Mike Lindell, who is the CEO of MyPillow Inc., spoke at a campaign rally for then President Donald Trump at the Duluth International Airport on September 30, 2020 in Duluth, Minnesota (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images).
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's false claims about the 2020 election have resulted in expensive defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies, leading to hefty legal bills. This caused him to lose lawyers along the way, in in at least two cases. Now, MyPillow has also lost a warehouse.
According to reports, a judge in Scott County, Minn., ruled in favor of First Industrial at an eviction hearing, acknowledging the landlord's assertion that MyPillow owed over $200,000 in unpaid rent for its Shakopee warehouse.
As early as October, Lindell himself confirmed stated that MyPillow had been severely affected by the defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic against several pro-Donald Trump figures who claimed that the voting machine companies conspired to manipulate the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden.
“We’ve lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” Lindell said, claiming he’s been unfairly targeted for questioning the “security of our elections.” He also asserted that he only had “$10,000 to my name.”
Despite the apparent financial challenges, Lindell most recently succeeded in going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to retrieve his cell phone. The phone was seized in 2022 by the FBI at a Hardee’s drive-thru in Mankato while Lindell was returning from a duck hunting trip. Later, the federal authorities revealed that they had executed a warrant related to identity theft, intentional damage to a protected computer, and conspiracy, in which Lindell was considered a “subject” (as opposed to a “target”).
On Tuesday, Scott County Chief Judge Caroline Lennon dealt another blow to the pillow salesman’s business, leaving it without a place to operate following four default notices and $217,000 in unpaid rent. The Associated Press reported that MyPillow was directed to “immediately” leave the premises.
The Star Tribune reported that MyPillow is renting a second warehouse in Shakopee, but the eviction and financial difficulties raise concerns about whether the rent for that location will be paid.
Sara Filo, an attorney for MyPillow’s landlord First Industrial, reportedly said in court that the company “has more or less vacated but we’d like to do this by the book.”
“At this point there’s a representation that no further payment is going to be made under this lease, so we’d like to go ahead with finding a new tenant,” Filo reportedly added.
Lindell is challenging separately a $5 million arbitration award that an electrical engineer and software developer Robert Zeidman won after accepting the MyPillow CEO’s “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge.
The April 2023 decision stated that the data provided by Lindell LLC did not accurately represent the November 2020 election information. Because Mr. Zeidman was not paid the $5 million prize as agreed, it was considered a contract breach, allowing him to seek compensation.