AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
- Idaho state officials sent MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell a cease-and-desist letter this week.
- The officials want Lindell to stop baselessly claiming there was widespread voter fraud in Idaho.
- They also billed Lindell more than $6,500 for a pricey recount that they did to debunk his claims.
Officials in Idaho have sent a cease-and-desist letter to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, demanding that he stop pushing baseless claims that there was widespread voter fraud in their state.
The letter was sent on Tuesday by Idaho Secretary of State Lawrence Denney and the state’s Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to Lindell, per local media outlet Idaho Statesman. The letter, seen by the Idaho Statesman, also came appended with an invoice for $6,558.83 — requesting that Lindell compensate the Idaho secretary of state’s office for the funds it spent on debunking his claims.
In October 2021, the Idaho secretary of state’s office announced that they did a manual review and recount of ballots based on Lindell’s claims, but found no merit in them. Idaho Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck commented then that the state would be sending Lindell a bill for the costs of the vote recount.
“We jealously guard Idaho’s election integrity reputation, and this was a shot directly aimed at each state,” Houck said in a statement in October. “While our team is always looking for possible vulnerabilities, this allegation was patently without merit from the first look.”
“Despite knowing your statements about Idaho’s elections are false, you have not removed your ‘Big Lie’ chart and continue to perpetuate your false statements,” the letter from Denney and Wasden read, according to the Idaho Statesman.
The cease-and-desist letter also requested that Lindell “promptly remove all false statements about Idaho’s elections” from his website, and “refrain from making similar statements in the future.”
Denney and Wasden were likely referring to a page dedicated to Idaho on Lindell’s Frank Speech website. On the page, which is titled “The Big Lie,” Lindell baselessly claims that Trump won the state by 70,791 more votes than recorded. Lindell’s website also alleges that from November 3 to November 6, 2020, some 35,357 votes were flipped from Trump to Biden.
“Idaho had massive cyber flips through the machines like every other state! I will continue to tell everyone about the crimes of the 2020 election,” Lindell told Insider when reached for comment on Thursday.
“If (Idaho) wants to be shown what happened there, I will send a cyber team to show them all their computer and machine fraud!” Lindell added.
Lindell doubled down on his claims on Thursday’s edition of his nightly broadcast, The Lindell Report.
“I’m going to mention Idaho every single day. They’re front and center!” Lindell said on Thursday. “Last I heard, Idaho was Republican!”
Idaho is a known Republican stronghold, and went to Trump in 2020, with the GOP holding both houses of the state legislature, governor, and all four congressional seats. Additionally, no evidence has been found of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and Trump’s allegations of voter fraud have consistently been debunked.
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