Jury finds MyPillow founder defamed former employee for a leading voting
equipment company
[June 17, 2025]
By COLLEEN SLEVIN
DENVER (AP) — A federal jury in Colorado on Monday found that one of the
nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder
Mike Lindell, defamed a former employee for a leading voting equipment
company after the 2020 presidential election.
The jury found that two of Lindell's statements about Eric Coomer, the
former security and product strategy director at Denver-based Dominion
Voting Systems, including calling him a traitor, were defamatory. It
ordered Lindell and his online media platform, formerly known as
Frankspeech, to pay Coomer $2.3 million in damages, far less than the
$62.7 million Coomer had asked for to help send a message to discourage
attacks on election workers.
“This is hurting democracy. This is misinformation. It’s not been vetted
and it needs to stop,” Charles Cain, one of Coomer's attorneys, told
jurors in closing arguments Friday.
Lindell said he would appeal the financial award, saying Coomer's
lawyers did not prove Coomer had been harmed. He also said he would
continue to speak out about election security, including criticizing the
makers of election equipment like Dominion.
“I will not stop talking until we don’t have voting machines in this
country,” said Lindell, who backs paper ballots counted by hand.
Lindell stuck by his false claims that the 2020 presidential election
was stolen during the trial, but did not call any experts to present
evidence of his claims.
Cain faulted Lindell for being “all hat and no cattle." Even though the
damage award was smaller than he had asked for, Cain said he thought it
would still send a message that people who work behind the scenes of
elections should not be attacked. But he said Coomer, who has recevied
death threats, is “still going to be looking over his shoulder.”
Dominion's voting machines became the target of elaborate conspiracy
theories among allies of President Donald Trump, who continues to
falsely claim that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 was due to
widespread fraud.
Dominion won a $787 million settlement in a defamation lawsuit it filed
against Fox News over its airing of false claims against the company and
has another lawsuit against the conservative network Newsmax.
Newsmax apologized to Coomer in 2021 for airing false allegations
against him.
Coomer said during the two-week Lindell trial that his career and life
were destroyed by the statements. His lawyers said Lindell either knew
the statements were lies, or conveyed them recklessly without knowing if
they were true.
Lindell’s lawyers denied the claims and said Frankspeech was not liable
for statements made by others. The jury found that eight other
statements made by Lindell and others appearing on Frankspeech were not.
Lindell said he went to trial to draw attention to the need to get rid
of electronic voting machines that have been targeted in a web of
conspiracy theories. He said he used to be worth about $60 million
before he started speaking out about the 2020 election and is now $10
million in debt.
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Mike Lindell walks into federal district court for a defamation
trial on Thursday, June 5, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)
Reviews, recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump
contested his loss in 2020 all affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s
victory. Trump’s attorney general at the time said there was no
evidence of widespread fraud, and Trump and his allies lost dozens
of court cases seeking to overturn the result.
Lindell said his beliefs that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud
were influenced by watching the 2020 HBO documentary “Kill Chain”
and by the views of Trump's former national security adviser,
Michael Flynn. In an interview for a documentary Lindell made in
2021, Flynn said foreign interference was going to happen in U.S.
elections, and Lindell said he had no reason to doubt the claim
since Flynn had worked for both political parties in intelligence.
Lindell distanced himself from an account by a Colorado podcaster
who claimed to have heard a conference call from the anti-fascist
group Antifa before the 2020 election. The podcaster claimed that on
the call someone named Eric from Dominion said he would make sure
that Trump would not win, a story that was recounted on Frankspeech
during a 2021 event. Lindell said he only learned about that during
the trial.
Lindell said he never accused Coomer of rigging the election, but he
did say he was upset because he said Newsmax blocked him from being
able to go on air to talk about voting machines after it apologized
to Coomer. Coomer denied there was any such deal to block Lindell
under his agreement with the network.
Coomer's lawyers tried to show how their client’s life was
devastated by the conspiracy theories spreading about him. Lindell
was comparatively late to seize on Coomer, not mentioning him until
February 2021, well after his name had been circulated by other
Trump partisans.
Coomer said the conspiracy theories cost him his job, his mental
health and the life he’d built and said Lindell’s statements were
the most distressing of all. He specifically pointed to a statement
on May 9, 2021, when Lindell described what he believed Coomer had
done as “treason.”
Lindell’s attorneys argued that Coomer’s reputation was already in
tatters by the time Lindell mentioned him. They said that was partly
because of Coomer’s own Facebook posts disparaging Trump, which the
former Dominion employee acknowledged were “hyperbolic” and had been
a mistake.
Lindell denied making any statements he knew to be false about
Coomer and testified that he has called many people traitors. His
lawyers argued the statements were about a matter of public concern
— elections — and therefore protected by the First Amendment.
But Coomer’s lawyers said the statements crossed the line into
defamation because Lindell accused Coomer of treason, a crime.
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