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- Dominion Voting Systems may sue MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over his baseless claims of election fraud.
- A Dominion spokesperson told CNN Sunday that Lindell is “begging to be sued.”
- Dominion and competitor Smartmatic have filed numerous defamation suits since the election.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
Dominion Voting Systems may sue MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over his ongoing claims that the voting-machine provider swayed the November presidential election in President Joe Biden’s favor.
“Mike Lindell is begging to be sued, and at some point we may well oblige him,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for Dominion, said during an appearance on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday.
The bedding businessman, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, has continued to claim that the election was stolen from the former president and handed to Biden even as right-wing media outlets have largely reversed course.
Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax have backed off of promoting unfounded conspiracy theories that Dominion and a rival company, Smartmatic, illegally intervened to funnel votes to Biden, as the voting-systems companies become increasingly litigious.
Lindell, meanwhile, has forged full steam ahead, airing a three-hour-long movie on OAN on Friday that pushed an array of election-fraud conspiracies.
“This latest quote-unquote documentary that he aired is nothing but the same old half-baked conspiracy theories repackaged – and the truth is catching up with him,” Steel told CNN.
As the two voting-machine companies embark on a litany of defamation lawsuits against media outlets and individuals who propagated conspiracy theories about the election, OAN went to great lengths to distance itself from the movie’s claims. It ran a 90-second disclaimer which said that “Mr. Lindell is the sole author and executive producer of this program and is solely responsible for its content.” The disclaimer also said that OAN does not endorse any of the film’s statements regarding Dominion or Smartmatic.
Newsmax cut Lindell’s mic during an appearance this week after he began ranting that he had “100% proof” that Dominion was engaged in voter fraud. The anchor rejected the bogus claims and walked off set.
This week, Smartmatic filed a defamation suit against Fox News, some of its anchors, and members of Trump’s legal team seeking $2.7 billion in damages.
Dominion recently filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani seeking an eye-popping $1.3 billion in damages. The company alleges that Giuliani’s peddling of claims that Dominion’s voting machines are inaccurate may cause it to lose hundreds of millions worth of government contracts.
The complex conspiracy theory that implicates Dominion in a widespread voter-fraud scheme alleges, among other things, that the firm’s parent company was founded by offshoots of the Venezuelan government to steal elections.
In reality, Dominion is a Canadian company, and independent audits have found its voting machines reliable and accurate.
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