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Mike Lindell Begs 8th Circuit To Void Check His Mouth Wrote That His Ass Can't Cash

Lotsa luck getting an arb award tossed, Pillow Dude.

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US-POLITICS-ELECTION

(Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Mike Lindell just put a bankruptcy lawyer on his payroll, but not for the reason you think.

Yes, the MyPillow CEO is facing a cash crunch since all those major retailers got the woke mind virus and stopped selling his “lumpy pillows” in their stores. But in fact he’s hired Thomas Miller, a bankruptcy lawyer from Wayzata, Minnesota, for a field trip to the 8th Circuit to appeal an arbitration ruling. (Probably because of the mustache.)

As with most of the Pillow Puffer’s legal troubles, this case has its roots in his election denial. To wit, in August of 2021, Lindell hosted a cyberfraud hootenanny in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at which he plunked a bunch of data on the table and offered $5 million to anyone who could prove that it wasn’t evidence of election fraud.

Software developer Robert Zeidman bellied up to the bar and demonstrated that none of the proffered bits and bytes were election data. But Lindell refused to pay up, so Zeidman took him to arbitration, as per the rules of the “Prove Mike Wrong Contest.”

The three-judge panel of arbitrators unanimously agreed with Zeidman, but Lindell still refused to pay, so the parties wound up in the District Court of Minnesota. There, Judge John Tunheim grumbled that he didn’t necessarily agree with the arbitrators, but that didn’t change the legal standard to overturn a binding arbitration award.

“Where parties agree to arbitrate, a court cannot substitute a judicial determination for the arbitrator’s decision,” he groused, adding that “the Court’s potential disagreement with the outcome is not the standard upon which to review an arbitration award. The Court must only decide if the panel was arguably applying the contract.”

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So on February 24, Judge Tunheim gave Lindell 30 days to pony up the $5 million plus interest since April of 2023. And on the 30th day, he noticed an appeal to the 8th Circuit.

Lindell hasn’t asked Judge Tunheim for a stay of the judgment, likely because the original arbitration language, which was drafted by Lindell’s personal attorney Kurt Olsen, defers payout until all appeals are exhausted. (Either that, or every single lawyer in Pillowland is a complete bloody idiot.)

Also this week, Lindell’s lawyers Andrew Parker and Alec Beck withdrew their appearance in the trial court for the arbitration case. Assorted counsel from Minnesota firm Parker, Daniels, Kibort noped out of representing him in the election defamation cases after the pillow magnate made what he called the “courageous” decision to stiff them on the bill “to protect my company.”

This was the last Lindell-related outing for Parker, who got sanctioned along with Olsen and Alan Dershowitz for filing a garbage election suit on behalf of Kari Lake in Arizona.

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On the plus side, we might actually get some interesting new arguments from the bankruptcy lawyer. And if it doesn’t pan out at the 8th Circuit, presumably Miller’s other services might come in handy.

Zeidman v. Lindell Management LLC [Circuit Docket via Court Listener]

In re: Lindell Management LLC Litigation [District Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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