The moral of the story of Trump world is that when wealthy a$$holes get into politics it is a disaster. Not that politics isn’t the normal purview of those to the manor born, indeed it is. But when the only qualification that one can bring to the table is money, and zero comprehension of or experience with government, that’s where the problems begin, bigly. And that is where Mike Lindell squarely fits. Lindell is the reformed crack addict who amassed an estimated $300 million by selling pillows, incredibly, and his presence as an advertiser on Fox News brought him up on Donald Trump’s radar and the rest is history.
Lindell was sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion for defamation, as was Sidney Powell. Powell’s defense was basically that no sane person would have taken her hyperbole seriously to begin with. And it looks like Lindell is going down the same path.
The Dominion v. Lindell case is going to seriously test the libel law in this country. That much seems to be agreed upon. Libel laws, as they now stand (as explained by a lengthy article in Yahoo News),
“require that the defendant be shown to actually know or strongly suspect the falsity of his or her statements—play out when the defendant is a conspiracy theorist who seems beyond the reach of rational persuasion. In essence, it poses the question of whether, in a libel suit—which is a civil case—a defense lawyer could argue something akin to the insanity defense that exists in criminal cases. This story seeks to plumb Lindell’s highly atypical psyche to imagine how a jury might view his singular case, given our libel law’s steep and subjective criteria for liability.” […]
That brings us square to the central question and it is a biggy.
Is lunacy a defense to libel?
The seminal work on political conspiracy theorists is the late historian Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” first published as an essay in Harpers in 1964. By choosing the word “style,” Hofstadter largely side-stepped speculation—beyond his credentials—about the precise mental state of the people he was chronicling. These included the folks who, over the centuries, saw elaborate, dastardly, and highly implausible plots being hatched by such presumed villains as Bavarian Illuminati, Free Masons, Jesuits, and—in some circles in the 1950s—such putative crypto-communists as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and even President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Do such conspiracy theorists share any psychic disposition? A personality disorder? A mental illness? For the most part, Hofstadter didn’t go there.
But there’s no side-stepping state of mind in a defamation suit. In the U.S., a “public figure” who brings a libel case—and Dominion will likely be considered a public figure—must show “actual malice” to prevail, which is a subjective standard, the Supreme Court has held. The question is not whether the defendant should have known whether his reputation-damaging statements were false, but whether he actually did know they were false, or at least harbored “serious doubts” about their truth.
Does that mean that lunacy is a defense?
“You know I got your email,” said David Schulz in an interview, “and I had to stop and scratch my head a minute, because it’s a really difficult question.” A media lawyer for 35 years, Schulz is senior counsel at Ballard Spahr and the Floyd Abrams clinical lecturer at Yale Law School. “I don’t know of any court that’s decided that.”
Such a defense would certainly be an extraordinary one, Schulz opined. “Unless they’re going to come in with some kind of expert psychiatric evidence to say [the defendant] really couldn’t understand this,” says Schulz, a jury is “highly unlikely” to be swayed by such a defense.
There are a number of doctrines and precedents, he adds, that, in a sense, almost smuggle an objective standard back into the picture, at least to the extent that they permit a jury to assess all the circumstances and conclude that the defendant must be lying. For instance, sticking to a preconceived narrative in the face of contrary facts can be evidence of “actual malice,” courts have found. So can a defendant’s “conscious avoidance” of evidence that cuts against his or her thesis, Schulz says.
“So it’s not enough to say, well, I didn’t know it was false,” he continues, “in the face of all these facts [weighing the other way]. . . . The jury can say, ‘We don’t believe you. No one would have believed this stuff.’”
On the other hand, juries are wild cards. What if the jury itself includes a conspiracy theorist or two? (In federal court, where the case against Lindell has been filed, civil jury verdicts must be unanimous unless the parties stipulate otherwise.)
This is going to get interesting, because it won’t be just a landmark case exploring the libel laws, it could be a landmark for disinformation and conspiracy theory, because that’s at the heart of all this. What do you say about the sanity of a man, Lindell, who believes that he has stumbled across a global conspiracy to defraud Donald Trump out of victory in the 2020 election, originating from China, and also involving Iran, the Czech Republic and other countries? Lindell would have you believe that he has the ability to identify individual computers in those countries, used by the hackers, and the concomitant U.S. voting tabulator,
in 2,995 American counties, which were each supposedly identified by something known as a “media access control” address. The spreadsheet even claimed to report the actual number of votes “stolen” during each intrusion—i.e., switched from then-President Trump’s column to that of now-President Joe Biden. If not for these thefts, the spreadsheet data indicated, Trump would have won the election.
Lindell’s now famous spreadsheet, which is the basis of his Absolute Proof documentary and its sequel, is a masterpiece. It’s been called, “not just fake, but a badly generated fake by someone who didn’t know what they were doing,” by experts in computer science.
I feel unclean just having watched those 13 minutes,” [Steven] Bellovin wrote me in an email, referring to the critical segment of the movie displaying the supposed “proof” of the cyber-attack.
“This is completely and totally fabricated,” he continued in an interview the next day. “The technical details make no sense whatsoever. The network addresses are impossible . . . and the tradecraft is completely wrong. So it’s all bull.”
Three other computer or election security experts interviewed reached similar conclusions, although they sometimes homed in on different features of the spreadsheet in terms of what struck them as the most preposterous. (In nearly every state some pointed out, the official vote is a durable paper ballot, incapable of being altered by computer hackers. In addition, the vast majority of states keep vote tabulators “air-gapped,” i.e., never hooked up to modems for any purpose.)
This Yahoo piece is the only background article you will need when the Dominion v. Lindell case starts to heat up. And don’t forget, Lindell is not only counter-suing Dominion, he is filing a lawsuit against somebody unspecified, and he assures us all that the second suit ‘“is going directly to the Supreme Court” where “they’re going to take down this election” by a “nine-zero vote.” Trump will be back in office “by August,” he averred.'”
He does sound pretty nuts, you have to admit, so the state of mind analysis in this case should be one for the books. The entire case will unquestionably be amazing. Conspiracy theory and the Big Lie will be on trial as well. Stay tuned.
The conundrum: How can there be a state of mind analysis when there is no functioning mind?
That is the paradox, isn’t it?
Dominion is going to make an example out of him. The message it will send will be crystal clear: don’t even THINK about accusing us of bad faith without rock-solid proof.
The standard should be was a “substantial” number of people fooled and were there consequences as a result? Such as loss of business.
I sincerely hope Lindell’s back on the street doing crack with Powell and Giuliani after the courts are done with them. Lying garbage all of them.
Please please keep your irrational opinions to yourself and report the damn news nobody needs to know what your take on the story is or that you think somebody’s a nutcase or whatever keep your damn opinions to yourself and report the news. I’d like to delete your channel right freaking now. Don’t tell me what to think and don’t tell me who’s this and who’s that, the media is full of crap these days and doesn’t allow people to make up their own mind by just reporting the story instead they have to offer their two cents about what their opinion is and their opinion is usually crap…
Dear lady, this is an opinion site. You want just the facts, ma’am, screen old Dragnet episodes or read the Associated Press.
That makes sense. The cities who chose Dominion, if they continued to re-use Dominion with no loss to dominion then how do they justify a 1.5 billion? Is just an attempt to punnish and deter others from speaking badly about them. Many cities believed them to be unusable do to the way their system works. Is that a reason for Dominion to sue as well? If the city made it’s reasons they found Dominion inadicuate, would they be liable too? I hope Lindell has the goods. Dominion is the one who needs to be taught the lesson here. One of the witnesses has like 3 masters from M.I.T. There were thousands of SWORN AFFIDAVITS to fraud. 1 can put you in prison for life on a murder charge. 1 witness. Yet they say the courts threw it out for lack of standing? So the American citzens who claimed to witness fraud have no merit??? Sickening and laughable. Obviously fear is the only thing that has standing to these courts. It’s there job to listen to both arguements and weigh in. So now they can just say thia everytime they don’t want to make a decision. That’s convenient. So much for Truth Justice and the AMERICAN WAY…
My paternal grandfather was a well-known psychologist back in the early 20th century. I wonder what he would think about Lindell.
He may skip the trial after some guys in white coats invite him to try on this new jacket: “Look – it fastens up the back. Isn’t that cute?”
Touche. Great arguments. Keep up the amazing spirit.
Most of you are morons, education has ruined you idiots. Nothing is as it seems. Dominion is stupid for suing them, why? Because it opens dominion up to discovery, and all their records can be gone through. Most of you will be left behind.
So? You don’t sell voting machines to consumers, you sell them to government entities such as states or counties. Each sale would be public record, buyers would expect documentation of their accuracy and security. There would be little to hide.
A county planning on purchasing Dominion systems wouldn’t want citizens objecting @but I heard…”; they MUST defend their reputation.
Lindell is dead meat. The only question is how much the damages will be.