Lindell v. Dominion for the Layman

by: John B. Nevin
2021-06-21
Source: UncoverDC
09/19/2023

Lindell v. Dominion et al. was filed on June 3, 2021, when Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow and founder of FrankSpeech, entered a "Complaint" document summarizing Lindell's legal position against US Dominion Inc along with 17 "Exhibits," which provide supporting evidence for his claims.

We have dug into those documents filed by Lindell and summarized them in great detail (and legalese) in a series of articles that can be read using the links at the bottom of this article. This next series of articles offers a birds-eye view in layman's terms of what can be logically deduced, induced, and learned from the information in the filings.

First, it should be noted that Lindell v. Dominion is not a “countersuit“ to the original US Dominion, Inc., et al. v. My Pillow et al.—meaning that even though it came after Dominion first sued Lindell, Lindell sued Dominion separately, not in response.

In that first suit on February 22, 2021, when Dominion sued Lindell for allegedly damaging their reputation wrongly, or “defamation,” it came along with similar lawsuits against Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and Sean Hannity, and according to Lindell’s suit, over 150 private individuals and organizations.

These suits open the company up to “discovery“ by Lindell’s side, which means that the court can make Dominion provide private emails, financial records, or other internal documents that Lindell needs to make his case that he has said isn’t false. But the history of Dominion’s company and information about the vulnerability of its machines that are shown in Lindell’s suit makes it look like scrutiny and transparency are not likely to help Dominion’s public image nor help the company win taxpayer-funded contracts in the future.

Any defamation judgment money Dominion would get from suing would be intended to replace what was lost in reputation damage caused by Lindell. Sales for Dominion appear to be in the neighborhood of $40-$50 million per year, but the suit against Lindell alone asks for more than 25 times that—$1.3 Billion. To win the case, Dominion must show that public claims by Mike Lindell were false and cost the company $1.3 Billion. This has all led to speculation that Dominion has political incentives.

Lindell has filed a motion to dismiss the case Dominion filed against him, requesting that the judge throw out the case by ruling now that it can already be seen to have no merit. If it is not dismissed, though, it may come down to whether a Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan has precedent and applies in this case too. In the 1964 decision, the court unanimously ruled 9-0 that "A State cannot, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, award damages to a public official for defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves 'actual malice'—that the statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false."

Trivia: Guess who gave the majority opinion in the NYT v. Sullivan decision? William J. Brennan Jr., the namesake of the Brennan Center for Justice, whose report, partially funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundations, is featured in Lindell v. Dominion Exhibit 9.

So we can see the relevant questions involved here include:

Should companies that sell voting machines to taxpayer-funded entities be treated as public officials?
What about companies that have contracts with the government to help run elections?
Did Mike Lindell say false things about Dominion? If so, did he know they were false or not care if they were false? If so, did they cause Dominion to lose money? If so, how much?

Back to the Lindell v. Dominion et al. lawsuit that we will be looking at throughout this article. Note: "et al." means that Lindell is actually suing multiple companies, including Dominion, Smartmatic, and SGO, but just "Dominion" for short.

For clarity, here's one way to summarize Lindell's argument:

Mike Lindell didn't harm voting machine companies with lies, but voting machine companies sued him for it anyway. They also told him to stop going public with the information he has about them, which he believes to be true.
When Voting machine companies sue and try to muzzle political opponents, it is an abuse of the legal process (Law + Warfare = Lawfare).
Voting machine companies play a role in government elections and sell products across state lines to taxpayer-funded entities, so voting machine companies are a "state actor" acting under "color of state law." The Constitution prohibits the state from limiting a citizen's freedom of speech.
Voting machine companies and defamation lawyers had a "meeting of the minds" to conspire against Mike Lindell's right to advocate for his candidate, which is against federal law.

Lindell is requesting a jury trial consider the evidence his team will present in court to support this argument. He has not given a specific amount of money that he wants but asked if the court agrees he is given whatever amount of "recovery" the judge or jury decides.

Both Dominion v. Lindell and Lindell v. Dominion could have major implications to other cases now filed and for cases in the future.

Are 3^rd party, private-sector corporations with government contracts "state entities?"
If they have contracts to help run elections, are they "election administrators?" Are they "Critical Infrastructure?" Legally, are they just like other private sector corporations, or are they more like public officials and government entities?