Court upholds ruling that Mike Lindell must pay expert who debunked election lie $5M prize
A federal court has confirmed a $5 million arbitration judgment against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
In a 12-page order released on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim upheld a ruling that found Lindell must pay $5 million to cybersecurity expert Robert Zeidman, who responded to a contest to prove the pillow executive had not obtained evidence from the 2020 election.
Lindell over to pay the prize to anybody who successfully proved it — and Zeidman did.
Lindell had suggested the evidence showed Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump.
Last year, an arbitration panel ordered Lindell to pay Zeidman $5 million. Zeidman asked the federal courts to confirm the decision, while Lindell requested that it be overturned.
"A court's review of an arbitration award is very limited," Judge Tunheim explained in Wednesday's order. "Where parties agree to arbitrate, a court cannot substitute a judicial determination for the arbitrator's decision."
"The Court is not at liberty to review the outcome of an arbitration award simply because one party believes it to be incorrect," he continued. "Retrial of the issues is not within the purview of the Court."
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Tunheim concluded by confirming the arbitration decision.
"The Court's responsibility in reviewing an arbitration award is not to reevaluate the merits but rather ensure that the panel acted appropriately," he wrote. "Lindell LLC's only basis for Court action was that the panel acted outside the scope of its authority in issuing the award."
"Even though the Court may have reached a different outcome given an independent initial review of the information, the Court fails to identify evidence that the panel exceeded its authority. Under the Court's narrow review, it will confirm the arbitration award."
Zeidman has said that he doesn't actually expect Lindell to pay up.
"I'm a pessimist in general," he remarked in December. "I don't think I'll see it. I do think he's going to go bankrupt from all the lawsuits and all his expenditures on these illegitimate voting fraud cases. So I think he'll delay things until he's out of money, and I probably won't see anything."