would, in all likelihood, put him at risk of imminent harm,” Douglas Daniels and Trey Mayfield, who are working as Lindell’s defense attorneys, wrote in a May 14 legal filing. Lawyers said the CEO has received threatening phone calls and at least one malicious package.
Jeremiah Pilon, the deputy general counsel for MyPillow, explained in the filing that someone had repeatedly called the company’s call center threatening to decapitate Lindell. Pilon also said that a “threatening box” was delivered to the company’s headquarters in Minnesota.
“The box was open on top and contained two MyPillow bed pillows that had been slit open and splattered with a red-colored substance intended to look like blood,” Pilon said in the filing.
Like Trump, Lindell has repeatedly promoted bizarre conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential race, claiming that Democrats and President Joe Biden somehow “rigged” or “stole” the election with the help of foreign nations. These claims have been thoroughly debunked, and no evidence has been produced to substantiate them.
Dozens of election lawsuits challenging the 2020 results filed by Trump and his allies have been dismissed in state and federal courts. Even judges appointed by Trump and other Republicans have rejected the allegations. Meanwhile, multiple audits and recounts in key battleground states—including in areas where the election was overseen by pro-Trump Republicans—have reaffirmed Biden’s victory.
At the beginning of December, former Attorney General William Barr, who was widely viewed as one of Trump’s most loyal Cabinet officials, said that there was “no evidence” of fraud that would change Biden’s victory. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security said shortly after the election that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Regardless, Lindell and many other Trump loyalists continue to claim that the election was stolen. Many Republican voters appear to believe this. A poll conducted by SSRS for CNN in late April showed that 70 percent of GOP voters do not believe Biden won enough votes to beat Trump in the election.
Newsweek reached out to an attorney for Lindell for further comment but did not hear back before publication.
