Election conspiracist Mike Lindell must pay $5M to expert who proved him wrong

Election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell was ordered to pay $5 million to the electrical engineer and inventor who won the "Prove Mike Wrong" contest in which Lindell offered the prize to anyone who could prove that his data had nothing to do with the 2020 presidential election.

Lindell, the My Pillow CEO who helped finance Donald Trump's baseless election protests, was ordered to pay Robert Zeidman $5 million within 30 days in a ruling issued yesterday by the American Arbitration Association Commercial Arbitration Tribunal.

"Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract," a three-member arbitration panel wrote. The panel found that Zeidman proved the files provided by Lindell to contest participants did not contain actual data from the election.

Zeidman proved that Lindell's data "unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover," the panel said.

"I am obviously really happy about the arbitrators' decision," Zeidman said in a press release issued by his lawyers. "They clearly saw this as I did—that the data we were given at the symposium was not at all what Mr. Lindell said it was. The truth is finally out there."

The arbitration "decision declares unequivocally that Zeidman proved Mike wrong," the press release said. The arbitration panel's ruling chided Lindell for defining "election data" too broadly:

In fact, it would be unreasonable to conclude that any data about the election is "election data." Newspaper articles and broadcast news about the election are transmitted as data over the Internet, for example. It is unreasonable to conclude that any data file containing those accounts—or excerpts from such a file—would qualify as election data in a contest. If such data qualified, the Contest would not really be a contest at all.

“This will be going to court!”

Lindell appears to be ready to challenge the ruling in court. "They made a terribly wrong decision! This will be going to court!" he told The Washington Post in a text message.

Lindell gave a similar response to CNN. "In a brief phone interview with CNN, Lindell said 'this will end up in court' and slammed the media and professed the need to get rid of electronic voting machines," CNN reported.

Zeidman's attorney, Brian Glasser, told The Washington Post that the arbitration decision can't be appealed directly. Paraphrasing Glasser, the Post wrote that "Lindell could ask a federal court to quash it on the basis that it represented a 'manifest injustice.' The statutory grounds for such a claim are narrow, and it is 'extremely rare' for such a claim to succeed, according to Glasser."

Lindell claimed he possessed a great deal of data captured from the Internet during voting in the November 2020 US election, and that his data showed China interfered with the November 2020 election in several states.

"Mr. Lindell testified that he was frustrated that his statements about China's election interference were not being taken seriously, and so decided to hold a 'Cyber Symposium,'" the ruling said. "The purpose of the symposium was to provide the data he had to prove China's interference in the November 2020 election. He invited the press, politicians, and cyber experts to attend the symposium, which took place in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on August 10 and 11, 2021."

Lindell promised to provide "cyber data and packet captures from the 2020 November election" and announced the Prove Mike Wrong contest. The contest announcement said that participants "have one goal. Find proof that this cyber data is not valid data from the November Election. For the people who find the evidence, 5 million is their reward."

Lindell conceded at the arbitration hearing that he doesn't have the ability to analyze the files himself and thus relied on experts who "assured him that the data was real and proved China's interference with the election."

11 files didn’t contain real election data

As the panel noted, Zeidman's many technical qualifications include holding "over two dozen patents in computer software, hardware, communications, and similar fields." He secured an invitation to the symposium and signed the contest rules, which "focused on the authenticity of the data rather than on what the data did or did not prove about any interference by China."

Zeidman received and analyzed 11 files during the contest. "He wrote and presented a 15-page report explaining his conclusion that 'the data Lindell provides, and represents reflects information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally does not contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election,'" the arbitration panel wrote.

Zeidman filed the arbitration case after contest judges, including Lindell LLC's attorney, denied that he won.

"The Panel was not asked to decide whether China interfered in the 2020 election," the ruling said. "Nor was the Panel asked to decide whether Lindell LLC possessed data that proved such interference, or even whether Lindell LLC had election data in its possession. The focus of the decision is on the 11 files provided to Mr. Zeidman in the context of the Contest rules."

Zeidman demonstrated to the panel's satisfaction that the 11 files don't contain real election data. One file "is a demonstration of a tool used to extract data." Another contained "only IP addresses and numbers ranking the addresses from high to low."

Another file provided by Lindell contained "a graphic depiction of voting machines and network connections, which is not election data." One file was unreadable even after being translated to rich text format, appearing to be "encrypted or perhaps just gibberish," the panel wrote.

“Any reasonable person” would question authenticity

Some files did not contain packet data and "therefore cannot be election data from the November 2020 election," the ruling said. One of the files without any packet data was a very large spreadsheet that contained dates and names of cities, IP addresses, the names of candidates Trump and Joe Biden, and "the names of most, if not all, of the Fortune 500 companies."