Mike Lindell

Lindell in 2018

Lindell invented the My Pillow pillow in 2004 and grew the business into a major Minnesota manufacturing company.[13][16]

In 2017, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) revoked accreditation of My Pillow, lowering its rating to an F based on a pattern of complaints by consumers. The BBB cited a buy one, get one free offer that became a continuous offer and therefore the normal price of the product, not a sale price or free offer.[17] In a statement, Lindell said, "Naturally, I am terribly disappointed by the BBB's decision."[17]

In 2020, Lindell named his son Darren as the company's chief operating officer, citing his own possible future political ambitions.[18]

In 2021, some major retailers stopped carrying My Pillow products. Lindell has suggested that this is a result of his claims relating to the 2020 United States presidential election results, although outlets like Kohl's and Bed Bath & Beyond have stated this is due to market research and low customer demand.[19][20]

Frank

Type of business	Private
Type of site	Political commentary
Available in	English
Founder(s)	Mike Lindell
Industry	Internet
URL	frankspeech.com

In March 2021, media reported that Lindell was launching an alt-tech social media platform, which he described as a cross between YouTube and Twitter, that would be different from Gab and Parler. Originally called "Vocl," a dispute from a company that owned a web site called "Vocal" led Lindell to rename his site "Frank".[21] Frank launched on April 19, 2021, experiencing many technical issues which Lindell ascribed to a "massive attack".[22] During its first year, Frank had no social networking features[23] and primarily offered embedded video streams, including Absolute Interference, a two-hour video promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.[24][25][26]

Lindell has said he has spent millions of dollars developing Frank.[27] According to invoices published by a Salon writer, obtained from a leaked video conference with Lindell's IT team, Lindell spent about $936,000 on hardware, labor, and services to launch Frank.[28] Jared Holt, an extremism and far-right media researcher at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab opined that Lindell was "being had by the people around him... All the various products and ventures Lindell has going on, whether it's a pseudo-documentary film or a social media platform, are very expensive endeavors. Someone is taking Lindell's money from him to produce this stuff."[29]

On April 28, Lindell told Steve Bannon on a podcast that Frank would launch again at a rally at the Corn Palace on May 10, 2021.[30] The rally filled about half of the Corn Palace's 3,000-person capacity[31] and did not include any substantive announcements about Frank, which continued to lack social networking features.[32]

Frank, based on its error messages, is written in Drupal. Several Drupal experts have criticized the way in which Frank was developed and deployed, including one who observed that Drupal is not designed to handle a large amount of user-generated content typically found on social media sites.[33] One journalist observed that Frank was using Amazon Web Services for video hosting despite Lindell's frequent criticism of "Big Tech".[28]

Lindell told Insider in March 2022 that he was spending over $1 million per month on Frank.[34] The site’s social features became available in April 2022. A reporter for Insider described the site as reminiscent of Facebook’s design in 2012, with a basic news feed and no messaging function. Lindell had 308 followers as of April 21, more than any other user.[35]

Lindell in December 2020

In White House meetings with Trump and public appearances, Lindell has promoted the toxic plant extract oleandrin as a cure for COVID-19, saying, "This thing works – it's the miracle of all time."[58] In a television appearance, Lindell made a misleading statement about the testing of the substance.[58] Lindell has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology, a company that makes oleandrin, and sits on its board.[58] Lindell's unsubstantiated claims alarmed scientists, since there is no scientific evidence that oleandrin is a safe or effective coronavirus treatment, and there is evidence the plant is poisonous at low doses.[58][59][60][61] After the efforts by Lindell and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson to promote oleandrin, Trump said his administration would "look at" the substance.[58]

After Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Lindell played a significant role in supporting and financing Trump's attempts to overturn the election result.[62]

Lindell helped sponsor a bus tour that sought to challenge the election results. The two-week tour ended in Washington, D.C., on December 14, 2020, and Lindell spoke at five stops along the way. Lindell said that "he did not help finance subsequent trips to promote the Jan. 6 rally," referring to the rally that was followed by the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Lindell attended this rally, but did not go to the Capitol.[62] Following the Capitol storming, Lindell was among those who advanced the false conspiracy theory that people associated with Antifa were responsible for the attack, saying they had probably "dressed as Trump people".[63][64] On January 15, 2021, Lindell carried a document into the West Wing of the White House; the document, as seen in an enhanced photo, appeared to refer to martial law and the Insurrection Act, as well as replacing Gina Haspel with Trump loyalist Kash Patel as the CIA director.[65][66]

Lindell promoted a conspiracy theory, popular with Trump supporters, that falsely claimed that voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion conspired with foreign powers to rig voting machines to steal the election from Trump. In January and February 2021, Dominion warned Lindell that they planned to sue him, stating in their letter: "You have positioned yourself as a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign." (The two companies sent similar letters to others as well.)[67][11] After Newsmax had broadcast a "clarification" of its false reporting on voting machine fraud in response to a demand letter from Dominion, followed by a defamation suit from a company executive,[68][69] Lindell appeared on the network on February 2, 2021, to repeat the false claims, as network anchor Bob Sellers tried to stop Lindell before reading a disclaimer and walking off the set.[70]

On January 25, 2021, Twitter permanently banned Lindell for perpetuating the unfounded claim that Trump won the 2020 election. A Twitter spokesperson explained that Lindell violated the company's civic integrity policy implemented in September 2020 to fight disinformation.[71][72][73] After his personal account was banned, Lindell circumvented the ban by using the corporate My Pillow Twitter account to issue several tweets, including a call for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to "be found out and should be put in prison when all is revealed!" Following the tweets, Twitter permanently banned the My Pillow account for violating the platform's ban evasion policy.[74]

Lindell purchased three hours of airtime on One America News Network, which had also been threatened with legal action, to broadcast Absolute Proof, a documentary that makes false claims about the election, on February 5, 2021. OANN broadcast a lengthy disclaimer before the program saying the claims were Lindell's alone, but that the 2020 election results "remain disputed and questioned by millions of Americans".[11][75] YouTube removed the documentary that day for violating its policy against election disinformation.[76] At the 41st Golden Raspberry Awards, which gives awards to the films judged the worst, Absolute Proof won the Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture and Worst Actor for Lindell.[77][78] On April 20, 2021, Lindell published a second documentary titled Absolute Interference, which also promoted debunked conspiracy theories about the election, and criticized the news media and communism.[25][79]

Dominion sent cease-and-desist letters to Lindell in December 2020 and January 2021 and asked him to retract his false claims about the company.[80][81] After Lindell refused (saying "sue me"),[80][81] Dominion filed suit for defamation on February 22, 2021, naming both Lindell and My Pillow as defendants and seeking US$1.3 billion in damages. In its complaint, Dominion alleges that Lindell and My Pillow used "defamatory marketing campaign—with promo codes like 'FightforTrump,' '45,' 'Proof,' and 'QAnon'—[which have] increased My Pillow sales by 30–40% and [continued] duping people into redirecting their election-lie outrage into pillow purchases"; Dominion further stated its intent was to "stop Lindell and My Pillow from further profiting at Dominion's expense".[82][83][84] On August 11, a federal court judge ruled that Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Lindell and My Pillow can proceed, noting that Dominion has "adequately alleged" that Lindell's accusations against the company were either knowingly false or made with "reckless disregard for the truth".[85] Smartmatic sued Lindell for defamation in January 2022, seeking unspecified damages and legal fees, asserting his false claims had reduced the company's value from more than $3 billion before the 2020 election to less than $1 billion.[86]

In March 2021, Lindell said on Steve Bannon's War Room: Pandemic podcast he would counter-sue Dominion in cases for himself and My Pillow, accusing Dominion of racketeering and election interference.[87][88] On April 19, 2021, Lindell announced that My Pillow had filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Dominion, arguing that Dominion had defamed the company. Stephen Shackelford, legal counsel for Dominion, stated that My Pillow's lawsuit was "a meritless retaliatory lawsuit, filed by My Pillow to try to distract from the harm it caused to Dominion".[89][90] Lindell also filed a civil suit against Dominion and Smartmatic in June 2021. The day after the suit was filed, a law partner with Barnes & Thornburg who drafted and submitted the suit left the firm, which said he did not have "firm authorization" to participate in the suit.[91][92]

Lindell introducing Sean Smith, Tina Peters and Sherrona Bishop to talk about Mesa County, Colorado, at his Cyber Symposium

Lindell and others predicted various inquiries into the election would result in Trump being reinstated as president in 2021.[93][94] Lindell predicted that Trump would be reinstated on the morning of August 13, stating "it'll be the talk of the world". He held a three-day "Cyber Symposium" ending August 12, promising to present "irrefutable evidence" of election fraud, but none was produced; Lindell's own cybersecurity expert said that his purported evidence was a "pile of nothing" and found no proof of election fraud.[95][96] After August 13 passed and president Joe Biden remained in office, Lindell moved his prediction for Trump's return to September 30.[94]

In September 2021, Bonner County, Idaho, announced it would perform a recount of ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election, in response to an allegation by Lindell that all 44 Idaho counties had been digitally hacked. Lindell provided a detailed list of IP addresses he asserted had been compromised. County Clerk Mike Rosedale stated that all county voting machines were fully airgapped from the Internet, also noting that seven Idaho counties do not use voting machines. Lindell alleged that a specific formula had been applied by hackers to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Rosedale said Lindell had not contacted his office before presenting his allegations. Trump carried Bonner County with 67.2% of the vote and Idaho with 63.9% in the 2020 election.[97][98] At the conclusion of the Idaho recount, accuracy was determined to be within 0.1% for the election results with no indications of digital hacking. Idaho plans to bill Lindell for the cost of the recount.[99] The Bonner audit, and audits of two other counties that do not use voting machines, affirmed the accuracy of the ballot count. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck said Lindell would be sent a bill for the audits.[100][101]

In January 2022, Lindell claimed that he possessed "enough evidence to put everybody in prison for life, 300-some million people" for their part in the alleged 2020 election fraud.[102] At the time, the population of the United States was approximately 332 million.[103]