A federal appeals court has sided with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, ruling he does not have to pay a $5 million reward to a man who entered a contest Lindell put together to look for 2020 election discrepancies.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled an arbitration panel’s decision to grant the prize money to software engineer Robert Zeidman, who won the “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” in South Dakota in 2021.
Contestants were expected to find proof that cyber data Lindell provided was not valid data from the 2020 election. Zeidman provided a 15-page report concluding that the data was, in fact, not connected to the November 2020 election.
However, judges of the challenge argued Zeidman did not provide enough evidence the data was not election data and denied him the $5 million award.
Zeidman took Lindell to court and an arbitration panel initially sided with him. The Eighth Circuit reversed the ruling this week.
“Whatever one might think of the logic of the panel’s reasoning, it is contrary to Minnesota law,” the Appeals Court wrote. “When a contract is unambiguous, ‘evidence of the circumstances surrounding the [agreement’s] negotiation and formation’ is extrinsic and may not be considered.”
Lindell marked the court’s ruling as a “great day for our country.”
“We’ve gotta get rid of the electronic voting machines,” Lindell said in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune. “This was a big win. It came up corruptly through arbitration, and it went to a District Court of appeal, and they even said they did something wrong, and to have this righteously overturned by the Eighth Circuit Court is amazing.”
