Lindell, a staunch Trump loyalist, has been a key promoter of discredited claims that the last presidential election was “stolen” in favor of President Joe Biden. He has alleged that China hacked the election to prevent Trump from winning, but the “evidence” he has brought forward has been consistently debunked by cybersecurity and election experts. Nonetheless, the businessman plans to keep on fighting for Trump and spending his money in the process.
“I will keep spending it because there is no tomorrow. We lose our country. We either only have two paths: Either it gets changed before the 2022 election or we lose our country forever. I will spend every dime I have,” Lindell told CNBC in an interview published Thursday morning.
“I will spend whatever it takes,” he asserted, saying that he’s already spent some $25 million.
Despite Lindell’s and Trump’s claims, no evidence has emerged that substantiates their allegations about the 2020 election. To the contrary, dozens of election challenge lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies have failed in state and federal courts. Even judges appointed by the former president and other Republicans have dismissed the legal challenges.
Former Attorney General William Barr, who was widely viewed as one of Trump’s most loyal Cabinet members, said last December that there was “no evidence” of fraud that would change the election’s results. Barr made the statement after he had the Justice Department investigate claims of widespread voter fraud. Audits and recounts in key battleground states have consistently reaffirmed Biden’s victory as well.
But Lindell has not been deterred by the reality of Biden’s win. Instead, he has traveled around the country attending pro-Trump events promoting the baseless claims of widespread fraud. He told CNBC that the $25 million he has spent thus far has gone toward the cyber-symposium he held in August, lawyers and cyber-investigators. The My Pillow CEO said that some $500,000 has covered legal fees related to the defamation lawsuit he faces from Dominion Voting Systems.
Lindell told CNBC that he and other groups with a shared mission are working to investigate the election results in the vast majority of U.S. states.
“We are in 44 states now. We’re doing canvassing efforts. I’ll give an example. In Florida, we canvassed 10,000 people’s names, and 2,600 of them were phantom voters,” Lindell said. “Phantom voters” refers to an allegedly dead person who had a ballot cast in his or her name. Notably, Trump beat Biden in Florida by nearly 400,000 votes.
It’s unclear exactly how much Lindell is worth overall. Several websites—including Celebrity Net Worth—estimate that it’s about $50 million in total. Earlier this year, Lindell said that he’d lost some $65 million in My Pillow sales because of his ties to the former president. As of April, more than 20 retailers had removed My Pillow products from their shelves.
Lindell has repeatedly promised supporters results in his efforts to prove election fraud, but he has repeatedly failed to deliver. Ahead of Thanksgiving last month, he vowed that states’ attorneys general would sign on to a lawsuit that would go before the Supreme Court and lay out “evidence” that China hacked the election.
The pro-Trump businessman said the Supreme Court would then rule 9-0 to throw out Biden’s election victory. While Lindell released last month a copy of the lawsuit he wanted to go before the Supreme Court, no attorneys general backed the document for it to be officially submitted.
Previously, Lindell predicted that Trump would be “reinstated” as president in August. In regards to that claim, legal scholars—including some within Trump’s orbit—pointed out that such an outcome was not possible under the Constitution.
Lindell’s and Trump’s claims appear to be resonating with Republican voters, despite the lack of evidence backing them. Polls have repeatedly shown that a majority of Republicans do not believe Biden is the legitimate president. Survey results from Vox and Data for Progress released in November showed that three-quarters (75 percent) of Republicans believed Biden’s election win was “strongly” or “somewhat” due to fraud.