Mike Lindell’s Dominion Suit Deemed ‘Flaming Bag Stuffed With Feces’

Mike Lindell filed yet another suit against Dominion Voting Systems yesterday, his April 19 effort having been thrown out of court, apparently. This latest suit is 82-pages long and quite honestly, it doesn’t give the impression of having been written by a lawyer. Or, maybe times have changed since I worked in that business, which was about eleven years ago. Stylistically, this suit is like nothing I’ve ever seen and substantively, it is trash. That’s not just my opinion, either.

The suit quotes literary works in different places. This is a new one on me. Law review articles start out with quotes but lawsuits? “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” from Shakespeare’s The Tempest is one of them. “But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.” That’s Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451. If any of you legal types here are still out in practice, would you let me know if this is how it’s done these days?

The first 66 pages of the suit are preamble to the causes of action. That’s a lot of preamble. And in it you will find commentary that you’ve heard before, about passwords and routers in Maricopa County, you know the drill. Lindell seems to be adjudicating not his own issues with Dominion so much as tilting at the Big Lie windmill full force.

I mention that I don’t think that a lawyer wrote this because the chief rookie mistake that you do not make, and you learn this on your first set of midterm exams, first semester, is that you do not mix issues. That is the cardinal sin that will have you bouncing onto academic probation or out the law school doors altogether. Here, it’s all one big mishmash of witness intimidation mixed with the First Amendment, mixed with the Arizona audit. As one of my law professors said about something similar, “it’s a social argument, it’s not a legal one.”

If you want to take a bash at it, here’s the link to courtlistener.

A litigator named Akiva Cohen wrote an analysis of the last fifteen pages or so of the suit, where the causes of action are finally stated. Here’s a link to the thread reader. This guy is funny. Here are a few snippets.

OK, as promised, a thread on the flaming bag stuffed with feces Mike Lindell and his excellent lawyers at @BTLawNews left on the electronic doorstep of the Minnesota federal court yesterday

And yes, I tagged @BTLawNews (and am tagging their other practices @BTLawLE @BTLawTrade @BTLawDC) for a reason. I’m not sure they understand how rapidly this filing is torpedoing their reputation; I’ve already seen GC’s on here pledging never to send them any business

And that’s well deserved. Not only did @BTLawNews @BTLawLE @BTLawTrade @BTLawDC sign up for a morally repugnant assault on American democracy, *but they did a craptastic legal job doing it*. In-house counsel thus gets to stay away for both moral and practical reasons

It’s one thing to have zero moral compass beyond “hey, we’re going to get paid a pile of money for doing this,” @BTLawNews @BTLawLE @BTLawTrade @BTLawDC. It’s another thing entirely to torch your moral reputation while *also* informing the world you stink at “law” stuff, too

Let me be as clear as I possibly can: If I saw this quality of work from @BTLawNews @BTLawLE @BTLawTrade @BTLawDC on ANY case – even pro-bono representation of literal saints – I’d advise any client who asked to run away, not walk. This is capital-S shoddy on substance. […]

I am just absolutely staggered by how gigantic of a flaming trashpile these guys filed, and that’s despite having walked into reading this with appropriately “Mike-Lindell-filing low” expectations

Update for those not watching the replies: The partner who signed this pile of shit has been defenestrated with remarkable speed, and the firm claims he never got approval to sign their name.

Note: I have my serious doubts. No biglaw partner signs an engagement without first

going through the firm’s conflict clearance process. No doubt the firm authorized him to represent Lindell but is saying they didn’t realize what the substance would be. But there’s no way the firm didn’t accept the *client*

And I love Cohen’s comments to Lindell. This is choice.

1) You weren’t sued for “supporting President Trump”
2) You weren’t sued for “advocating against the use of electronic voting machines in the 2020 election” (my dude, I know you’ve floated free from the bonds of reality, but linear time is a thing)

3) You weren’t injured in your person. Neither reputational harm nor threats on your life are physical injuries, and those threats didn’t come from the people you sued, so how could they even conceivably be relevant?

4) You weren’t injured in your property: people choosing not to buy pillows from your company because of your batshit insanity is not the type of property damage the statute contemplates; nor is “I had to defend a defamation suit”

5) You weren’t deprived of your right to free speech; you are still more than capable of saying whatever the fuck you want. You just are gonna get sued if you defame people.

What the everloving fuck? How can this continue to get crazier? How?

I …

I don’t even know what to say, here. Dominion is not a state actor or acting under color of law when they file a lawsuit against you. And even if they were, “being hit with a C&D and a suit” isn’t an equal protection or due process violation.

I … how?

No. No, Dominion is not “acting under color of state law” when it sells voting machines to the state and that the state then has state employees use to run elections. (BTW, “designing and selling voting machines” isn’t a traditional state function)

And what does this have to do with your claim about their “lawfare”?

OMG. I was really hoping they were going to go the *less* stupid route of alleging that Dominion participated in election fraud and thereby harmed his right to vote.

Reader … they chose the stupider road

Look, even if it is a state actor in “running elections” (it isn’t, b/c it doesn’t, but even if) that doesn’t make it a state actor in everything else it does. When they go pitch Montana on bringing their machines in, that’s not “State Action” by the states already using them

By the same token, when they sue a crazy pillow salesman who got all hopped up on meth and crystallized fascism and went on a defamatory campaign against them, that’s not state action. It’s just not, no matter what else Dominion does for the state

And no, “we’re suing the people leading the accusations that we participated in election fraud” is not “viewpoint discrimination” or an equal protection violation even if Dominion *were* a state actor. It’s not your “conservatism” that’s the issue here, you loon

Oh good, they’ve pled civil conspiracy, which is basically “you guys conspired to do a bunch of unlawful stuff”; I’m not bothering with this one since it’s just a rehash of all the reasons the rest of it is batshittery

And that’s it for the substance.

I’m sorry, guys, but I’m not going to read through the first 66 pages of nonsense when the legal claims are this goddamned stupid, and I have to go do some actual work. /fin

The only comment I want to make is that this firm is supposedly one of the 100 largest law firms in America, Barnes & Thornburgh. One would think they have been around the block a few times. But something went very off the rails this time. And I agree with Cohen. Maybe the other lawyers never saw the flaming trash pile, but they had to know Lindell was a client.