MyPillow founder Mike Lindell lost a $2.3 million defamation case to a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems on Monday.
Lindell is known for spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, and it has cost him. He said he was once worth roughly $60 million and is now $10 million in debt, The Associated Press reported.
A federal jury has found Lindell guilty of defaming Eric Coomer, a former security and product strategy director for Dominion Voting Systems, according to the AP.
Lindell and other supporters of President Donald Trump have made false claims that the companies’ voting machines rigged the 2020 election in former President Joe Biden’s favor, The New York Times reported.
While Lindell’s lawyers argued the statements were protected by the First Amendment because elections are a matter of public concern, Coomer’s lawyers claimed they were defamation because their client was accused of a crime, the AP reported.
Coomer said his career, mental health and his life in general were destroyed after Lindell accused him of “treason” and statements streamed on Lindell’s online media platform, formerly called Frankspeech, accused him of stealing the 2020 election.
The former Dominion employee’s lawyers claimed that Lindell either knew the statements were false or they were conveyed recklessly without knowing whether they were true.
Lindell stood by his false election conspiracies, but he denied making any statements he knew to be false about Coomer. He also said he never accused Coomer of rigging the election and that he’s called many people traitors.
The MyPillow founder’s lawyers said that Lindell’s platform is not liable for statements made by others and claimed that Coomer’s reputation was already ruined by the time Lindell mentioned him in 2021.
Lindell’s lawyers partly blamed Coomer’s downfall on his own Facebook posts that disparaged Trump. Coomer did acknowledge the “hyperbolic” posts were a mistake.
Fox News settled a lawsuit with Dominion for $787 million in April 2023 for airing false claims that its machines switched votes from Trump to Biden.
Dominion also won a victory in a lawsuit against Newsmax this past April when a judge ruled that the network falsely accused the voting machine company of rigging the 2020 election.
