By The Washington Times (Politics) | Created at 2026-08-12 15:40:56 | Updated at 2026-08-12 18:48:48
4 hours ago
MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is refusing to concede his loss in Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary, saying he wants to make sure no voting irregularities occurred.
The Trump-backed businessman lost to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa DeMuth by more than 45,000 votes in a race called by The Associated Press.
As votes were still being counted, Mr. Lindell said, “Why would I listen to the AP?” when asked by a reporter Tuesday whether or not he would concede if the network called the race for his opponent.
“I’m not going to give up this race until the votes are counted,” said Mr. Lindell, who stepped down as My Pillow CEO to focus on his campaign. “That’s nonsense.”
After his defeat, Mr. Lindell said his team needs to “reconcile these numbers” before conceding.
“If this is a chance to finally show that there’s problems with the computers in our election, so be it,” he told reporters Tuesday night after Ms. Demuth was declared the primary winner. “If I find nothing happened there and it was just a mathematical deviation of history that doesn’t make sense, I will let you all know tomorrow.”
The well-known election conspiracy theorist has found himself in murky waters before due to his election rhetoric, becoming a prominent promoter of the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump.
Mr. Lindell remained one of the president’s most vocal 2020-election-fraud allies and continued discussing “election integrity” with Mr. Trump directly.
He built a major conservative media brand on the foundation of his election rhetoric, launching LindellTV in 2021, which evolved into a platform hosting his podcast and other prominent election deniers.
His documentary “Absolute Proof,” released in early 2021, said it showed evidence that foreign actors and voting-machine companies manipulated vote tallies to hand the election to former President Biden. Such assertions have never been substantiated and were repeatedly rejected in court.
Mr. Lindell followed it with sequels and a “cyber symposium” in 2021 meant to prove his fraud accusations with supposed data. But his assertions triggered a wave of defamation suits from voting-technology companies.
Mr. Lindell was ordered to pay more than $56,000 to voting-machine company Smartmatic USA after it successfully sued him for defamation.
A federal jury found Mr. Lindell liable for defaming former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer, ordering roughly $2.3 million in damages. In June, Dominion Voting Systems — now known as Liberty Vote — dismissed its $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Lindell.
He was also linked to a security breach of Mesa County, Colorado’s voting system.
Former county clerk Tina Peters gave a person associated with Mr. Lindell unauthorized access to the county’s election equipment, and data from that equipment, including passwords, was later distributed at the “cyber symposium” Mr. Lindell hosted in August 2021.
Ms. Peters was convicted on multiple felony and misdemeanor counts and sentenced to nine years in prison. Mr. Lindell was not charged in the case.
Her sentence was shortened by Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, and she was released from prison last month after Mr. Trump waged a pressure campaign against the governor and the state.
