On Monday, MyPillow CEO and ultra-MAGA Trump apologist Mike Lindell suffered one of his worst days in court to date when a Minnesota District Court judge denied his motion to throw out a defamation lawsuit brought against him by a voting technology company.  Smartmatic, the company, alleges that Lindell defamed them by continually pushing the election fraud lies of former president Donald Trump.

Smartmatic had provided election technology and services to the Los Angeles area in the 2020 presidential election, and has alleged that both Lindell and his MyPillow company defamed them by pushing the theory that their machines had been rigged in favor of current President Joe Biden.

via Twitter / @Politico

The election tech company also accused Lindell, who advertised promotion codes for his MyPillow products to viewers and listeners during media segments in which he pushed the election fraud lies, of using deceptive trade practices.

The case is one of many filed after Trump lost the 2020 election by companies like Smartmatic and Dominion, against Trump allies who have decided to run with the election fraud narrative that has been thoroughly and undeniably debunked.

Lindell had moved to dismiss the complaint, saying that Smartmatic failed to adequately plea the defamation claim, and that the other claim of deceptive trade practices isn’t legitimate because when he made those false statements about Trump’s election loss, he was acting in a personal, not professional, capacity.

Mike Lindell via Flickr / Matt Johnson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

MyPillow separately from Lindell, moved to dismiss ther complaint, saying that the company is protected by the First Amendment and that Lindell, not the company, made the statements about the election, further arguing that Lindell’s statements are not attributed to MyPillow as a corporation and not an individual.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright denied both Lindell’s and MyPillow’s motions to dismiss the complaint, concluding that Smartmatic has presented sufficient facts to support the claim of defamation. The denial of the motion included its “claims that Lindell’s statements were false, that his defamatory statements were communicated to outside parties, that he knew or should have known his statements were false and that he acted with actual malice in promoting them.”

Mike Lindell via Flickr / Gage Skidmore https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

The court also concluded that MyPillow can indeed be vicariously liable for Lindell’s words and actions, since he intentionally promoted the companies products while defaming Smartmatic and that Smartmatic can pursue their claim that Mike Lindell violated the Minnesota Deceptive Trade Practice law, since Smartmatic has provided sufficient evidence that Lindell’s statements were made in part to promote his own products.

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Christopher Powell