You always get a humdinger of a story when it comes to Lindell and his dealings
The Minnesota Reformer writes
Mike Lindell’s story of cocaine addict to rich pillow pitchman to Trump fanboy and election huckster seems to have taken a new turn.
With his fortune at stake, the MyPillow CEO lost his cool during a series of legal depositions recently.
Lindell yelled, swore, called lawyers names, banged his fist on a table and repeatedly slammed down a pile of legal documents during a March deposition he gave defending himself in a defamation lawsuit.
Eric Coomer, former director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, sued Chaska-based MyPillow and Lindell for promoting baseless allegations that the company helped rig the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump.
“How dare he come and sue MyPillow?” Lindell said of Coomer during one of three depositions. “He’s a scumbag for doing that.”
Lindell blasted the attorneys questioning him, calling them ambulance chasers, criminals, liars, slime, and disgusting for bringing a lawsuit against him and his company, which he said had “nothing to do with anything.”
“I have lost everything I’ve had so far, you got it?” he said. “I’ve lost millions of dollars.”
Coomer’s attorney filed a motion Thursday asking the judge to make Lindell appear in Colorado at another deposition and pay all costs of the deposition process so far for being “vulgar, threatening, loud, disrespectful” during the three depositions. The lawyer included excerpts of the interviews as proof.
The court filing says Lindell took phone calls during his deposition, insisted on unscheduled breaks. At one point during his deposition, Lindell left to go on Steve Bannon’s podcast, where he promoted MyPillow, offering deep discounts to celebrate the company’s 20-year anniversary. He then stormed out of his final deposition in Minneapolis in August.
In Lindell’s telling, he was a crack addict before he became a Christian and founded MyPillow, which has a manufacturing plant in Shakopee.
His crusade against electronic voting systems and companies has now threatened his pillow empire: Earlier this year, MyPillow auctioned off equipment; Lindell claimed his company lost $100 million after 30 big box stores and shopping networks dropped his products, and said the company had to borrow money to stay afloat. (In other interviews, he contradicted those claims.)
In a separate case, Dominion sued Lindell for $1.3 billion for accusing the company of rigging elections, alleging his conspiracy crusade has been good for his pillow business. Dominion also sued Fox News and won a $787 million settlement.
During one deposition, Lindell rejected the suggestion that he’s spinning election conspiracies alongside promotions for his company, saying people don’t know him as “the MyPillow guy,” but as an “election guy” and “a guy trying to save the country.” He called Coomer’s attorneys “traitors” for suing his “made in America” company.
“My company has been hurt so bad because of people like Eric Coomer,” Lindell told the lawyers. “It’s a joke saying MyPillow benefited from this.”
Lindell repeatedly accused Coomer and his lawyers of hurting his employees with the lawsuit, which he called the most frivolous in American history. He also blasted U.S. District Judge Nina Wang for not tossing the suit.
Lindell was especially angered when Coomer’s attorney asked questions about customer service and pillow quality — and especially lumps.
“When you say lumpy pillows, now you’re an a******,” Lindell told the attorney. “Now he’s an a******. He’s an ambulance-chasing a******.”
Coomer’s lawyer warned Lindell that if the judge wasn’t pleased with his conduct during the deposition, Lindell could face penalties.
Lindell soldiered on, saying it was “disgusting” that the judge hadn’t yet ruled on a motion to dismiss the case. He threatened to counter-sue.
After a March deposition, the court reporter refused to return the next day and had to be replaced, and Coomer’s attorney said he would ask the judge to order that Lindell be re-deposed.
“How do you guys sleep at night?” Lindell asked the lawyers questioning him. “You obviously don’t have a MyPillow. That’s a fact.”
In a motion filed Friday, Lindell asked the judge to throw out Coomer’s defamation claim, denying he accused Coomer of rigging the election. The filing noted that Coomer lost his job after being outed for denigrating Trump on Facebook, calling him “autocratic,” “narcissistic” and a “fascist,” among other things.
While Coomer has acknowledged he made the Facebook posts, he sued 14 people and companies that disseminated what he said were false claims that he promised Trump wouldn’t win while on a phone call with so-called Antifa members.
One was the cable channel Newsmax, which Coomer settled with in 2021. Aside from an on-air apology to Coomer, the terms of the settlement were confidential, but Lindell told the Reformer that Coomer made a deal with Newsmax that banned Lindell from going on the channel to promote his products after a decade of doing so. His court filing says Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy told him he couldn’t come on the show anymore as part of the settlement.
Lindell told the Reformer that in the four months prior to the ban, his company made $3 million with the Newsmax promo code, and in the four months after, only $300,000.
