Can Mike Lindell Convince A Jury Satan Controls Voting Machines?

That is the question. And it’s an existential one for the MyPillow man, just like To Be Or Not To Be was for Hamlet. Mike Lindell is finally getting his day in court — and no it’s not the Supreme Court, where he has claimed that he would get a 9-0 verdict if only they wouldn’t be such fuddy duddies about standing and hear his case. Don’t try explaining to Mike that the issue of standing is the most central one to our system of jurisprudence. You can’t ask the Supreme Court to hear some wingnut conspiracy theory anymore than you can demand a New York court hear a case about a fender bender in Los Angeles, but Lindell’s *mind* can’t seem to parse through these distinctions. To him they are trivial.

In any event, all this week and part of next week, Lindell is defending himself in trial. And of course he’s overly cocky. It wouldn’t be him if that wasn’t the case. If it was you or me or anybody with a grain of sense as the defendant in this case, we would be worried sick about the big $787M award to Fox News, and not looking to wrestle with the same tiger that got that award. But then again, Lindell is out of money, we are told, so maybe this is him going for the gusto (and the publicty.)

Before jury selection kicked off on Monday, Lindell held a press conference outside the courthouse during which he revealed that he isn’t exactly repentant about promoting conspiracy theories. Lindell was joined by several supporters, many of them with signs calling for the release of imprisoned Lindell pal and fellow election-denier Tina Peters. Asked who controls the voting-machine algorithms that determine elections, Lindell had one idea: “Satan.”

Beyond the current spectacle, the trial recalls the heady days right after the 2020 election, when the most utterly nonsensical claims could become matters of national importance.

Coomer became a target of the right just days after the 2020 election when Joe Oltmann, a right-wing Colorado podcaster, claimed that he had listened in on a pre-election “antifa conference call” and overheard antifascists plotting. On that call, in Oltmann’s telling, someone introduced as “Eric from Dominion” vowed to steal the election. After Trump’s loss, Oltmann deduced that “Eric” was none other than Dominion’s Eric Coomer.

Naturally, Oltmann hadn’t actually recorded the incriminating “antifa conference call,” and he never provided any evidence that it took place. Still, the “Eric at Dominion” trope eventually made its way to Lindell, who took to his platforms to call Coomer a “traitor” for his imagined role in the election theft.

Coomer first sued Lindell and his companies in 2022, for an unspecified amount of money. And unlike other media figures who have been sued over election-fraud claims, Lindell has refused to repent or admit he was wrong. In fact, he is poised to take the stand.

Now, testifying on your own behalf is rarely a good idea. But that’s doubly true for Lindell, a voluble former crack addict with a persecution complex; it’s difficult to imagine a person more poorly suited than he is taking the stand at his own trial. (His plans to do so were first reported by Rolling Stone.)

On Monday, I asked Lindell whether he really planned to take the witness stand.

“Of course!” Lindell texted me from the courtroom, making sure to include the fact that he was, indeed, in the courtroom. “There is only one truth!”

Lindell also offered to provide updates to me throughout the trial, so stay tuned for that.

While I absolutely love it, rather than texting me, Lindell should probably be paying more attention to a case that could prove financially disastrous to himself and his co-defendants, MyPillow and Lindell TV’s parent company.

If Coomer is victorious, Lindell could potentially be on the hook for millions of dollars in damages—although it’s not clear the pillow impresario has much money left. Last year, Lindell’s legal team on the Coomer case and other election-related lawsuits ditched him, saying he owed them millions of dollars in unpaid bills. And this April, Lindell said that his legal problems had drained him financially, complaining to one judge that he was “in ruins.”

That’s where we stand. Will Sommer, who penned this article, will get texts from Lindell and we’ll feed them to you here. I hope for Lindell’s sake he doesn’t behave like he did when he was deposed. Those clips went viral. Lindell was combative and ultra defensive right out of the gate. He belittled the deposing lawyer when all the man was attempting to do was give him the rules of the deposition process. That’s like belittling a cop when he’s reading you your Miranda rights. Lindell made a supreme ass of himself and the lawyer, understandably, asked for sanctions.

If Lindell similarly comports himself on the witness stand, he might very well find himself in contempt of court. Lindell lives in an alternate reality, one where the likes of Sydney Powell and Rudy Giuliani are great jurists, who promulgate the same “truths” that he does. Those truths may be universal in wingnuttia, but to the rest of the world, the doings of Italian satellites and Hammer & Scorecard software are pure bat guano, up there with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s space lasers. That’s why this trial might be interesting. In all events, maybe it will bring closure to Lindell’s crusade. Or, maybe Mikey will get nuttier than ever and that ought to be something to watch.

And don’t forget, Lindell intends to take on Mike Waltz in a gubernatorial run in Minnesota. That is going to be classic, if it happens. If the two of them *debate* I may have to wear diapers. Maybe Donald Trump can tell me which ones to buy.

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Friends, if you’re able to find some spare change in the cushions, we are in need. It’s been a rough year but we intend to work through it and keep going. Thank you. Ursula

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