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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell issued a plea for donations Wednesday, some of which would go toward supporting Shasta County in its lawsuit against the state of California over ballot counting.
Lindell made the plea after recently admitting to various financial struggles stemming from his 2020 election fraud claims. Lindell is involved in defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. Both companies accuse Lindell of severely damaging their reputations after he spread baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that Donald Trump was the real winner even though the companies conspired to rig the machines.
Major retailers have since stopped stocking MyPillow products, sending the company into financial disarray. In July, Lindell said that his company had lost $100 million and that he was hit by "massive, massive cancellation" as retailers canceled their orders in response to his 2020 election allegations. American Express slashed the company's line of credit in September, and his lawyers stopped representing him after he was unable to pay millions of dollars in legal fees.
Lindell spoke Wednesday to his supporters in a segment on the streaming platform Lindell-TV, urging them to donate whatever they could to the Lindell Offense Fund.
"That's what it's all going for, not for anything else," Lindell said after asking people to donate, even if it is only $5 a month.
Lindell told Newsweek that everything he focuses on is to "secure our elections." He touted the importance of hand-counted ballots and said he was against the use of electronic voting machines.
Lindell said the donations would also help fund Shasta County's suit against the state of California. According to Lindell, the county is taking the state to court after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that limits a local government's ability to count ballots. The legislation came less than a year after Shasta County terminated its contract with Dominion Voting Systems and counted the ballots by hand instead, according to a report by ABC News.
Shasta County rushed to cancel its contract with Dominion after unfounded election fraud claims surfaced. The new law allows hand-counted ballots only under specific circumstances, such as in municipalities with less than 1,000 registered voters during regular elections and less than 5,000 voters during special elections. Counties also are restricted from canceling their voting system contracts without a transition plan and approval from the state.
Newsom signed the bill into law last Wednesday, and it went into effect immediately.
"We have to win this, we have to go after it," Lindell said. "This is the stuff that needs to be funded."
He said that the Shasta County lawsuit is a "very worthwhile" cause to support. "Republicans and Democrats alike, we all want secure elections."
Lindell also helped fund legal efforts aiming to reverse President Joe Biden's election victory. Lindell is a longtime supporter of Trump, who continues to lead in the polls for the GOP's presidential nomination.
Lindell's plea for donations comes after he told Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to Trump and host of the War Room podcast, that he refused to settle the lawsuits with Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, even if it meant bankrupting MyPillow.
About the writer
Anna Skinner is a Newsweek senior reporter based in Indianapolis. Her focus is reporting on the climate, environment and weather ... Read more