(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
In August of 2021, MyPillowfluffer Mike Lindell hosted an election fraud hootenanny in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. During the festivities, Lindell aired an illegal breach of Colorado voting machines and survived a brutal assault by a deranged Antifa member — or maybe it was just some guy hugging him too tight during a photo op.
He also lost $5 million in the “Prove Mike Wrong Contest,” wherein he dared various experts to debunk his supposed proof that the 2020 election had been stolen via hacked voting machines.
Software developer Robert Zeidman analyzed Lindell’s digital evidence, demonstrated that none of it was the promised packet capture data which would indicate internet traffic between voting machines and the nefarious Chinese/Italian/Martian hackers, and demanded his money. But he was rebuffed by the three-judge panel, which included Lindell’s personal attorney Kurt Olsen, a MAGAworld regular who drafted the rules himself.
Zeidman took the matter to arbitration, as per the rules of the contest, and in April of 2023 the arbitrators unanimously agreed that Lindell’s data was garbage, ordering him to pay up within 30 days.
“They made a terribly wrong decision!” the pillow CEO yelled to the Washington Post. “This will be going to court!”
Arbitration awards are almost impossible to overturn, but so are elections, and that never stopped Mike Lindell. By May the parties were duking it out in US District Judge John Tunheim’s Minneapolis courtroom.
Surprising no one but Lindell himself, the judge refused this afternoon to vacate the arbitrators’ ruling.
“Where parties agree to arbitrate, a court cannot substitute a judicial determination for the arbitrator’s decision,” he wrote, noting that the Federal Arbitration Act only allows a ruling to be overturned on the basis of “corruption, fraud, or undue means,” none of which was alleged here. The Eighth Circuit standard is no further help, allowing an order to be vacated only where it is “completely irrational or evidences a manifest disregard for the law.”
Judge Tunheim strongly suggests that he would have reached a different conclusion from the arbitrators, who relied on statements by Lindell and his experts to support Zeidman’s theory that only PCAP traffic counted as election data.
“Admittedly, the panel was tasked with the difficult job of interpreting a poorly written contract, but in evaluating the same information, the Court finds it to be quite a leap that the only possible data that could constitute ‘election data’ would be packet capture data,” he wrote, before conceding the reality that his opinion is of no moment.
“Because the panel was arguably interpreting and applying the contract, even the potentially serious legal error of using extrinsic evidence to interpret an unambiguous term is not enough to vacate the award,” he added. “As such, the Court will not vacate the award despite the fact that it may have reached a different outcome if reviewing the case de novo.”
Damn you, black letter law!
And so, after a footnote in which Judge Tunheim assured the parties that his disdain for the arbitrators should not be construed as support for “unproven theories of election fraud or interference” or “even the slightest endorsement of Lindell’s broader election related claims,” he sent parties on their way.
Lindell has 30 days to pay the $5 million, plus interest accruing since April 19, 2023. Or he can appeal this dumb turkey to the Eighth Circuit and seek a stay pending review, something so ridiculous that it’s more or less guaranteed to happen.
Zeidman v. Lindell Management LLC [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.