lindell my pillow
grifter/ influencer/
aha: entrepreneur is god term, spencer neo-libtard survival of fittest ~ racism anybody can make it small indep biz replaces TJ yeoman farmer
major fox prime time sponsor
crazy? just PR addict? wants to be player in GOP? trump posse?
my red pill-ow?
html Broward-Palm
1/22 bak
tag:
https://www.mediamatters.org/mike-lindell
often on bannon? AN says big part of some rw media revenue/ 30?
2x?
https://www.alternet.org/mike-lindell-2659924801/
cuomo chris
https://www.alternet.org/never-asked-me-for-evidence/
no lnx vid
"They’re not gonna give you anything': Chris Cuomo shuts down Mike Lindell’s Fox News conspiracy
Brandon Gage April 28, 2023
MyPillow Chief Executive Officer and unrelenting 2020 election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell has accused Fox News of participating in a nefarious scheme to steal the contest from former President Donald Trump, even though no such scenario ever took place.
The conservative network's call that now-President Joe Biden had defeated Trump in Arizona – winning its eleven Electoral College votes – has remained a thorn in the side of Trump and other denialists who refuse to accept that he lost the state. Failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is arguably the most vocal example.
Similarly, Lindell has yet to abandon his debunked campaign to have Biden's victory overturned, despite facing a massive defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which settled a parallel case with Fox News for $787.5 million earlier this month.
READ MORE: 'Dumbest metaphor I've ever heard': Tucker Carlson compared vaccines to MyPillow and it totally bombed
"I will never back down, ever, ever, ever," Lindell told The New York Times on April 6th. "They can't deny it. Nobody can deny it," he added of Dominion, whom he alleges aided in the plot to take the election away from Trump.
This is the narrative that Lindell pushed on Thursday night's edition of Cuomo. Without providing substantive evidence, Lindell argued that Fox News perverted the election. News Nation host Chris Cuomo, however, refused to indulge Lindell's rotten red herring.
"I believe it is not about the law. I believe it's about politics and persuasion, that's why I wanted to see – Fox is not gonna be selling what you want it to sell when it comes to our elections. That's what this settlement means. That's why I'm asking whether or not you'll still support him," Cuomo wondered, referring to Trump's 2024 White House bid.
Lindell lost it.
READ MORE: 'They did nothing wrong': Mike Lindell loses it over Fox News’ 'strange' Dominion settlement
"Fox's candidate is Ron DeSantis," he declared of the Republican Florida governor. "Fox's settlement – Fox did this settlement, Chris I've said it from the get-go– I believe Fox played a big part in this election crime, because back then, they called Arizona early.They've did– they've made a – Smartmatic sued Fox News on February 4th of 2021. That started lawfare in this whole country. Since that time, people like me have not been able to go on any conservative media and talk about our election. They didn't even talk about 2000 Mules, which had nothing to do with electronic machines. So Fox has been suppressing, for some reason, and they make this deal with Dominion? This backdoor deal? Gimme a break."
Cuomo set the record straight.
"Yeah, they made the deal with Dominion. They made the deal with Dominion because they were caught and they knew it was only gonna get only worse. Sixty-one outta sixty-two vettings of these issues have gone against – but sixty-one outta sixty-two have been lost, and the one that wasn't was held in abeyance," he noted.
Lindell doubled down.
"Chris, Chris, Chris. I've subpoenaed Fox.I have subpoenaed Fox for ev – they've never asked me for the evidence. We posted on FrankSpeech. Anyone can go and look at it. They've – Fox News has never subpoenaed me for the evidence," he bellowed.
"Of course they didn't want the evidence," Cuomo quipped.
"We have subpoenaed Fox for their evidence but they won't give us anything. They won't give us anything. We're going to the judges..." Lindell continued until Cuomo cut him off.
"Well, they're not gonna give you anything. But Mike, Mike, they do not produce evidence of the nonexistence of the election being rigged," Cuomo said. "And they did more than anybody else did to fuel the speculation, which is how they got jammed up with Dominion."
Watch below via Mediaite or at this link.
READ MORE: Mike Lindell ordered to pay $5 million reward to expert who debunked 'rigged election' claims
The New York Times' full interview with Lindell is available here (subscription required).
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#8
an 7 22
the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol held its**final hearing** of the summer yesterday, focusing on choices Donald Trump made between concluding his speech on the ellipse at the “Save America” rally and when he finally told the mob to go home in a video posted on Twitter, 187 minutes later.
The July 21 hearing featured several explosive new pieces of information about Trump’s “complete dereliction” of his duty as president of the United States, resisting his entire inner circle’s efforts advice to him that he tell the insurrectionists to stop and go home -- instead, he spent much of his time stewing in the White House dining room, watching Fox News and making calls to GOP senators and Rudy Giuliani telling them to delay the counting of the electoral vote.
Fox News did not carry Thursday’s hearing. Instead, the right-wing network ran its regular prime-time programming, as it did during the first prime-time hearing the committee put on in June.
[twt]
during the hearing, Fox hosts decried women making their own health care choices, undocumented immigrants, a canceled Dave Chappelle show, and the committee that they refused to cover. They also played a Hillary Clinton interview from 2018 and sold some t-shirts.
Between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET, MyPillow -- the pillow company run by coup plotter Mike Lindell -- ran 6 advertisements for its products on Fox. Here’s some of the other companies that decided to advertise on Fox News prime time while it refused to air the January 6 hearing.
Tucker Carlson Tonight
On July 21, 2022, Tucker Carlson Tonight featured advertisements from MyPillow, Boll & Branch, Balance of Nature, Freshpet, and WeatherTech.
Hannity
On July 21, 2022, Hannity featured advertisements from MyPillow, Bayer,**T**rivago, Nutrisystem, and ReputationDefender.
The Ingraham Angle
On July 21, 2022, The Ingraham Angle featured advertisements from MyPillow, ADT, Bausch & Lomb, America’s Best Contacts & Eyeglasses, and Vitrazza.
Jan 6 hearing #7
kylie? kremer told lindell march to cap had to be secret
https://news.yahoo.com/pro-trump-lawyer-rising-stop-090303115.html
in late 2020, as then-President Donald Trump was waging a multi-front campaign to cling to power, a little-known attorney and self-described former special ops commander began working on Trump’s behalf, badgering senior Justice Department officials in an effort to rope them into the plot.
In the months since Trump’s failed coup attempt, government documents and emails have further revealed the extent of this attorney Kurt Olsen’s behind-the-scenes crusade to try to keep him in power. The twice-impeached former president had clearly taken a shine to Olsen and his work. But since the fallout from the 2020 presidential election, it appears that Olsen’s former colleagues want to distance themselves from him—to the point where his onetime law firm has effectively disowned him and airbrushed him from its history.
Olsen’s recurring appearances in the ongoing Capitol Hill investigations into what led to the MAGA riot on Jan. 6 raise some glaring questions. How did a virtually unknown private attorney and associate of extreme MAGA personalities stumble his way into influencing the functions of the executive branch—to the degree that the most senior DOJ personnel had to concoct plans to fight off his onslaught?
For 18 years, Olsen worked as a partner at Klafter, Olsen & Lesser, a small New York-based law firm he co-founded.But shortly after he signed on to help Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election at the Supreme Court, the firm changed its name and registered a new website—without Olsen’s name in the URL—on Feb. 24. Now, where Olsen’s bio used to be, a disclaimer says, “Kurt Olsen is not affiliated in any way with Klafter Lesser LLP.”
Partners at Klafter Lesser did not respond to requests from The Daily Beast for comment. Olsen did not provide comment, either.
Emails released by the House Oversight Committee and reporting by Politico show that after the election, the Maryland attorney rose from relative obscurity in conservative politics to capture the ear of then-President Trump. Despite his access, several lawyers and administration officials intimately involved with the anti-democratic effort did not know or simply couldn’t remember Olsen—a reflection of the disjointed and chaotic state of post-election MAGA politics as different factions pushed competing authoritarian ideas and fought amongst themselves
Out of six knowledgeable Trumpworld sources contacted for this story, several said they hadn’t directly dealt at all with Olsen, though they knew Trump was enamored by the ideas he was selling. One former senior Trump aide said they purposely avoided contact or involvement with Olsen, describing his legal theories as pure “nonsense.”
[Rudy Giuliani’s Law License Suspended Over Election Lie Spree
Predictably, none of that trepidation from Trump administration brass prevented the then-president from embracing Olsen or his fringe legal opinions.
Olsen’s ascent to the heights of MAGA activism began in December 2020 when Paxton put together a Supreme Court case to toss out Joe Biden’s electoral victory in Pennsylvania. The Texas attorney general reached outside his office for help and appointed two special counsels to assist in the case: Lawrence Joseph, a conservative attorney with experience filing briefs at the Supreme Court supportive of conservative causes and figures, and Olsen, whose office sat a few floors down from Joseph’s firm in the same Washington, D.C., office building.
The move placed Olsen, who had little-to-no national profile in conservative politics, at the tip of the spear in the Trump-backed effort to overturn the 2020 election in court. Prior to his legal career, the attorney “served as a Naval Special Warfare Officer assigned to SEAL Team Five”who “has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Far East, primarily as a special operations platoon commander,” according to a since-deleted bio at his former firm.
Paxton’s Supreme Court suit ultimately failed when all nine justices unanimously voted to throw it out on the grounds that the state of Texas lacked the standing to bring the case. Despite the suit’s failure, Olsen’s star continued to rise among the increasingly bizarre world of “Stop the Steal” notables.
Emails sent by Olsen to Justice Department officials, obtained by the New York Times and House Oversight Committee, show that after the Supreme Court tossed the Texas suit, Olsen managed to get in touch with Trump himself to brief him on an effort to revive the case.
At some point after the Texas suit’s failure, Olsen managed to get in touch with the president to pitch him on the idea of having the Justice Department bring a suit “modeled after the Texas action,” which would theoretically sidestep the lack of standing that had doomed the state-led effort.
“The President of the United States has seen this complaint, and he directed me last night to brief AG Rosen in person today to discuss bringing this action,” Olsen wrote in an email to the Justice Department. “I have been instructed to report back to the President this afternoon after this meeting.”
Olsen never got his meeting with Rosen, and the acting attorney general never took up Texas’ quixotic attempt to overturn the election. But, as Politico reported this month, the president’s interest in Olsen’s work grew so intense that in December, Trump himself made a point of bothering Rosen about the 54-page draft complaint that Olsen had been pushing to the highest levels of the federal government.
According to Politico, Rosen recently told Senate investigators that he counseled the then-president that the draft complaint was, at best, a waste of time.
Furthermore, Olsen’s name also appeared on a memo that was hand-delivered to Trump in his very last days in office—a memo that also appeared to include a recommendation on resorting to “martial law if necessary.” When pillow magnate and staunch Trump ally Mike Lindell visited the White House to brief Trump and administration officials and attorneys on his wild claims of Chinese hacking efforts in the 2020 election, Olsen’s name even appeared in a photo of documents Lindell brought to Trump, next to figures like Sidney Powell and Kash Patel, as suggestions for who Trump should appoint to senior positions during his quest to stay in power.
Lindell’s fondness for Olsen continued into the post-Trump era. As Lindell’s “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was ongoing last week, Olsen commented on aWashington Times story and was referred to as a member of the MyPillow CEO’s team of lawyers.
Olsen’s reported presence on Lindell’s legal team shows how he isn’t done associating himself with doomed efforts to overturn the 2020 election results or to reinstall Trump. The Aug. 11 Washington Times article in which Olsen is featured is headlined, “Cyber expert says his team can’t prove Mike Lindell’s claims that China hacked election.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/16/us/politics/trump-olson**-lindell**-election.html
no lnx
Jan. 6 Hearings
Next Hearing
Understand the Hearings
Key Revelations
Jan. 6 Timeline
Democracy Challenged
Little-Known Lawyer Pitched Trump on Extreme Plans to Subvert Election
The role of William J. Olson in advising the president in late 2020, which has not previously been disclosed, shows how fringe figures were influencing him at a critical time.
Maggie HabermanLuke Broadwater
By Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater
July 16, 2022
Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call.
The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president. Mr. Olson later conceded that part of his plan could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and that another aspect could invite comparisons with Watergate. The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order.”
“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”
The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.
The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.
Read William J. Olson’s Memo to Trump
William J. Olson, a right-wing lawyer, sent a memo in December 2020 to President Donald J. Trump on how to seek to overturn the election.
READ DOCUMENT
That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust.
“In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.”
It was not immediately clear how Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, arrived in Mr. Trump’s orbit.Mr. Olson previously worked with Republican super PACs and promoted a conspiracy theory that Vice President Kamala Harris is not eligible to be vice president, falsely claiming she is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. He and his firm have long represented Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group.
According to his website, which displays a photograph of him shaking hands with President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Olson was a White House intern in 1971.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
Card 1 of 8
Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out evidence that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:
An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Dept.During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.
The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.
Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.
His 2020 memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied — at one point almost physically — with outside actors to influence Mr. Trump. In that meeting, on Dec. 18, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.
But the document suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.
And the memo indicates that Mr. Trump was acting on the outside advice. At one point, it refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the acting attorney general about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.
A person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee was aware that Mr. Olson was in contact with Mr. Trump and that it was exploring Mr. Olson’s role in pushing forward plans to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Olson did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the former president’s relationship with Mr. Olson.
According to his memo, Mr. Olson was discussing with Mr. Trump the notion that the Justice Department would intercede with the Supreme Court to reverse his electoral defeat.
The court had declined to hear a case that allies of Mr. Trump in Texas had brought challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.
Mr. Olson told Mr. Trump that he believed the Justice Department “will do nothing except continue to run out the clock.”
“While time to act was short when we spoke on Christmas Day, time is about to run out,” he wrote.
It was unclear which White House lawyer Mr. Olson described as dismissive in his memo. At the time, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone; Patrick Philbin, his deputy; and another lawyer who did not work for the counsel’s office, Eric Herschmann, were working in tandem to push back on some of the more outlandish ideas being recommended. Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Herschmann had taken lead roles during the Dec. 18 White House meeting in countering Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn.
“The feeling I had was that not just was he not offering you any options, but that he was there to make certain you did not consider any,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to the unnamed White House lawyer. “But you do have options.”
Among those whom Mr. Olson mentioned as speaking to Mr. Trump about the Justice Department getting involved was Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. White House officials believed at the time that Mr. Martin was brought in through Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.
Mr. Olson urged Mr. Trump to hire another lawyer, Kurt Olsen, who had worked on the Texas case.
“As I emailedMolly Saturday morning,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s assistant, “we began acting on your question about our team revising the complaint filed by Texas into what could be the first draft of a complaint filed by the United States. The lawyers with whom I have been working took on that task, and we now have a draft that could be presented to you to review, and by you to Mr. Rosen to edit, improve and file.”
In his memo, Mr. Olson recounted that during their discussions, he had told Mr. Trump that he had followed the president’s suggestion to call Mr. Rosen a few hours earlier requesting that the acting attorney general file a lawsuit to try to block Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory.
Mr. Trump, based on Mr. Olson’s memo, was aware that Mr. Rosen was slow-walking his request. The suit was never filed; Mr. Rosen testified last month before the Jan. 6 committee that doing so was out of the bounds of the law.
A spokesman for Mr. Rosen said that he did not recall speaking with Mr. Olson, but that it was accurate that the acting attorney general was against filing any lawsuits to interfere with the election results.
At the time of the memo, Mr. Trump had decamped to Mar-a-Lago, but Mr. Olson encouraged him to return to Washington to fight the election results from his perch in the White House. Mr. Trump did so shortly thereafter, working through the holidays on challenging the election results.
“I do not believe you can do what is required to be done from Florida,” Mr. Olson wrote to the president. “And, it would send a message about your commitment to the task, to leave Mar-a-Lago to take charge at the White House. I urge you to return as soon as it can be arranged.”
Mr. Olson encouraged Mr. Trump to fire or reassign Mr. Rosen should he not go along with the plans to use the Justice Department to challenge the election in court, though Mr. Olson acknowledged such action would draw negative news coverage.
“This step will likely bring on a thousand stories making an analogy to ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ in 1973 when President Nixon ordered AG Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox as a special counsel investigating Watergate,” he wrote.
Mr. Olson also urged changes at the White House Counsel’s Office. He wrote that a new White House counsel should take steps to ensure a “fair election count,” though he conceded that would be seen by the news media as “martial law.”
After Mr. Trump left office, Mr. Olson joined the legal team of Mr. Lindell, who has promoted a series of conspiracy theories about the election and has been sued for defamation by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems. Mr. Lindell, who crashed the Oval Office in the final days of the presidency hoping that Mr. Trump would still take action related to the election, was adamant that Mr. Trump would be reinstated as president in 2021, something that was not possible.
Mr. Lindell sued the Jan. 6 committee, seeking to block the panel’s subpoena to Verizon for his call logs. The suit, which Mr. Olson filed along with other lawyers, argued that Mr. Lindell’s communications about his objections to the 2020 election were protected speech, in part because they were tied to his religious beliefs.
https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/mike-lindell-walmart-canceled-mypillow/
db 3 22
...Later in the episode, the co-hosts call up Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who kindly outlines what it is a secretary of state does all day. (Oversee elections for states, as it turns out.) But that’s not all. Though Griswold has been leading a vanguard to strengthen election security in Colorado, the threat of voter fraud remains terrifyingly real—all the more so because the call is coming from inside the house.
One of Griswold’s more unusual opponents for the secretary of state seat this election cycle is a Mesa County clerk named Tina Peters, who was recently indicted for an election-tampering scheme aided by none other than the MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Why is someone who’s been indicted allowed to run for government office? That’s just the Colorado way, Griswold says. “Colorado is the nation’s gold standard for election access and security,” she explains, “but we’ve also become ground zero for these insider threats and conspiracies.”
To fight that, Griswold is working to tighten election infrastructure. Her first legislative priority, prohibiting open-carry within 100 feet of an election site, was signed into law earlier this week. Now the focus is on a landmark bill to disincentivize bad actors like Peters from compromising or illegally accessing voting equipment. If you do, Griswold says, “you’re going to go to jail. It’s going to be a felony.”
But despite all the optimism, there’s still room for a healthy dose of concern. “I think we’re seeing the groundwork so that the next time an extreme elected official or candidate does not want to accept the results of a free and fair election, it will be easier for them to try to take their seats, no matter the results,” Griswold says, “which is very frightening for the future of this country. And it underscores the need to make sure that election-deniers do not become secretaries of state, in that we continue to have free and fair elections for all Republican, independent, and Democratic voters in this country.”
new 3 22
Although now-President Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory in the United States’ 2020 presidential election — winning 306 electoral votes and defeating then-President Donald Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote — it certainly wasn’t because of Idaho, a deep red state that Trump won by 30%. But far-right conspiracy theorist and MyPillowCEO Mike Lindell, a tireless promoter of the Big Lie, has claimed that Trump’s margin of victory was even higher than 30% in Idaho but that votes were stolen from Trump there through widespread voter fraud. And Lindell’s false claim, journalist Allan Smith reports for NBC News, has become a divisive issue among Idaho Republicans.
“Last summer, Idaho officials received demand after demand to investigate extraordinary claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election,” journalist Allan Smith reports in an article published by NBC News’ website on March 6. “In a state where former President Donald Trump won by more than 30 points, people claimed a vast conspiracy cheated the former president out of an even greater margin of victory. Almost all the e-mails referred to theories promoted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, DeputySecretary of State Chad Houcksaid. Lindell, people claimed, had proof of major malfeasance — if only someone would look into it.”
Houck and the office of Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney, according to Smith, investigated Lindell’s claims and “found them to be totally without merit.”
According to Smith, “Houck’s office decided to manually count the ballots in two of Idaho’s smallest counties — Camas and Butte — as well as manually recount the ballots in eight of the 32 precincts in Bonner County, a medium-size locale in the state. Between the three counties, it found an error rate of roughly 0.1 percent.”
But Lindell’s supporters in Idaho are not satisfied.
“Idaho’s work combating Lindell only seems to have made supporters of his fraud narrative angrier, Houck said, and has set the stage for midterm battles along fault lines Republicans are contending with nationwide,” Smith reports.
Houck told NBC News, “We’ve received two types of responses back to the office. One has been: ‘How dare you attack a patriot like Mike Lindell.’ On the flip side, (others) said: ‘Thank you for standing up to Lindell’s narratives’…. I’ve had counties that have had individuals come into county commissioner meetings and threatened the entire county commission that they were going to be unseated. And if they couldn’t do it through bureaucratic means, then they’re going to do it through physical means, to a point where I’ve had counties that have requested assistance in funding to put additional security measures into their county buildings, just to secure the election office from physical threat.”
no lnx
How Mike Lindell and 'a mysterious dark money organization' pushed a bogus 'snake-oil treatment' for COVID-19
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell speaking at the 2020 Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, Gage Skidmore
Alex Henderson February 07, 2022
A variety of bogus “treatments” or “cures” for COVID-19 have been promoted in MAGA World, from hydroxychloroquine to oleandrin (an extract from the poisonous oleander plant). According to Daily Beast reporters Roger Sollenberger and William Bredderman, one of the companies that haspromoted oleandrin as a COVID-19 miracle cure is Propter Strategies— which has ties to two major allies of former President Donald Trump: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
“It’s an all-too-familiar story at this point: A person pushing an unproven COVID-19 cure — and pushing back against the vaccines — pays the ultimate price for their skepticism,” Sollenberger and Bredderman report. “But this time, there’s a new wrinkle. It’s not just one person dabbling in COVID quackery with tragic results; it’s actually a mysterious dark money organization, with ties to influential MAGA figures like Steve Bannon and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.”
The organization, according Sollenberger and Bredderman, was Propter Strategies — and the person who became a “victim” of its “secretive work” was partner Kenneth Happel.
“To this day, Propter Strategies is a black hole, despite its high-profile connections and multi-million-dollar budget,” the Beast reporters explain. “Aside from Happel’s account, there is no evidence of Propter’s activities anywhere in the public record. And that might be with good reason: Those activities included hawking the snake-oil COVID treatment oleandrin at the highest levels of the government, as the pandemic’s lethal second wave peaked across the country.”
Happel, according to Sollenberger and Bredderman, is presently hospitalized with his second COVID-19 infection — and his wife died from COVID-19 in January.
“In a phone interview from his hospital bed, Happel, 72, remained unrepentant and defiant about the numerous baseless theories that quite likely landed him back in the hospital, and killed the wife he loved dearly,” Sollenberger and Bredderman write. “Happel still places hope in the pseudo-science that he, Propter Strategies, and Lindell had pushed so hard — a proprietary compound derived from oleander extract, which the pillow tycoon and at least one Propter official had invested in.”
Registration data, according to Sollenberger and Bredderman, shows that Happel is the owner of Proper’s website, needsp.us, and Happel has “confirmed” to the Beast “that the Propter Strategies cited on his page was, in fact, the same group linked to those leading MAGA figures.”
“Happel, a former Tea Party activist with an entrepreneurial history that intersects with biotechnology, recounted working on oleandrin in 2020 with Propter board member Andrew Whitney,” Sollenberger and Bredderman note. “A serial entrepreneur and former Bain Capital investor, Whitney was actually pulling oleandrin double-duty — he was on the board at the nonprofit Propter, as well as at Texas-based Phoenix Biotechnologies, whose research centered on the product. Happel also acknowledged the connection toLindell, who, it turns out, also holds a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnologies.”
Whitney and Lindell, according to the Beast reporters, “paired up for a MAGA media parade” and promoted oleandrin “as a neglected medical miracle” on right-wing outlets such as Newsmax and Diamond & Silk’s YouTube show. And Lindell “confirmed he still has a financial stake in Phoenix.”
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/mike-lindell/
jail 300m for vote fraud?
https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/year-after-january-6-one-america-news-has-found-its-insurrectionist
no lnx vid
A year after January 6, One America News has found its insurrectionist footing
OAN spent the last year promoting GOP voter suppression efforts, selling airtime to a demented pillow maven, and priming its audience for political violence -- perhaps even civil war
WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BEATRICE MOUNT
PUBLISHED 01/06/22
The January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump was a watershed moment for conservative media. The “peaceful transition of power” that has long been a force in the mythologization of American democracy broke down that day, and rather than owning up to the gravity of a violent attack on that tradition, One America News Network stuck to its familiar playbook of lies and deceit – this time in service of increasing voter suppression.
A survey performed inSeptember 2021 found that 68% of Republicans wrongly believed that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Among Republicans who primarily trust far-right outlets like OAN, 97% believed the election was stolen. This correlation is no coincidence, and right-wing media’s continued lies about the 2020 election have provided fuel for nationwide voter suppression efforts by the GOP. In the wake of the Capitol attack, OAN became an important part of the conservative media campaign pushing a whopping 440 bills in state legislatures in 2021 that attempted to restrict voting access.
Voter suppression is nothing new for the conservative movement, but OAN used the aftermath of January 6 to double down on election lies and promote efforts to make voting more difficult for its fellow Americans – while priming its right-wing audience for a potential civil war.
OAN helped drive a frenzy for fraudulent election audits
OAN correspondent Christina Bobb disputed the 2020 election results before a winner was even declared, a moment which was a harbinger for her coverage in 2021. Fueled by a passionate embrace of the Big Lie that the election had been stolen, Bobb essentially became a salesperson for election audits in any state that would entertain the idea.
Bobb provided documents and testimony to get the Arizona audit in motion, and founded a nonprofit to raise money for the audit. Her group Voices & Votes raised $605,000 for the Arizona audit, or about 10% of its cost, undoubtedly in part because of Bobb’s frequent fundraising during her audit coverage on OAN.
The amateurish operation in Arizona appears to be the playbook for other so-called “audits” going forward, even though it confirmed both President Joe Biden’s victory in the state and the oft-asserted fact that there was no significant fraud. But that didn’t stop Bobb or other audit extremists.
Bobb has been concentrating her efforts to spread audits to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, counting on friendly GOP legislatures to indulge in the Big Lie. Some states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are making moves toward their own audits. In Texas, which Trump won handily, preliminary results of an audit have once again confirmed earlier counts.
Besides its own correspondent, OAN has helped create a second star of the right-wing election fraud movement. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was already known before the 2020 election to be a prolific, unhinged Trump supporter, but Lindell’s delusions turned into an erratic fusillade of election lies, and -- unprecedented in television news -- the wealthy pillow CEO acquired vast swaths of OAN airtime in 2021 to zealously push his own false claims and conspiracy theories.
:{
}:
OAN repeatedly aired at least three different Lindell “documentaries” alleging to unravel the conspiratorial web behind the 2020 election.Additionally, OAN ran ads for Lindell’s three-day “cyber symposium” over 150 times in a single week, before devoting more than 30 hours of live coverage to his erratic event. Just before Lindell's symposium began, OAN was sued by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation over spreading other election lies; later the network was hit with another defamation suit from voting technology company Smartmatic.
OAN followed the symposium and defamation suit by letting Lindell take over its evening programming on at least three occasions. In his “The Lindell Report” the businessman aired even more potentially defamatory election lies.
OAN backed voter suppression attempts nationwide
Pursuant to its whole-of-network embrace of the Big Lie, OAN gave friendly coverage to or expressed outright support of several voter suppression efforts in states all over the country.
OAN’s prime-time shows became important stops for Texas state legislators to promote Senate Bill 7, which “includes provisions to limit early voting hours, curtail local voting options and further tighten voting by mail.” On June 1, OAN’s Natalie Harp hosted GOP state Rep. Kyle Biedermann to raise concerns about “a lot of things going on against the laws” in 2020, like “drive-thru voting” and “ballots that were mailed out that shouldn’t have been mailed out.” OAN’s Dan Ball hosted state Sen. Bob Hall, who claimed that SB 7 would guard against what he called “soft fraud” by “election officials taking advantage of rules to bend them as much as they could in their favor.” According to Media Matters’ data, since December 2020, eight Texas state legislators have made at least 23 appearances on OAN prime time, many of them clustered around the SB 7 debate.
The Georgia omnibus election bill was another focal point of OAN programming, particularly since the network is also interested in fomenting an election audit in Georgia. In ostensible news segments, OAN reports called Senate Bill 202 a “voting rights bill” that is “securing integrity for future elections,” and literally laughed at the notion that anyone would take issue with these “common-sense changes.” The Justice Department filed suit against Georgia over a long list of “racially discriminatory” provisions in the law, including “the prohibition on efforts by churches and civic groups to provide food or water to persons waiting in long lines to vote.”
OAN frequently turns to one guest in particular for Georgia political commentary: former state representative and current gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones. According to Media Matters' data, Jones has made at least 26 appearances on OAN prime time since December 2020 -- often dedicated to promoting his campaign for governor while pushing election lies and audit attempts.
Video file
CitationFrom the October 5, 2021, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball
OAN primed its audience for more political violence
On June 23, correspondent Pearson Sharp drew widespread condemnation for an OAN segment suggesting mass executions of Democrats for supposedly stealing the election from Trump.
:{
}:
Declaring the 2020 election was actually “overthrown,” Sharp told his audience: “Any American involved in these efforts, from those who ran the voting machines to the very highest government officials, is guilty of treason under U.S. Code. 2381, which carries with it the penalty of death.”
:{
}:
Despite the unmistakable clarity of Sharp’s words, he told Talking Points Memo, “Neither I, nor OAN, are suggesting anyone should be executed,” but added, “That is for the appropriate law enforcement agencies to determine.”
:{
}:
Sharp’s midsummer bloodlust wasn’t much of an aberration for One America News Network. OAN guests have casually gamed out civil war scenarios on-air, and the network has aired reports accusing “retired Democrat generals” of spreading civil war allegations against Republicans, while falsely claiming “evidence indicates that it is actually the left that is at war.”
Though she did not directly suggest violence, Bobb brought in the new year by strongly denouncing the Biden administration as “fascist” and “illegitimate,” in part for having “faked an insurrection on the Capitol” and stealing the 2020 election. For a conservative steeped in Second Amendment mythology about “the tree of liberty” and “the blood of tyrants,” the dots don’t need to be connected.
Wayne Allyn Root, a radio host and far-right conspiracy theorist, appeared on OAN in December and denounced Biden’s “communist dictatorship” for stealing both the 2020 election and Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, giving Democrats their current tie-breaking Senate majority “destroying this country.” Root accused Democrats of “looking for a civil war,” which he claimed conservatives like him do not want -- but later in the same rant, Root said that the oppression of conservatives by the Democratic Party “is a lot worse” than the conditions that merited the American Revolution.
:{
}:
“The worst is yet to come,” Root warned.
Video file
CitationFrom the December 29, 2021, edition of OAN's The Real Story with Natalie Harp
OAN is headed into 2022 with more of the same lies, and little care for any negative consequences
From OAN’s perspective, 2021 was a good year for “election integrity.” OAN’s Bobb fought for and secured an Arizona election audit, and successfully spun the mundane results into enough fuel to keep pushing for more audits. OAN collected viewers and money from airing MyPillow’s Lindell, even if it did help get the network sued for defamation. Several of the voter suppression initiatives OAN supported became law. OAN’s suggestions of political violence have retained a veneer of plausible deniability while priming the audience with fury and fear to keep pushing for more voter suppression.
Reckless, false commentary about stolen elections and calls for punishing enemies are how we got Trump supporters invading the Capitol, menacing members of Congress, and chanting to execute Trump’s vice president one year ago. But it’s all just good business for OAN.
THE LATEST
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01/07/22 9:17 PM EST
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01/07/22 9:03 PM EST
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01/07/22 6:27 PM EST
Fox hosts launch vicious attack on teachers, calling them stupid, “selfish and lazy”
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==
12 21 mma
myPillow
Proactiv
NordicTrack
ADT
Sanofi
Tivity Health (Nutrisystem & South Beach)
- Twitter (Nutrisystem)
- Twitter (South Beach)
- Facebook (Nutrisystem)
- Customer Service
WeatherTech
Sandals Resorts
Visiting Angels
Loan Depot
Omaha Steaks
America's Best
https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/mike-lindell/
libel suit loss daily ---
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/fbi-election-breach/
2nd one?
bkgd items interest jesus tiger mural?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/mike-lindell-thanksgiving/
myPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Tuesday claimed that the investigation into MAGA Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters was part of a deep state plot to derail his purported Supreme Court lawsuit that he believes will reinstate former President Donald Trump.
During an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast, Lindell claimed that the government was making moves to discredit his allies because they feared what his lawsuit would unveil.
"This is to put fear into everybody -- look at the timing!" Lindell said. "One week from today, on November 23rd, the states are suing the U.S. government at the Supreme Court! It's over! This is where it's all going!"
Lindell proceeded to claim that some Democratic attorneys general had signed on to his lawsuit in favor of overturning the election results, but then declined to name them publicly.
He then went on a long rant about how all media organizations, including Fox News, were not covering his purported Supreme Court lawsuit as part of a plot to fool the American people into believing that Trump will not be reinstated as president.
"It's propaganda -- Hitler did it!" he said. "Goebbels was the best at it back in Nazi Germany! It's brainwashing! That's what it is! You brainwash and then you pit people against each other!"
Lindell concluded his rant by reassuring viewers that "we are very blessed because we have all the evidence!"
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/mike-lindell-newsmax/
distance
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/mike-lindell-arizona-audit/
turns on az audit
an Idaho plans to hit Mike Lindell with a bill for audit that discredited his baseless election conspiracy
October 08, 2021
When MyPillow CEO contested Idaho's 2020 election results amid false claims of voter fraud, officials conducted an audit for three of the counties that were scrutinized. Now, the state office is sending Lindell ....
921 gubmint will kill me
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/mike-lindell/
kid pillow ~ satan?
mma 921
no lnx many
vids
Steve Bannon regularly hosts a QAnon adherent to push for a Pennsylvania election “audit”
Toni Shuppe and Audit The Vote PA’s connections to QAnon closely mirrors groups associated with the Arizona “audit”
WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM DANIL CUFFE
PUBLISHED 09/17/21
Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been frequently hosting QAnon conspiracy theorist Toni Shuppe on his podcast to push election lies and advocate for a Pennsylvania “audit” of the 2020 election.
Toni Shuppe is a founding member and the director of Public Relations of Audit The Vote PA, an “election integrity” group whose goal is to jumpstart an Arizona-style audit of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. Shuppe and her group have pressured state Senate members repeatedly via social media to advocate for their cause.
With the recent development of Pennsylvania Republicans subpoenaing personal voter information, Audit The Vote PA’s tactics on the ground, connections to QAnon, and relationships with state senators are starting to closely resemble that of the Arizona election audit.
Audit The Vote PA’s organizing work and conspiracy theories even led to an election commissioner in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, to receive death threats after one of the group’s leaders instructed her followers to email the commissioner their “thoughts.” This incident also mirrors incidents in Arizona and other states in which federal officials have faced death threats over election audits.
A June report from Insider detailed Audit The Vote PA’s connection to Pennsylvania Republican state Senator and QAnon adherent Doug Mastriano. Mastriano has appeared at multiple Audit The Vote PA-sponsored events and is listed as the featured speaker on more than one occasion. Insider’s report also described Shuppe’s own history of promoting QAnon hashtags and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
When asked by Insider if Audit The Vote PA was associated with QAnon, the group stated that none of the organizers “consider themselves followers of QAnon" and are “aware” but “not affiliated” with the conspiracy theory.
However, Shuppe’s history of promoting these conspiracies goes beyond this reporting.
Based on a Media Matters review, there are multiple online instances of Shuppe using the QAnon hashtag “WWG1WGA,” promoting QAnon literature, posting a 9/11 conspiracy theory meme (claiming the terrorist attack was a distraction from a “gold heist”), and advertising her group’s interview with QAnon influencer RedPill78. (Zak Paine, who uses the pseudonym RedPill78, participated in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol).
During a Facebook live on January 8, Shuppe admitted to being “outside” of the Capitol during the insurrection. She claimed she didn’t see any of the “horrific things” because there are “lots of angles” of the building. During her live, Shuppe also pushed the QAnon-linked conspiracy theory that Italy meddled in the 2020 election (they didn't).
Toni Shuppe's Facebook Page
Shuppe and her lackeys were also present at MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “cyber symposium" where he spent three days spewing election conspiracy theories claiming that China rigged the 2020 election. After the event, Audit The Vote PA wrote on Telegram that one of its “biggest takeaways from the Symposium” was that “the deep state is 100% real.”
Now, Shuppe is a regular on Bannon’s podcast where she constantly updates his listeners on a Pennsylvania election “audit.”
During one of Shuppe’s podcast appearances on September 3, Bannon promoted her audit “petition” of the Pennsylvania results and asked her to talk more about it. In her response, Shuppe suggested that voter fraud evidence “has been swept under the rug.” She continued, stating that she was “clueless about politics as of March 1, 2020” and said she believes that her effort to start an audit is “evidence of God working through me” to find someone “to be held accountable” for election “anomalies.”
Shuppe also claimed during this appearance that she “personally knocked on doors" and found “proof" that ballots were "messed with.”
CitationFrom the September 3, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic
During another appearance on September 8, Shuppe promoted Audit The Vote PA’s canvass of voters in Pennsylvania. She shared that her group knocked on resident’s doors to question them about “how they voted in 2020” and “how many people are registered to vote at their house and how many people from that house actually voted.” Shuppe claimed her group is finding “massive discrepancies” and that even as far back as November and December, the group had found “78,000 phantom votes” — a number her group had extrapolated after surveying just 1,600 households. She admitted that there are people saying that Audit The Vote PA is “intimidating people, but they are completely lying.”
Bannon also brought up a canvass report linked with Liz Harris — another QAnon adherent who played a large role in bringing an audit to Arizona and conducted a voter canvass with results that were eventually debunked.
In May 2020, the Department of Justice sent a letter to the Arizona Senate stating that a voter canvass in Arizona could possibly violate federal law against voter intimidation. It is unclear whether Shuppe’s canvass violates federal law because of the accusations of intimidation by Pennsylvania residents.
CitationFrom the September 8, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic
Similarly to the QAnon groups associated with the Arizona audit, Audit The Vote PA’s pressure campaigns and groundwork seemingly appear to be helping to advance the push for a Pennsylvania audit. Shuppe has applied continued pressure on Pennsylvania state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Republican, on Bannon’s show.
Just days before the Pennsylvania state Senate approved subpoenas for personal voter information from the 2020 election, Shuppe appeared on War Room to blast Corman for not asking “the right questions,” and instructed her followers to “go on their social media pages and comment” because “it's the equivalent of calling them out in the public square, if you will.” Shuppe also suggested that the state Senate “remove” Corman from the president pro tempore position when it goes back in session.
Toward the end of the interview, Bannon implied that “confrontation at the Senate level” is the right move because it’s “not moving quickly enough.”
CitationFrom the September 9, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic
For months, Bannon has had an obsession with bringing election “audits” to all 50 states and sees Pennsylvania as a particularly attractive place to spread his election fraud conspiracy theories. During the September 15 edition of his podcast, he explained that Pennsylvania is “different” because it is one of the “big industrial states that have been controlled by Democrats” and a grassroot movement pursuing an audit there will force “the establishment to respond.”
CitationFrom the September 15, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic
Bannon will not stop until he has undermined election integrity across the entire nation, and he will continue to bring conspiracy theorists and wackjobs along for the ride.
omg
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/08/23/conservative-think-tank-end-wisconsin-elections-commission/
looks legit
conservative think tank — run by a former staffer for then-Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and connected to former Gov. Scott Walker — has called for abolishing the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) and moving the administration of state elections to the elected secretary of state.
The think tank, the Institute for Reforming Government, called for the change to state election law in a news release Monday morning.
“It is time to abolish WEC and implement good government accountability when it comes to Wisconsin’s elections and work to restore confidence among Wisconsin residents,” Chris Reader, executive vice president of IRG, said in a statement. “When unelected bureaucrats oversee Wisconsin’s elections it can lead to the erosion of faith and confidence in our electoral system. Thirty-three other states have elected officials overseeing the election process, providing a good measure of accountability by empowering people across ideological spectrums to provide a check on who manages elections. This is a good government measure that will benefit all Wisconsinites.”
The think tank’s president is CJ Szafir, who previously worked on Fitzgerald’s staff and served as the executive vice president for the right wing legal outfit, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Walker is named on the think tank’s website as its former national honorary chairman.
According to the think tank’s most recently available :{tax records:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, it paid Walker’s consulting firm, the Walker Group, more than $164,000 in 2019.
The call comes as Republicans continue an effort to delegitimize state election administration in the wake of the 2020 presidential election and former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen.
This weekend, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) :{met with Trump:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:to discuss an ongoing investigation into the election led by former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Gableman recently traveled to South Dakota for a conspiracy theory-laden convention, run by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, where lies were spread about the 2020 election.
Gableman was joined by a state lawmaker and Robert Spindell, a member of the Elections Commission who has frequently spread conspiracy theories about last year’s election as well.
The conservative group’s call to disband the Wisconsin Elections Commission — made up of six members, three appointed by Democrats and three by Republicans — comes just six years after Republicans themselves created the commission. Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls), who chairs the Assembly Campaigns and Elections Commission, has continued an effort to hold a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election — similar to the widely derided audit held in Arizona.
Fitzgerald, now a member of Congress, and Walker were behind the creation of the WEC in 2015 after they disbanded the Government Accountability Board (GAB) over some similar complaints to the present complaints about the WEC. The GAB was made up of members appointed by a panel of appellate judges and was responsible for administration of the state’s election, ethics and campaign finance laws.
Republicans disbanded the GAB after it began investigating Walker for violations of campaign finance laws through so-called John Doe investigations.
GOP leaders, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, :{directly cited:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: those investigations as the reason for the disbanding of the GAB and the creation of two new commissions to take its place — the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Wisconsin Ethics Commission.
:{
The legislation that created the WEC was introduced by then-Rep. Dean Knudson (R-Hudson). Knudson is now a member of the WEC and its former chair.
The current Wisconsin secretary of state is Democrat Doug La Follette. The office is largely responsible for maintaining government records, as Republicans took nearly all of the other responsibilities — and most of the staff — away from the office they now want to run elections under Walker, moving La Follette to a storage room in the Capitol basement. In 2015, a different right wing think tank, the MacIver Institute, called for :{abolishing the position:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.
The Institute for Reforming Government did not respond to a request for comment.
}:
https://tyt.com/stories/7K5fbfFNXj9lcqTMpHEVRS
inside the family larsen
For nearly 70 years, and even in this moment of surging Christian nationalism, Democrats and Republicans have set aside their differences once a year to join in an event for fellowship and reconciliation: The National Prayer Breakfast.
The breakfast and the secretive religious group behind the scenes, popularly known as The Family, have been the subject of scandal over the years. Most notably, journalist Jeff Sharlet exposed the group’s theocratic, anti-labor origins, and revealed The Family’s role in Ugandan capital punishment legislation for gay people. More recently, the FBI caught Russian operatives using the breakfast to pursue back-channel connections with U.S. politicians.
But despite its dealings with international powers, The Family still enjoys the invisibility to which it attributes its influence. We’ve never had a full accounting of who works for The Family or even just who gets to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, let alone who decides. Until now.
Earlier this year, The Young Turks obtained a list of the 4465 people invited to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast.The document identifies guest connections to The Family and names virtually everyone who works for The Family, as well as numerous volunteers and allies. It also identifies which Family insiders submitted each invitee’s name.
Since then, TYT has been researching individuals named in that document and in others (including a list of 2018 breakfast attendees obtained last month). With assistance from organizations including the international journalism collective Bellingcat, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, TYT is assembling what amounts to an x-ray of The Family, and a map of its connections and endeavors around the world.
Although more remains to be learned, we can now draw some conclusions and begin reporting on what we are finding. (This is an ongoing project and we invite journalists and advocacy groups to contact us if they are interested in conducting research of their own.)
The prayer breakfast is, we’ve been told, an ecumenical, nonpartisan event for leaders of every stripe, run by prayer groups in the House and Senate. None of that is true.
The National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) is not run by Congress. The Family controls it, uses the breakfast for its own ends, and can do so thanks to the bipartisan fiction maintained by its remaining Democratic allies. (Democratic protectiveness of the breakfast may have its roots in the weekly congressional prayer meetings, which appear, like the breakfast, to offer members moments of genuine bonding and connection.)
Only a few congressional Democrats are even tangentially involved in the NPB. A handful of congressional Republicans play significant roles. But the breakfast itself is overwhelmingly a production of The Family. The event’s only significant financial backer is a well-known, right-wing theocrat.
The Family’s congressional defenders have served up portraits of the NPB that could never be refuted because they wouldn’t release the invitation list. (It has never been clear why an event ostensibly produced by Congress would be shrouded in such profound secrecy.)
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), The Family’s most prominent Democrat, said earlier this year that the breakfast “has brought together religious, political, and cultural leaders from all over the world.” But many attendees are not leaders at all; they are fellow travelers and friends of The Family. Others springboard off the breakfast to build anti-LGBTQ, anti-democratic networks in their home countries. International media portray the breakfast invitations as coming from Congress or the president, boosting the standing of the Family-allied politicians who get invited.
It’s not just Democrats perpetuating this. The Family operates in a penumbra of secrecy formed by the overlap of lax IRS disclosure laws and law-enforcement squeamishness about scrutinizing organizations appearing remotely religious.
And Coons’ implied diversity doesn’t apply to the delegations of guests from multiple countries. The breakfast is neither nonpartisan, nor ecumenical. The politics of the breakfast – its attendees and those who choose them – are a far cry from Coons’ claim. For instance, of the 20 individuals who invited the most guests in 2016, TYT was able to assess the politics of 13 – using voter registrations and political donations as gauges. Of those 13, only one was a Democrat: Grace Nelson, a former Family board member and wife of former Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). The top five inviters whose politics could be ascertained were all Republicans.
The Republicans who got to pick the most attendees are overwhelmingly Trump supporters. Their ranks range from a Chick-fil-A franchisee (who invited 38 guests) to former Gov. David Beasley (R-SC), a Trump supporter later appointed by Trump to run the UN’s World Food Programme. Many Family insiders are now actively supporting Trump’s election lies, the Christian nationalist movement undergirding those lies, and the movement’s leaders.
Two of the top inviters had no U.S. political footprint because they don’t live in America. One of them has ties to theocratic, anti-LGBTQ organizations. He got to invite 30 people to the 2016 breakfast.
The invitation list categorizes 253 invitees as non-entertainment media. Those invitees include a lot of local Washington, DC, on-air people -- even for traffic and weather. But the political media are overwhelmingly conservative: The Daily Caller, The Blaze, the Washington Times, Newsmax, the Weekly Standard, the Washington Examiner CEO’s assistant, Rush and David Limbaugh, Stephen Hayes, Laura Ingraham, etc.
Five media people are specifically noted on the list as Fox News (TYT identified at least 22 others connected to Fox News). Democratic media figures invited are likely to have appeared on Fox. CNN is mentioned in connection to one guest; MSNBC not at all.
Invited writers from mainstream outlets are often conservative pundits or cover a religion beat. Liberal and progressive names seldom appear, even from major outlets, let alone progressive media counterparts to the Daily Caller or the Blaze.
Sitting members of Congress are automatically invited, but of former members, The Family invited 20 Democrats and 38 Republicans, almost twice as many, plus former Democrat Joe Lieberman.
The invitation list reflects recurring religious discrimination, too. In nations TYT has looked at, a clear pattern emerges among who gets to choose the guests and, not surprisingly, among the guests they invite.
Christianity is favored over non-Christianity, Protestantism over Catholicism, and evangelicalism over non-evangelicalism. Non-evangelical leaders are vastly outnumbered by evangelical non-leaders.
What the documents do not show is intentional discrimination. If anything, The Family appears un-strategic in its operations, at times to its own detriment. The autonomy its associates enjoy mirrors the laissez-faire economic philosophies that helped give rise to The Family.
This makes it difficult to infer intent or to apply sweeping generalities to The Family or the breakfast. The organization is relational; if you’re friends with a Family insider, you might get an invite. Disparities in who gets invited arise less from a conscious plan and more from the vagaries of who becomes friends with someone inside The Family. Which, of course, is a textbook recipe for systemic bias. In some cases, invitations also appear to be tied to whether invitees might provide financial support for Family associates (who raise their own funds that are then administered by The Family).
It can be startling at times to come across the online ministries of Family associates. In blog posts and videos, they project inclusivity, joy, and distinctly un-Trumpian gentleness, humor, and even vulnerability.
They seldom resemble servants of an angry God or the cartoons of televangelism. The modest fundraising conducted by Family associates appears largely untouched by modern marketing. By any measure, they appear genuine in their compassion and desire to do good. They “have a heart for Africa,” many say. Some literally spend their lives overseas in conditions materially wanting but spiritually rewarding. They dedicate themselves to helping others.
But their compassion is intuitive, not strategic. Few are experts or rely on experts to determine the best way to do the most good. God leads them.
As it turns out, God seldom leads them to assist the elderly or the sick. More often, Family missionaries are led to help those whose responses happen to be the most rewarding.
So you will find Family associates working with impoverished children or remote villages in Africa, southeast Asia, or Latin America. They build schools and they teach. Typically they teach lessons premised on belief in Jesus. If you believe Jesus is the answer to all problems, after all, what solution would not include Jesus?
Kids are taught English, for instance, by learning songs about how Jesus loves them. They learn the language, but also the love…as The Family sees it. It’s a love based on surrender, accepting God’s will and Biblical authority – including condemnation of homosexuality and even, for some, the subordination of women. The Family’s students learn to speak that language, too, overseas and at Christian schools where scholarships take them here in the U.S.
Because how unsatisfying would it be to make the world a better place by doing volunteer accounting in the back office of some bureaucratic (but effective and professionally run) monolith with exacting, quantitative standards? Family associates can be found instead at the low-profile, sometimes one-person nonprofits that proliferate on the IRS website like weeds in a vast orchard of Christian charities.
Some Family members have anonymous benefactors, wealthy enough to support mission work that jibes with their political inclinations. The politics matter, because The Family tasks its missionaries to bond with the leaders of their host nations – leaders who know full well, as Sharlet documented, that these bright-eyed missionaries have the ears of the Americans who hold the wallets and bombs of the U.S. government. These missionaries use their access to local leaders to help stand up miniature versions of both the prayer breakfast and The Family – iterations that share or even exceed the homophobic or theocratic leanings of their model.
Ironically, one could argue that The Family does not use its influence enough. In accordance with their famous slogan of “Jesus Plus Nothing,” The Family asks little of the leaders they minister. As we’ll report, The Family enjoys proximity to local and national leaders that entails virtually no accountability for their political decisions and accepts virtually any policy that can be seen as Jesus-based.
To The Family, accountability starts with Jesus; they seldom champion the checks-and-balances accountability that transparency brings. As one source close to The Family told me, its leaders might counsel a senator to work on his marriage, but remain silent on matters such as encouraging violent upheaval of American democracy. During a conversation with notorious Republican operative Lee Atwater, Doug Coe, the late Family leader, reportedly condemned adultery only when pressed.
And so these smiling missionaries, even those preaching inclusivity and love for sinners and enemies, end up arm in arm with unsmiling politicians feverish to squeeze voting rights, or reproductive rights. A smaller group inside the ranks of The Family flares with anger when LGBTQ rights are framed as an affront to religious freedom.
Historically, The Family’s rationale for serving leaders unconditionally is that reducing evil means engaging with it. Who needs prayer more, after all, than the worst among us?
As Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY), another Family ally, said this year, “the Prayer Breakfast reminds us to both love our neighbors and even the more challenging love our enemies.” It was an irrefutable defense right up until we could check whether The Family engages its own enemies as fervently as it engages the enemies of others.
Now, however, Suozzi’s high-minded aspirations are hard to reconcile with the 2016 invitation list. The names present, and those omitted, suggest that enemies of human rights may come and break bread, but enemies of Republicans get left out in the cold.
The Revs. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and William Barber – some of America’s top religious leaders on the left – are all absent from the 2016 invitation list. Business leaders, however, appear in abundance (although yesteryear’s captains of industry have been replaced by today’s regional managers of industry).
Non-religious leaders who advocate for the disenfranchised are hard to come by. The late AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, invited by Beasley, was one of the rare labor leaders on the list.
Still, participating Democrats claim the breakfast somehow can foster reconciliation, regardless of the short supply there of LGBTQ people, socialists, and baby-killers with whom to reconcile. “After a very divisive time in our nation’s history,” Coons said in February, “it’s my hope that this year’s breakfast offers Americans of all faiths and backgrounds the strength and courage to unite as a nation and tackle the challenges we face together.”
Except now we know that Americans of all faiths and backgrounds aren’t at the breakfast. In fact, as our first report will show, the breakfast – and some Family leaders – helped fuel our current divisions. And their secret work today is at the heart of the challenges we now face.
Jonathan Larsen is TYT’s managing editor. You can find him on Twitter @JTLarsen.
With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuela, and assistance from members of the TYT Army.
If you have tips on this subject or others you can contact us using Proton Mail at TheYoungTurks@ProtonMail.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to stay on top of exclusive news stories from The Young Turks.
9/21
Salon.com
How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to ...
The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin ...
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How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to Donald Trump
Mike Lindell was just a guy who sold pillows on TV — until he met Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast
By JONATHAN LARSEN
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2021
Michael Lindell, with My Pillow, laughs with President Donald Trump during a "Made in America," roundtable event in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)]
This article originally appeared at The Young Turks. Used by permission.
One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.
Perhaps as much as former President Trump himself, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has become the public face of the Big Lie. Like the Jan. 6 Capitol attackers, Lindell is brandishing openly theocratic, Christian beliefs to secure a Biblically based autocracy led by a man he sees as divinely anointed.
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Lindell wasn't always this way. But over the past several years, people with ties to The Family have played key roles behind the scenes in Lindell's radicalization, religiously and politically.
Family insiders and allies, for instance, have dominated the boards of Lindell's nonprofits. One man associated with The Family was part of Lindell's "legal offense fund" to challenge election results.
Lindell's faith journey often features in his speeches. As he tells it, God orchestrated a series of events that changed him from a casual Christian into the hardcore, autocratic evangelical who called for the U.S. military to install Trump in a second term.
"What gave [Lindell] the certainty he was looking for was evangelical Christianity," one Republican operative told Politico. "He was born again."
That religious certitude has proved infectious. A MyPillow employee told Politico, "There's a lot of people calling and saying Mike is a disciple of God."
Lindell's certainty rests on his conviction that God had a hand in key moments in his life. That conviction, he explains, arose from his inability to see any other explanation for those events. He called his memoir, "What Are the Odds?"
What Lindell appears not to know, however, is the full extent of Family involvement in the events that so profoundly changed him.
Publicly, Lindell has only addressed his Family ties in relation to one incident: The 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. And even there, he elides important details that we can now fill in. He has never said, for instance, who invited him or why.
Cue Stephen Baldwin
Lindell met actor Stephen Baldwin at a New York radio station. "I'd felt led to visit the station in early 2014, though at the time I wasn't sure why," Lindell wrote in his book. "Now I know it was to meet Stephen, who became like a brother to me."
In a brief call this week, Lindell told TYT how he came to attend the 2016 prayer breakfast: "I was invited at the last minute by my friend Stephen Baldwin." The Christian actor also attended that year's breakfast.
Baldwin, a Trump supporter, would be at Lindell's side for a number of important events. But, according to an internal Family document, it was not Baldwin who invited Lindell to the breakfast; at least, not directly. (Baldwin and others with ties to The Family did not respond to requests for comment, unless noted otherwise.)
The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin Ministry. All three principals of Baldwin's nonprofit have had ties to The Family.
One of the three principals was Margie Frank, connected by court records to a Texas oil inheritance. A six-figure donor to conservative causes, including reducing reproductive rights, Frank more recently has backed Republicans pushing the Big Lie.
Frank's husband, Jonathan, was quoted in Philippine media as a spokesperson for the National Prayer Breakfast, in relation to boxer Manny Pacquiao's attendance in 2015. The religious, right-wing fighter ostensibly was invited by Congress, but the invitation reportedly was delivered by a Texas pastor named Wilfred Job.
Job, whose church had a significant Filipino population, was the second Family affiliate running Baldwin's ministry. The third principal at Baldwin's ministry was a Pennsylvania real-estate developer named Todd Hendricks. Both Job and Hendricks are connected to The Family.
A source close to The Family told TYT that Job did virtually nothing without Hendricks. Internal Family documents support this: The two men are listed as collaborating to invite 29 people in 2016. Job invited no one on his own.
(Job's nine other invitations were submitted in conjunction with two then-leaders of The Family: Doug Coe, now deceased, and former South Carolina governor David Beasley, now head of the UN World Food Programme.)
By contrast, Hendricks appears to have had more autonomy. Hendricks submitted names on his own for both 2016 and 2018. Aside from Coe, no individual submitted more guest names for the 2016 event than Hendricks did: 109. He had at least 59 people attend in 2018.
Three years after joining Baldwin's ministry, it was Job, with Coe's sign-off, who invited Baldwin's new friend, Lindell — best known back then as TV's pillow pitchman — to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast, along with his girlfriend. According to the same internal Family document, Hendricks invited Baldwin and Pacquiao.
Asked about Job, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about." Asked whether he was aware that the Lindell Foundation listed Job as its president on its 2017 tax filing, Lindell said, "No." Pressed for details, Lindell said, "Go to jail. Go somewhere and find yourself a nice jail cell because that's where you're going to end up. Goodbye."
Whether or not Lindell knows Job and Hendricks, that's how TV's pillow guy — not yet very religious, let alone political — ended up at the National Prayer Breakfast. It was at the breakfast where he would meet Dr. Ben Carson, and hear a prophecy that would change everything.
The prophecy
Although the president's Thursday morning speech is the public highlight, the National Prayer Breakfast is actually a four-day event. It's in breakout rooms and prayer sessions where the real work gets done.
The night before the breakfast, Lindell metretired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Dees.Dees told TYT he has attended a number of breakfasts over the last decade and "various other events with Fellowship members," but has "no direct association with the Fellowship Foundation."
A source close to The Family agreed with that characterization, saying Dees had ties to The Family, but was nowhere near the inner circle. Dees had, however, just started working very closely with someone who was in the inner circle.
Carson, a future Trump cabinet member, was already a Family star — having ripped into then-President Obama during a speech at the 2013 breakfast. Now, Carson himself was running for president. Dees was running Carson's campaign. And the campaign had just brought on a Family board member to head up communications.
Dees declined to reveal some specifics about his discussions with Lindell, but did share a few. "I can offer that we had a far-ranging discussion in a breakout room the day prior to the prayer breakfast," Dees said.
Lindell is only slightly more expansive in his book. "I talked with [Dees] for over an hour," Lindell writes, "in a discussion about the direction of the country."
Now the president of Resilience Consulting, Dees has worked with a wide range of conservative Christian organizations, including Liberty University and Military Ministry, which strives to convert members of the armed forces. He has also drawn scrutiny for his LGBTQ positions and views on Islam.
After the breakfast, Lindell says, he and Baldwin were "randomly" invited to a breakout room where a dozen would gather for prayer, including Ben Carson. Lindell doesn't say who picked him.
And it's not clear how random it was. Dees told TYT, "After the prayer breakfast, the NPB leadership asked me to bring Dr. Ben Carson to a small room for follow-up prayer with a small group of perhaps 15 individuals, including Mike Lindell."
Dees wouldn't say who asked him to bring Carson to meet Lindell and the others. "From my perspective," Dees said, "it was simply a courtesy to put a man of Dr. Carson's prominence together with a seemingly randomly selected group of NPB attendees."
Baldwin, however, apparently already knew Carson, because Lindell says it was Baldwin who introduced him to Carson in the breakout room. And Carson's communications director, A. Larry Ross, was also at the breakfast.
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Whether Lindell knew it or not, Ross is also The Family's spokesperson and a key leader. A Texas public relations man who long worked for Billy Graham, Ross has been on the board of the Fellowship Foundation, The Family's legal entity, since 2011. If Job and Hendricks brought Lindell to the starting gate, it would be Ross who eventually got Lindell to the finish line.
It's in the breakout room after the breakfast that Lindell hears the prophecy. He loves the story enough to have told it many times since, but not enough to tell it consistently.
In June, Lindell told it this way:
[I]n that room we were praying, the, a guy in there prophesied in there. He said, "Two of you in this room are gonna become great friends and change the course of history." And Ben and I are great friends! And he said, and I'm sitting there, though, as they're praying and he's saying that, I go, I go, "If one of them's me, who would the other one be?" and this, things started happening to me.
In his 2019 book, he tells the story differently. It's not just two of them, and the prophecy isn't directed specifically at him. "Two or three of you in this room are going to become great friends," the unnamed prophet says. "And you will be part of a great change in our nation."
Either way, the prophecy hit Lindell like a thunderbolt with his name on it. What he may not have known was that The Family throws the exact same thunderbolt at pretty much everyone, even printing it on breakfast literature.
It's based on Matthew 18:20: Where two or three of you gather in my name, there am I with them. As Coe put it to journalist Jeff Sharlet, "Two, or three, agree? They can do anything."
What they would do was also a topic of discussion at the breakfast breakout room. And it wasn't just faith.
"I suddenly found myself surrounded by people talking about God and politics," Lindell says in his book.
The dozen people in the room gathered in a circle and began talking about the critical importance of the 2016 election. We agreed it was going to be a real spiritual turning point for the country. One path could lead us toward national renewal. The other could lead us down a dark path from which there might be no return, a path that had begun with the removal of God from the public square.
Lindell's discussion in the breakout room — with Carson, Dees, Baldwin and others — he writes, "opened my eyes to the impact of politics on ordinary people."
After dropping out of the Republican presidential race in March 2016, Carson tells Trump about Lindell, who then gets invited to meet with Trump on Aug. 15. The day before their meeting, Lindell donates $2,700 to Trump's campaign, $17,300 to the Republican National Committee, and $20,000 to Trump Victory. (Trump Victory was later accused along with state party committees of circumventing donation limits. The first federal donation of Lindell's life had been $527.27 to the Republican Party of Virginia on May 25, the day Trump Victory was formed.)
The Family had helped to open Lindell's eyes to Trump, but his soul still needed work. Within a year, though, Lindell would be on his knees.
The operation
In the months after bringing Baldwin and Lindell to the prayer breakfast, Family insiders expanded their sphere beyond Baldwin and his nonprofits to Lindell's.
Why the interest in Lindell — who wasn't yet an evangelical?
The source close to The Family said they weren't aware of the relationships with Baldwin and Lindell, but had heard of tensions between Hendricks and Job and the internal team, including Beasley, that oversaw much of the breakfast logistics.
Referring to Hendricks and Job specifically, the source told TYT, "Those guys were always hunting a big fish like a Mike Lindell that would support their stuff."
The source said, "If you can convince him, 'Oh, we're doing this amazing work,' he might just be the kind of guy that gives you $10 million. Or he might be the kind of guy that puts you on his charitable foundation board and gives you a salary."
Baldwin's ministry never filed any federal tax forms, so it's not clear whether anyone got paid. The Lindell Foundation, however, is another story.
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Tax filings for the Lindell Foundation don't list any board members for 2016, but Lindell writes that Ross joined the board that year. The following year, the Lindell Foundation lists six people as officers or directors — half of them tied to The Family.
In addition to Lindell's niece and a lawyer from Texas (where Ross and Job are based), the four other people named are three board members — Lindell, Ross and Dees — and a new president: Wilfred Job, who takes home $55,385 that year.
Asked about Job by TYT, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about."
In 2018, Lindell brings on a right-wing Republican from his home state, Doug Wardlow — a former intern of Family friend Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — who soon becomes MyPillow's general counsel and is now enmeshed in the company's Big Lie legal battles. Job doesn't appear on the filings anymore.
Ross, however, the Family board member and former Carson spokesperson, expands his role in the Lindell-verse.
How much Ross's communications company makes from his work we don't know, but Ross ends up serving as a spokesperson for Baldwin, Lindell, the Lindell Foundation and MyPillow. And helping Lindell get Trump elected.
Three days before the Trump/Clinton matchup, Manny Pacquiao stepped into the ring with Jessie Vargas for the WBO welterweight championship. Lindell was ringside, along with The Family.
Lindell and Baldwin had flown to Las Vegas for the fight at the invitation of a "group of [Baldwin's] friends," Lindell writes. He doesn't name these friends, but says, "One of the men in our party was a prominent Democrat I'd met at the National Prayer Breakfast."
Wilfred Job — who had delivered Pacquiao's 2015 breakfast invite — reportedly traveled with Baldwin on at least two occasions. Ross was also in town and joined Lindell for a big group dinner.
During the meal, the Trump campaign called: They wanted Lindell back in Minnesota the next day to join Trump for a rally two days before the vote. The only problem: No flights.
The group — apparently all Trump supporters — start hunting online for tickets. "Suddenly," Lindell writes, "Larry called out, 'Got it!' ... Larry hustled me out of the restaurant, and we jumped in a car for McCarran."
At a meeting of the Lindell Foundation board that same month, Ross comes to Lindell's aid again. He encourages Lindell to attend a program for military veterans. The program, Lindell writes, had helped hundreds of veterans "come to a place of freedom by locating primary points of pain in their pasts, and inviting God in to heal them."
Operation Restored Warrior (ORW) has multiple connections to The Family. Ross had participated in the program, as had retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, now a vice president at the Family Research Council.
The man who ran Operation Restored Warrior was Paul Lavelle, who had met Lindell at the 2016 breakfast. Like Dees, the source described Lavelle as well outside the inner circle, but having ties to The Family.
One of ORW's funders had invited Lavelle to the breakfast (along with six people from Compassion International, a Ross client that has been accused of trying to proselytize the vulnerable children it serves). At the breakfast, Lindell later wrote in his book, Lavelle "felt led" to invite Lindell to ORW.
Pressed by both Ross and Kendra, his girlfriend, Lindell agrees to go to ORW, but he's still reluctant about it. That changes at his second National Prayer Breakfast.
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There, he writes, he was inspired by the "powerful, jaw-dropping message" of Senate Chaplain Barry Black. Lindell doesn't give specifics, but in his speech, Black argued for the existence of an interventionist God, still active in the matters of humanity, who takes action in response to prayers.
Three months after Ross's suggestion and just weeks after Black's speech, Lindell flies to Colorado and delivers himself up first to Lavelle, and then to Jesus.
"I went in there with hope," Lindell later told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I said, 'God please, show me you're real, show me, you know? I want that personal relationship,' And on the second day, on Feb. 18, 2017, I did a full surrender on my knees."
"I can now," Lindell says later, "talk about Jesus Christ in the same way I used to talk about a pillow."
Today
As TYT reported earlier this year, a number of known Family leaders and backers have donated to Trump and other Republicans after they began telling Americans the election was stolen. Future reports will identify others, in addition to those named here.
Much as many Family leaders reject separation of church and state, Lindell observes few distinctions between his personal, commercial, philanthropic, religious and political pursuits. Ross has continued to represent not just the Lindell Foundation but Lindell himself and MyPillow, which has been an active participant in Lindell's Big Lie crusade..
On March 17 of this year, Lindell created a new nonprofit: The Lindell Legal Offense Fund. Its purpose: "Advancing legal efforts regarding election integrity issues …"
The three-man board includes Lindell and lawyer Kurt Olsen, a lawyer and special ops veteran whose assistance to Lindell included last month's disastrous election-security summit. The third man is Paul Lavelle.
Despite the summit's outcome — which Lindell blamed on outside forces — his faith remains steady, his political convictions unshaken.
A report this summer by the conservative outlet The Dispatch says that Lindell starts most of his days on the phone with his prayer group. But it doesn't say who they are.
With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuella.
JONATHAN LARSEN
Jonathan Larsen is the managing editor and executive producer of TYT Investigates.
MORE FROM JONATHAN LARSEN • FOLLOW @JTLARSEN
Related Topics
Ben Carson Christianity Donald Trump Mike Lindell National Prayer Breakfast Religion Reporting Stephen Baldwin The Family The Young Turks
https://tyt.com/stories/2E4lb3zIDV37rdUAwsh1zn/5uRUGSqLjaM9cyUhYRuhzy
One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell started his charity, the Lindell Foundation, in 2012, to help addicts and substance abusers.
It was dissolved and then born again in 2013. It relaunched in 2015. In January 2018, Lindell told Don Imus that he was getting ready to start to launch and in October 2018 told Laura Loomer, “We’re not completely launched.”
This week, Lindell told TYT he hasn’t done anything with the Lindell Foundation in four years. The Lindell Foundation URL redirects to his personal site. But tax records show it was still taking in money -- and distributing it to evangelical causes -- as of 2019, its most recent filing.
As TYT reported, insiders from The Family have been involved with the Lindell Foundation since 2016, the year Lindell attended his first National Prayer Breakfast.As his connections with The Family deepened that year, traditional lines between Lindell’s politics, religion, commerce, and philanthropy began to fade.
Related story: How Mike Lindell Found Jesus Christ…and Donald Trump]
Against internal advice, Lindell turned MyPillow explicitly political. He began to see his company as a platform to do what he believed to be God’s work -- including supporting Donald Trump. Then, after Trump won, Lindell writes,
“I began to understand what God might intend for the ‘platform’ He had provided, and that the Lindell Foundation and our focus on helping people might be a vessel for that. Throughout 2016, I had asked myself why a guy like me would be invited to participate in high-profile, nationally watched events. Now I was beginning to think that maybe God had opened those doors in order to expand whatever good the Lindell Foundation might do.”
Tax filings show that, after The Family got involved with the Lindell Foundation, the charity’s focus shifted from addiction toward evangelism. When Imus asked him in 2018 about helping addicts, Lindell
, “No, no. That was originally what I was gonna do.”
(Lindell has maintained some focus on addiction elsewhere. Another philanthropy, the Lindell Recovery Network, allows addicts to view videos pertinent to both their age and substance use.)
In Lindell’s media appearances, however, the Lindell Foundation has provided him with valuable publicity. Christian actor Stephen Baldwin got Lindell an award for the Lindell Foundation’s work.
Related story: Stephen Baldwin’s Other Family
Lindell
he’s put $6 million of his own money into the foundation, to cover overhead, so that every dime donated goes to the beneficiaries. In 2017, Lindell’s niece told the city of Chaska, MN, MyPillow’s headquarters, that the foundation had committed $2 million for housing.
But Lindell Foundation filings show no sign of any such expenditure. And the charity’s total revenues since it was formed add up to only $2.6 million, well below the $6 million Lindell says he donated. Its total expenses, including employee salaries, grants, and charitable distributions, total only $2.6 million.
In 2017, the charity reported having 12 employees -- but only disclosed $201,211 in salaries and compensation. Subtracting the $55,385 paid to its president, that would leave the remaining 11 staffers making an average salary of $13,257.
Lindell has said he wanted donors to select their recipients. In 2018, Lindell told Imus, “You’re gonna go on [the site] and you’re basically gonna be able to pick your need, like pick your square. You’ll hear a story about whatever it is, and then whatever you wanna give, even if it’s five dollars…you’ll hear back from them online the difference you made.”
As Lindell told TYT, however, he hasn’t done anything with the Lindell Foundation in four years. Someone apparently has, though. Because although the foundation’s footprint shrank, it has continued funding evangelical causes under the leadership of Family insiders and friends.
Family Values
By 2017, three Family insiders or allies were helping to run Lindell’s charity: Lindell Foundation Pres. Wilfred Job and board members Bob Dees and A. Larry Ross. With The Family’s hands on the wheel, Lindell’s charity went in a new direction, that included the Philippines.
Ross is both a board member of The Family’s legal entity, the Fellowship Foundation, and its spokesperson. In December 2016, Ross and Lindell flew to the Philippines on “matters related to the Lindell Foundation,” according to Lindell’s book.
The foundation’s filings indicate having no one working outside the United States, and Lindell says only they were “invited” to go, not by whom. But The Family had connections in the Philippines. While they were there, Lindell and Ross met with Pres. Rodrigo Duterte, who had been invited to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast prior to becoming president.
Just a mayor at the time, Duterte had been invited to the breakfast by a Pennsylvania real estate developer named Todd Hendricks, a Family insider who has invited scores of people to the breakfast. Hendricks had his own Philippines connections -- he attended a 2015 meeting there with Family members and Filipino leaders. And although Americans are told that it’s Congress that invites foreign leaders, Filipino politicians knew to thank Hendricks and Job by name for their invitations. Job, the Lindell Foundation’s new president, also had connections to the Philippines.
Lindell, however, told TYT he “had no idea” who Wilfred Job was. Asked about the salary the Lindell Foundation reported paying Job, Lindell said he was not aware of that. Lindell added, “Go to jail. Go somewhere and find yourself a nice jail cell, because that’s where you’re going to end up. Goodbye.”
During the brief call, Lindell several times referred to the reporter as a “scumbag” and at one point said, “Where do you get these lies?”
Job’s position and his salary are listed on the Lindell Foundation’s 2017 tax filing. According to the filing, Job worked five hours a week for the foundation, and received $55,385 in compensation.
Lindell, Job, and Ross are also listed in Texas business filings as directors of two other charities. Giving Grace Church was formed in July 2016, while Encircle was formed in March 2017. It’s not clear whether Lindell is even aware of these entities, as he denied knowing Job, the filings have Texas addresses for Lindell, and both entities were short-lived.
Although Lindell’s book says Ross was on the board of the Lindell Foundation in 2016, the first time the foundation discloses the existence of a board is 2017, the first year Family involvement is documented. That same year, the filing says, the Lindell Foundation’s mission expanded beyond addicts to include the “homeless, poor, [and] veterans.” The foundation would do this, in part, by funding evangelical organizations.
The Lindell Foundation’s 2017 beneficiaries included:
- Detroit Blight Busters ($10,000 to “help those in critical need”)
- Togetherworks ($25,000 to “help those in critical need”
- Somebody Cares America ($15,000 for “displaced families”)
- One Mission ($15,000 for “displaced families”)
- Fellowship of Christian Athletes ($5000 for “displaced families”)
Like most charities, the evangelical organizations funded by the Lindell Foundation do good work, helping people who need it. Many, however, view a personal relationship with Jesus as a fundamental need, and incorporate proselytization into their work to meet that need.
One Mission, for instance, builds homes in Mexico, but has also supported missionaries. Somebody Cares America, a part of Turning Points Ministries, also proselytizes. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) has been banned from some schools for coercive proselytizing -- “illegal,” according to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The FCA also reportedly prohibits same-sex relationships among its staff and volunteers.
Detroit Blight Busters builds and renovates homes, but also razes homes seen as blights on their neighborhoods. “Get the city safe, get the city clean,” its founder told The Guardian. “The capitalists will take care of the rest.”
Then there’s Togetherworks. The Georgia charity got $25,000 from the Lindell Foundation in 2017. Bob Dees, the Lindell Foundation board member and Family friend, joined the Togetherworks board that same year.
Lindell met Dees and Ben Carson -- who had recently made Dees his campaign manager -- through The Family, at the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. Dees, a retired Army major general, was active across a constellation of right-wing Christian organizations.
Dees is also the founder of Resilience God Style (RGS), a program to build individual and national resilience through the communication of “Biblical truth.” RGS endorsers include Franklin Graham, Col. Oliver North (Ret.), and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), who compares Dees to Robert E. Lee.
When Dees joined the board in 2017, Togetherworks reported that he did 25 hours of work per week, and received compensation of $9000. Dees told TYT that the money was “reimbursement for goods and services provided in conduct of the Resilience God Style (RGS) conference and speaking ministry.” Togetherworks had also started funding RGS directly in 2016 and continued to do so, before drastically cutting its funding for Dees’ program in 2019.
The Lindell Foundation, however, appears to have begun funding RGS directly. In 2018, the Lindell Foundation reported a $10,000 “scholarship” for something called RGS Emmanuel. The tax ID number for RGS Emmanuel is the same as the tax ID for Emmanuel College, a small, Christian college in Georgia that made Campus Pride’s list of “absolute worst” colleges for LGBTQ students.
Dees, however, said Emmanuel College had nothing to do with it. (A spokesperson for Emmanuel College said the college had no such scholarship.)
Instead, Dees explained, the money was part of a scholarship funded by the Lindell Foundation in 2018 and 2019 to send a Liberian student named Emmanuel to study atLiberty University.
The Lindell Foundation filing does say that the nonprofit “donated toward education through Liberia 2 Liberty, an approved 501(c)3.” The IRS, however, has no record of a charity called Liberia 2 Liberty. No such entity appears in Virginia state records.
In an email, Dees said, “The flow of the Lindell donation went to Together Works (501c3)- Resilience God Style (RGS) Project Liberia2Liberty (or what [the] Lindell 990 calls ‘RGS Emmanuel’). Subsequently, Together Works used the donation proceeds to sen[d] to Liberty University for academic costs for [the student],” who “has now returned to serve in her home country.”
The Lindell Foundation did not disclose why it donated to bring a student from Liberia to attend Liberty University, the second-largest online school in the country, with 85 percent of its students remote in 2017. Liberty University did not respond to a request for comment, but awardedLindell an honorary doctorate in 2019. Liberty, another school on Campus Pride’s worst list, wassued earlier this summer for policies that allegedly make sexual assault more likely.
And it wasn’t just evangelical charities now getting Lindell money. In 2017, the Lindell Foundation paid $18,000 to Development Services Group -- a Christian, anti-abortion company -- for fundraising consulting (Lindell Foundation revenues went from $950,125 that year to $497,801 in 2018).
By 2019, the Lindell Foundation’s board had changed somewhat. Wilfred Job isn’t listed on any filings after his first year there. Dees and Ross, by now a Lindell spokesperson, remain, however, and they’ve been joined by another Family friend.
Paul Lavelle was a military veteran who ran a Christian program to help troubled veterans. It was Lavelle’s program, Operation Restored Warrior, that got Mike Lindell to drop to his knees and surrender to Jesus in 2017. In 2019, Lavelle became the treasurer of the Lindell Foundation.
Other foundation leaders at this point include Lindell, his niece, and a Minnesota Republican named Doug Wardlow. Wardlow, also general counsel for MyPillow, who reportedly had worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is known for its opposition to LGBTQ rights, including banning trans children from using the restrooms where they feel most comfortable.
Wardlow, Lindell said, “worked for this Christian organization that backs my Christian beliefs.” Wardlow also reportedly once bullied a gay classmate to the point of attempting suicide.
By this point, the MyPillow executives who once sat atop the Lindell Foundation were long gone -- although it appears MyPillow employees continued to perform administrative duties for the nonprofit.
Today
Lindell’s claim that his foundation hasn’t done anything for four years has some truth to it. It reported having fewer employees in 2018, just five, and none in 2019. Nevertheless, even in 2019, with zero employees, the Lindell Foundation still reported $60,000 in expenses. And somehow, whether Lindell knew it or not, money kept flowing, miraculously, to evangelical organizations.
Until its 2021 tax filings are released, we won’t know what the Lindell Foundation spent its money on, if anything, during Lindell’s post-election crusade to restore Trump to the White House. Nonprofit expenditures in political areas can potentially violate the law, but Lindell has frequently blurred the lines between his various endeavors.
Like much of The Family, Lindell dismisses the separation of church and state as an absurdity. When God’s will is clear, checks and balances are literally against God. Lindell has applied that same thinking to virtually all of his endeavors, including the Lindell Foundation.
Of the three board members of the Lindell Legal Offense Fund, the nonprofit entity for his “election integrity” efforts, two also sit on the Lindell Foundation board: Lindell himself and Lavelle.
Another Lindell Foundation board member, Doug Wardlow, is also very much engaged in the election issues. In his capacity as MyPilow general counsel, Wardlow must fight the legal battle that arose from Lindell’s false election claims -- because MyPillow pushed them. And Ross, the Family board member, doesn’t just represent Lindell and his foundation, he also represents MyPillow.
As TYT reported earlier this year, a number of Family leaders and financial backers were early supporters of the Big Lie -- donating after Election Day to Trump and other Republicans actively trying to convince millions of Americans that Joe Biden had stolen the election. Three weeks after that report, Biden delivered the traditional presidential speech at the breakfast anyway
Just a month after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Biden said in a video address to the breakfast’s remote attendees, “We know now we must confront and defeat political extremism, white supremacy and domestic terrorism.”
Calling this “a dark, dark time,” Biden asked, “So where do we turn?” His answer: “Faith.”
Religion News Service
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Pal of deranged Mike Lindell launches 'godly' garment company
He and other staffers who travel with Fitch to Christian conferences to sell shirts will always offer to pray with customers.
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721
last of the kraken? hype
https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/lindell-elvis/
an 621
Ivanka and Jared are distancing themselves from Trump as he has 'frequent contact With Lindell: report
David Badash The New Civil Rights Move
not grift gov't apprently just ingnorant of regs?
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's botched mask venture has become a bottomless pit of losses that he still has not yet recovered from. During a phone interview with The Daily Beast, the controversial CEO and Trump ally detailed the financial strain he is now facing as a result of the failed venture which has cost him millions.
Back in March of 2020, Lindell announced plans to create and donate cloth masks to frontline workers. However, that plan quickly hit a wall as cloth masks did not meet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) criteria for face coverings. The issues did not stop there. As the months progressed, Lindell was faced with an even bigger problem.
Now, the CEO is stuck will millions of face coverings his company cannot get rid of. With many states becoming more lenient where face coverings are concerned, the demand for masks has slightly decreased since the onset of the pandemic. "I can't give them away," Lindell said during the interview this week "I tried to. No one wants the things anymore."
The controversial CEO reportedly claims to have reconstructed his company's manufacturing line so it could produce cloth masks. Now, the equipment and machinery acquired for mask-making just sit in a corner collecting dust and serving no purpose. Since Lindell was only able to dump a meager 5% of the mask inventory, he is still stuck with more than $7 million in useless inventory.
"All of a sudden, there was masks everywhere, almost as if the industry knew it was coming and waited for prices to go up," Lindell said. "Now I probably got $7 million out of my pocket that we're just stuck with."
As a devout MAGA supporter who devolved into an anti-masker, Lindell's decision to speak with the publication does come as a bit of a surprise.
He also admitted that he believed the publication would "unfairly spin his mask enterprise as a 'failure.'" But despite the botched venture and his abrupt about-face on masks, he attempted to defend his mask products as he insisted "it helped so many people back then."
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travis raw AN 621
Trump has reportedly been telling people that he'll somehow be reinstated as president in August, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is taking credit for that notion.
The Trump-loving businessman claims he's been filling the twice-impeached one-term president with ideas about returning to the White House through means that aren't laid down in the U.S. Constitution, although it's not clear what justification Lindell has offered for that scenario, reported The Daily Beast.
"If Trump is saying August," Lindell told the website, "that is probably because he heard me say it publicly."
Two sources close to Trump told The Beast the ex-president has been increasingly asking confidants about possibly returning to the White House by the end of summer, claiming that "highly respected" people have been saying that's possible.
Both sources said they decided not to tell Trump they don't believe that's possible, and even Lindell seems more hopeful than confident.
"The month of August, for this, is subjective," Lindell said. "It is my hope that Donald Trump is reinstated, after all the proof comes out, by the end of August, but I don't know if it'll be that month, specifically. I started saying August…about four weeks ago. That was my estimation. I spoke about it with my lawyers who said that they should have something ready for us to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court by July. So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August. That's how I landed on August, and I'm hopeful that that is correct."
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jenna attacked for saying trump can't be re-install in aug b/c you know lAW/REALITY?
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-reinstated/
NO LNX TWT
On June 1, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported, on Twitter, that former President Donald Trump still believes that the 2020 election results will be overturned and that he will be "reinstated" to the White House by August. Haberman discussed her reporting during a June 2 appearance on CNN's "New Day," stressing to hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar that Trump is "echoing" the false claims he is hearing from attorney Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
"There is no mechanism by which this can happen," Haberman said of Trump's delusional claim that he will be returning to the Oval Office by August. But Trump's delusions, Haberman added, are being encouraged by Powell and Lindell — and he is "regurgitating" their bogus claims.
Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no… https://t.co/0gUGozPQQR
— Maggie Haberman (@Maggie Haberman) 1622551318.0
Haberman told Berman and Keilar, "What he's doing is echoing things that are being said by Sidney Powell, who was his lawyer — although he distanced himself from her at certain points over the final months of the administration. But she was helping advise him on these efforts to overturn the election last year. This is being said my Michael Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow — who has been pushing this for some time. (Trump) is echoing what they're saying. The difference between them saying it and Donald Trump saying it is that one is the former president — one is a possible future (Republican) Party nominee…. There are people telling him things are possible that are not possible."
Powell and Lindell have been relentless far-right promoters of the Big Lie, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump — who, Haberman said, has been "so laser-focused" on the recent election "audits" taking place in Arizona and other states because he "thinks they are going to overturn" the 2020 election results.
JUST NOW: "“There is a dangerous component about this conversation that's going on.” @maggieNYT on her reporting t… https://t.co/u3fuzgsHhr
— John Berman (@John Berman) 1622632941.0
Trump, Haberman warned, is trying to use the "conservative media ecosystem" to promote his fantasies of being "reinstated" to the White House this summer.
"People are in their own media ecosystems," Haberman observed.
Berman pointed out that some Trump opponents are upset with Haberman for tweeting about the former president's delusions, and the Times reporter responded that "ignoring" Trump will not make him go away in 2021 any more than it did in 2015 and 2016.
Haberman told Berman and Keilar that Trump "is in control of the Republican Party, to a big extent…. Ignoring him was not the answer in 2015."
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https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/qanon-followers-are-working-arizona-senators-audit-officials-overturn-2020
great pix
As Arizona conducts an audit of ballots in Maricopa County rooted in baseless conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, it appears the evidence underpinning that effort and much of the work to generate support for it has come from two QAnon followers, Liz Harris and Bobby Piton.
Both Harris and Piton have frequently bragged about working with Arizona senators and audit officials -- in one case, even livestreaming a supposed meeting with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) to discuss their findings -- but their support of the election audit is grounded in widely debunked claims of voter fraud, many of which stem from the same “Stop the Steal” allegations that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
Simply put: Arizona’s election audit has a QAnon problem.
Harris and Piton’s role in the Arizona election audit
Harris and Piton have both managed to place themselves in roles of influence as two of the main promoters of the Arizona election fraud conspiracy theory, working behind the scenes with state senators and audit officials. The Arizona Republic recently reported on Harris and Piton as some of the key figures involved in the election audit.
Harris is head of a “non-partisan” “grassroots canvass effort” to prove that rampant voter fraud exists in the state’s most populous county (it doesn't). The group claims, using data tabulated by Piton, to have uncovered mass voter fraud during the 2020 election.
Harris ran for the Arizona House of Representatives’s District 17 seat in 2020 but lost the general election. Much of her time is now dedicated to voter fraud canvassing efforts, while she commonly livestreams multiple videos per day related to the Arizona audit on YouTube and Facebook.
Piton is a managing partner at a financial planning and investment advisory firm in Illinois, whose website claims he “has read well in excess of a million pages over his career and has extensively studied physics, quantum mechanics, mathematics, economics, trading, portfolio construction, model development, asset valuation, and alpha generation to develop and refine his methodology.”
It seems that Harris and Piton have a relationship with Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the company conducting the audit. Logan recently came under fire for peddling “Stop the Steal” and other election fraud conspiracy theories on his personal Twitter account before it was deleted.
On April 11, Piton posted on the far-right platform Gab promising to provide his supposed Maricopa election fraud findings“to the person who won the bid to perform the audit,” which would be Logan and Cyber Ninjas. Piton later confirmed to The Daily Beast that Logan “asked him for his assistance” in the election audit, where he was working “in an unofficial capacity.” Piton also prayed a rosary on YouTube for Harris, Logan, and all Arizona “patriots.”
Harris claimed to have met Logan “multiple times,” and there is additional evidence to suggest that Harris and Logan have been in communication about the audit. According to a May 12 newsletter from Arizona Capitol Reports, Logan boosted Harris’ campaign with the hashtag “#PhantomSleeperVoters,” a reference to conspiracy theories about fraudulent ballots cast by nonexistent voters, before the deactivation of his Twitter account.
On February 28, Harris uploaded photos of herself with former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, two of the right-wing, pro-Trump millionaires funding the Arizona election audit, as well as Sidney Powell, the former Trump campaign attorney and conspiracy theorist who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In the comments under the photos, Harris wrote, “Arizona hold on to your hats… The storm has just begun!” (“The storm” is a key phrase in the QAnon conspiracy theory.) Harris noted that this meeting occurred in Arizona but did not provide other specifics[pix
harris has bragged in an April 25 livestream about sharing her canvassing data with Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, who has been supportive of the audit. She also said senators were lauding her canvassing efforts and relayed that audit officials were supposedly going to incorporate her work “into this deep-dive forensic audit.”
At one point, Piton livestreamed what appears to be a private Zoom meeting about the election audit between Harris, Rep. Andy Biggs, members of the Arizona Senate, and himself. This means that state Senate members and a sitting U.S. congressman were seemingly consulting with Harris and Piton about the audit and baseless allegations of election fraud. In the same livestream, Piton told his viewers that he had been asked to help with the election audit.
“One of the individuals that may be winning this bid to do the work has contacted me a few weeks back,” Piton said. “I did tell Liz I thought they would be contacting me, or somebody would. And they asked me if I would look at the data and I said that I would definitely be helping in one way, shape, or form.”
Given Piton’s other claims about contact with audit officials, this is most likely another reference to Logan.
On January 19, Piton posted what appears to be a birthday card from Trump and “two Patriots” working in the White House, at least one of whom appears to be from the National Security Council. This is particularly significant given Piton’s unofficial role in the Arizona election audit; the post also claims that Piton has been “communicating some of my findings with” those administration officials. [img]
in an April 2 Facebook post, Piton bragged about signing affidavits for “both Lin Wood and Sidney Powell regarding PA data back in mid December.”
Piton and Harris worked together to attempt to prove potential voter fraud abnormalities. According to Piton, he provided Harris with “a sample size of over 95,000 voter registrations that he forecast would have problems of the approximately 4,300,000 registered voters who are on the voter rolls”; Harris then “randomly selected names on those lists and had volunteers go to work in determining how many of these registered voters had issues.” This formed the basis for their election fraud claims.
Harris’ group started the “Crime of the Century” project, a website dedicated to exposing supposed voter fraud in Arizona. It includes an “Election Integrity Arizona” page that contains Harris’ “initial findings and analysis of the 2020 General Election in Maricopa and Pima counties conducted by a citizens’ non-partisan grassroots project.” The Arizona Republic reported that Harris’ initially claimed her “group was helping with the Senate’s audit, but she couldn’t say on what part because of a nondisclosure agreement. Harris later said she doesn’t know what her involvement may or may not be.”
The Arizona audit isn’t the first brush Harris and Piton have had with promoting misinformation about election integrity. Harris also testified at Rudy Giuliani’s Arizona election fraud “hearing” in November, with Piton appearing as an expert witness to claim “that his opinion, from reviewing Arizona voter data, was that between 120,000 and 306,000 ballots were cast by ‘fake people.’”
Both Harris and Piton appear to follow or support the QAnon conspiracy theory
Both Harris and Piton have posted content and slogans affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. Followers of QAnon led the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and believe that Trump will conduct mass arrests and secret military tribunals to prosecute “deep state” elites.
Harris’ social media presence suggests that she subscribes to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Her Facebook account contains QAnon videos, a “WWG1WGA” shirt (an abbreviation of the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all”), and QAnon-affiliated posts.
As for Piton, when The Daily Beast first reported on his unofficial involvement in the Arizona audit in late April, he said that “he didn’t know much about QAnon.” But his social media tells a different story. Posts explicitly supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory, and even a Q “drop” -- the term for messages from the anonymous figure at the center of the conspiracy theory -- are scattered throughout his public Facebook page. [pix]
for example, on August 2020, Piton wrote a post in support of the “#SaveTheChildren” QAnon movement, calling the Democratic Party the “DemoNcrat Party.” “This party is PURE EVIL,” wrote Piton. The image he shared with this post also contained the QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA.[img
in a post following the January 6 insurrection, Piton claimed to have never “been part of any ‘Q movement’” and downplayed his support as merely liking “some of their phrases.”
Less than a month later, Piton posted a photo of former National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael S. Rogers along with references to QAnon. “Admiral Rogers… come on down… you are the lucky number 1… 7 on the Truth is Right!!!” wrote Piton. (Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet and is popularly used to refer to “Q.”)
“Q...uestion for you,” he continued, once again referencing Q.
In November 2019, Piton shared a QAnon primer video on Facebook, writing: “Keep an open mind… even if all of this isn’t 100% accurate, it is something worth thinking about!" [pix]
on April 25, Piton and Harris were both interviewed on the QAnon outlet Patriots’ Soapbox. During the livestream, Josh Barnett, a QAnon House candidate who lost a race to represent Arizona’s 7th Congressional District in 2020 and is running again for the state’s 6th district in 2022, bragged that Arizona senators “saw Liz’s numbers” and “saw Bobby’s data” and “that’s when things started changing” and they began backing the audit.
Harris and Piton’s involvement in the Arizona election audit is more than concerning -- if their claims of working with audit officials and Arizona senators are true, it means that an attempt to overturn Arizona’s election results has been quietly influenced by two QAnon followers working from within.
myPillow guy bares false witness — says 'Trump will be back in office in August'
dominion defam
https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/my-pillow-lawsuit/
221 mma
Friday, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell released a two-hour disinformation film chock full of lies about the 2020 presidential election. Pro-Trump disinformation network OAN aired it in full multiple times, led by an absurd disclaimer noting that Lindell paid the network for the airtime. Pro-Trump outlet Right-Side Broadcasting and pro-Trump platform Rumble streamed it as well; it was swiftly removed from Vimeo and YouTube for promoting disinformation and obvious lies about the election. Nevertheless, Lindell the next day bragged to Steve Bannon about how many views it had received.
Lindell's zealotry has led right-wing media networks to compete for his affection -- and his cash. This is complicated by the fact that Lindell's zealotry has led him to advocate completely deranged positions, including conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems; he's also pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory about Italy . This has been only heightened since Lindell was permanently suspended from Twitter.
Tucker Carlson gave Lindell a friendly interview, and allowed Lindell to push more Dominion conspiracy theories (you may recall Carlson lashing out at Sidney Powell over the exact same conspiracy theories). Lindell's My Pillow is the major sponsor of Carlson's show.
When Lindell appeared on Newsmax on Tuesday, he again pushed Dominion conspiracy theories. But in lieu of a prior legal threat from Dominion to Newsmax, the host muted Lindell to read a disclaimer and eventually walked off set as Lindell kept talking about election fraud. A different Newsmax host welcomed Lindell later in the evening, but they did not discuss election conspiracy theories.
OAN used that incident to attack Newsmax for being insufficiently pro-Trump; The network also used the incident to promote that it was airing Lindell's "documentary" about the election -- while trying to protect itself by running a massive disclaimer.
Also: Lindell pushed this conspiracy theory in appearances at two rallies the day before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He also visited the White House nine days after the insurrection to reportedly encourage then-President Donald Trump to consider enacting martial law. Now, as Olivia Little reports, several of Lindell’s public social media posts appear to reveal additional information about his activities in the lead-up to the events that day -- and could implicate other prominent figures like former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
Finally: Lindell told Bannon on Saturday that the COVID-19 vaccines are "the mark of the beast stuff."
Legal details: You can find our research on right-wing media promoting Smartmatic conspiracy theories here; our research on Fox figures promoting Dominion conspiracy theories is here. Rush Limbaugh also was a heavy promoter of Dominion conspiracy theories.
==
anchor later apologized for walking off?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/mike-lindell/
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/my-pillow/
no lnx pix twt
Internet explodes as Trump meets with 'My Pillow Guy' whose notes reportedly mention 'Insurrection Act' and 'martial law'
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell expands from manufacturing masks to sourcing them after call with Trump
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement January 16, 2021
The internet exploded late Friday afternoon when a highly-respected Washington Post photographer captured on camera notes held by Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of My Pillow, one of the top advertisers on Fox News and a close confidant of President Donald Trump.
Lindell, according to the White House press pool, "was spotted outside the West Wing at 3 pm. He was on his cell phone at one point as he waited outside. The Marine let him inside at 3:05 pm."
There is always a Marine stationed outside the Oval Office when the President is inside the Oval Office, but not when the President is not there.
The notes appear to mention "martial law," a suggestion to move a dangerous Trump loyalist to the CIA as acting Director, the “Insurrection Act," and something about “foreign interference in the election," as Talking Points Memo reported.
Understandably, the Internet lit up like a Christmas tree, but with countless rumors, jokes, and concern.
All those aside, the question really is, would President Trump, who has less than five days left in office, actually fire the head of the CIA, and why? What would he hope to accomplish, do, or get away with if Gina Haspel were gone?
The other question of course is why would Trump listen to Lindell, a far right conspiracy theorist and religious extremist, but that question is unanswerable.
Here's what some are saying.
CNN analyst, attorney, and former FBI Special Agent:
CNN White House correspondent:
On Mike Lindell's notes: “…TAKEN IMMEDIATELY TO SAVE THE…CONSTITUTION” Names Sidney Powell and Kurt Olsen Says Kash Patel should be moved to “CIA Acting…”
Public advocacy firm:
Media Matters Senior Fellow:
Religion News Service national reporter:
Research director at CREW:
Economist and professor:
NBC News Reporter, "dystopia beat":
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mypillow-ceo-spotted-bringing-notes-to-wh-that-appear-to-reference-martial-law-installing-new-cia-director
myPillow CEO Michael Lindell brought notes with him to a meeting in the West Wing Friday that zoomed-in photographs appear to show contained the phrases “martial law,” “Insurrection Act” and “foreign interference in the election.”
The paper also included a line reading “move Kash Patel to CIA Acting,” a seeming suggestion for President Donald Trump to fire CIA Director Gina Haspel and move Patel, a Trump loyalist recently installed at the Pentagon amid a purge of senior civilian officials, to fill the role.
It also included the names of Sidney Powell, Bill Olsen and Kurt Olsen, though the beginning of the sentence involving them is cut off by a fold in the paper.
@MyPillowUSA CEO Michael Lindell shows off his notes before going into the West Wing at the White House on Friday, Jan 15, 2021 in Washington, DC. pic.twitter.com/AY6AyJNSyE
— Jabin Botsford (@jabinbotsford) January 15, 2021
Powell, a lawyer who hovered around the fringes of the Trump campaign’s attempt to overturn the election after being formally axed from the team, has become a vociferous purveyor of conspiracy theories and a hero to adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. It’s unclear which Olsens Lindell was referring to; the attorney Kurt Olsen was among those representing the state of Texas in its unsuccessful effort to throw out several other states’ election results, according to multiple reports.
The document appeared to reference other aspects of QAnon as well.The conspiracy theory holds as a central premise that the President is waging a behind-the-scenes war against the “deep state.” In some tellings, the battle will culminate with mass arrests and executions of his political enemies.
Some in the QAnon community — including Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and a client of Powell’s — have :{called:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: for Trump to enforce martial law in his attempts to overturn the November election.
Another line, cut off by a fold in the paper, appears to read “Insurrection Act now,” referring to a law which allows the President to deploy federal troops in extraordinary circumstances. It’s a measure Powell in particular has amplified calls for on her Twitter feed, as the MAGA-verse brainstormed mechanisms Trump could use to nullify the election results and hold a new vote.
More broadly, Lindell’s invitation to the White House indicates that even a week after the President invited a crowd to the nation’s capital and then directed them to march on Congress — leading to a riot and breach of the building that resulted in five deaths and his second impeachment — Trump is unwilling to let go of conspiratorial fantasies.
Lindell was among the pro-Trump celebrities that spoke at the “Stop the Steal” event in D.C. last week, at a rally the night before Trump’s fateful speech. His company was listed as a “coalition partner” for the event.
“I can tell you, 100 percent Donald Trump is going to be your President for four more years,” Lindell said, before mentioning a recent discussion he’d had with Flynn that involved even more evidence of massive election fraud. “Donald Trump was picked for eight years by God, not four,” he added later.
huh?
Watch right winger give out 'Kraken' offer code for MyPillow during ‘StopTheSteal’ rally in DC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell
michael James Lindell[3] (born June 28, 1961) is an American businessman. He is the founder and CEO of My Pillow, Inc.,[4][2][5] and is sometimes referred to as "the My Pillow guy".[6]
- :{:{Early life and career:(style="display:table-cell"):}::(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}:
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Early life and career
Lindell was born on June 28, 1961, in Mankato, Minnesota. He was raised in Chaska and Carver, Minnesota.[4]
Lindell launched and operated a number of small businesses in the 1980s including carpet cleaning, lunch wagons, and a few bars and restaurants in Carver County, Minnesota.[4][2] During the 1980s and 1990s, Lindell was addicted to cocaine, crack cocaine, and alcohol, leading to foreclosure of his house, and his wife filing for divorce. Lindell stated that he achieved sobriety through prayer in 2009, and, since then, has been clean.[4][7][8]
MyPillow
Lindell invented the MyPillow pillow in 2004 and grew the business into a major Minnesota manufacturing company.[9][10] The company laid off 150 employees in 2019.[11] Citing possible future political ambitions, Lindell named his son Darren as the company's chief operating officer.[11]
In 2016, Lindell's My Pillow company was sued in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, California for running ads with false claims of the pillow helping with snoring, fibromyalgia, migraines and other medical conditions. Prosecutors in nine California counties brought the charges against the misleading infomercials.[12] MyPillow settled for about $1 million, while admitting no wrongdoing.[12]
In 2017, the Better Business Bureau revoked accreditation of MyPillow, lowering its rating to an F based on a pattern of complaints by consumers. The BBB cited a Buy One, Get One offer that became a continuous offer and therefore the normal price of the product, not a sale price or free offer.[13] In a statement, Lindell said, "Naturally, I am terribly disappointed by the BBB's decision."[13]
Foundations, memoirs, and autobiography
Lindell created the Lindell Foundation, a faith-based foundation. The company and foundation donated goods to victims of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.[14][15] The foundation's focus was then broadened to help people with addictions, cancer victims, and veterans.[7][16]
Lindell also founded the Lindell Recovery Network to "bring hope, recovery, and mentorship" to those struggling with drug addictions; the network shares stories from recovered addicts and provides information on Christian recovery organizations.[17][18]
In March 2017, Lindell produced The Mike Lindell Story: An American Dream, about having overcome drug addiction and building a business. The autobiography was filmed at the Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[19] In January 2020, Lindell released his memoir, What Are the Odds?From Crack Addict to CEO.[20][21]
Political activities
In August 2016, Lindell met with then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump,[4][22][23] and became an avid supporter, calling Trump "the most amazing president this country has ever seen in history", following his 2016 election.[24] In a speech at Liberty University in August 2019, Lindell said "When I met with Donald Trump, it felt like a divine appointment, and when I walked out of that office I decided I was going to go all in."[25][26]
On October 19, 2016, Lindell attended the final presidential debate in Las Vegas.[27] He spoke at a Trump campaign rally in Minneapolis on November 6, 2016, and attended the Official Donald Watch Party on November 8. He attended Trump's inauguration, and Trump gave him an inauguration lapel pin as a personal gift.[24][28][22]
In 2017, Lindell sat next to Trump at an industry roundtable event at the White House.[29][30][4][23]
At a rally in Fargo, North Dakota on June 27, 2018, Trump commended Lindell's business acumen.[31] Lindell spoke at a Trump rally on October 4, 2018, in Rochester, Minnesota.[32] Lindell spoke at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, in which he promoted Trump as "the greatest president in history"[33] and "chosen by God."[11]
In a March 2020 appearance on Fox News, Lindell said that his company's bedding factories had been refocused on face mask production at the behest of the Trump administration. Later that month, Lindell appeared with Trump at a White House coronavirus press conference, at which Lindell praised Trump: "God gave us grace on November 8, 2016, to change the course we were on. God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the word. Read our Bible and spend time with our families."[34]
Lindell has publicly considered running for governor of Minnesota in 2022 against Democratic incumbent Tim Walz.[11][35] reportedly at Trump's urging.[11] He attended a Republican Governors Association meeting, at which he was encouraged to run.[11] In May 2020, he became the campaign chair for Trump's reelection campaign in Minnesota.[35] A few hours before Trump spoke at a 2020 Mount Rushmore Independence Day celebration, in response to an audience question at a small rally nearby, Lindell said he's "99% sure" about running for Minnesota governor.[36]
In November 2020, Lindell was identified as among those who paid for the bail of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse.[37]
Promotion of unproven coronavirus "cure"
In White House meetings with Trump and public appearances, Lindell has promoted a plant extract, oleandrin, as a "cure" for COVID-19, saying "This thing works — it's the miracle of all time."[38] In a television appearance, Lindell made a misleading statement about the testing of the substance.[38] Lindell has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology, a company that makes oleandrin, and sits on its board.[38] Lindell's unsubstantiated claims alarmed scientists, since there is no scientific evidence that oleandrin is a safe or effective coronavirus treatment, and since the plant is poisonous at low doses.[38][39][40][41] After the efforts by Lindell and HUD Secretary Ben Carson to promote oleandrin, Trump said his administration would "look at" the substance.[38]
Personal life
Lindell has been married twice. His first marriage was for about 20 years.[42] He married second wife Dallas Yocum in June 2013 and filed for divorce in mid-July 2013 after she left him. Lindell stated that they had a prenuptial agreement.[43][44]
Lindell is an evangelical Christian[7] and received an honorary Doctor of Business from Liberty University in 2019.[45]
Works
- Mike Lindell (2019). What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO. Minnesota: Lindell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-7342-8341-9.[35]
References
- ^ Bond, Paul (November 21, 2018). "Multimillionaire Trump Fan and Fox News Advertiser Jumps Into Film Financing". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellBloomberg_2-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellBloomberg_2-2) Dean, Josh (January 11, 2017). "The Preposterous Success Story of America's Pillow King". Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
- ^ "My Pillow, Inc". Dun & Bradstreet. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellCNBC_4-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellCNBC_4-2) d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellCNBC_4-3) e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellCNBC_4-4) f(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellCNBC_4-5) Wells, Jane (September 20, 2017). "How this entrepreneur went from a crack addict to a self-made multimillionaire". CNBC. Retrieved September 28,2017.
- ^ Betsy Klein (November 4, 2018). "How the MyPillow guy became a midterm messenger". CNN. Retrieved May 10, 2019.
- ^ Martin, Jeffery (March 30, 2020). ":{':(style="padding-left:0.2em"):}:My Pillow' trends after MyPillow founder urges Americans to focus on religion during White House coronavirus briefing". Newsweek. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellSalvationArmy_7-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellSalvationArmy_7-2) ":{':(style="padding-left:0.2em"):}:My Pillow' founder opens up about addiction". Salvation Army. December 29, 2015. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
- ^ Roosevelt, Ava (Fall 2017). "The Most Seen Man on TV and His Novel Notion on Giving". Philanthropy. International Opulence. pp. 126–127. Retrieved September 29, 2017.[dead link]
- ^ Hutton, Rachel (September 2, 2018). "Mike Lindell's fitful journey from crack addict to MyPillow magnate". StarTribune. Star Tribune. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ "The story of the My Pillow king". CBS News. July 29, 2018. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-PoliticoMarchMarch2020_11-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-PoliticoMarchMarch2020_11-2) d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-PoliticoMarchMarch2020_11-3) e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-PoliticoMarchMarch2020_11-4) f(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-PoliticoMarchMarch2020_11-5) Daniel Lippman & Tina Nguyen (March 30, 2020). "Trump has been nudging MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to run for office". Politico.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-fined_12-1) NBC Los Angeles (November 4, 2016). "MyPillow Fined $1M for Phony Ads". NBCLosAngeles.com. KNBC. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-revokes_13-1) KARE-TV (January 4, 2017). "MyPillow accreditation revoked by the Better Business Bureau". USA Today. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
- ^ "Special Projects Donation Update: Hurricane Harvey". Lindell Foundation. Lindell Foundation. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 20, 2017.
- ^ Winter, Deena (August 31, 2017). "MyPillow to donate 60,000 pillows to Hurricane Harvey victims". Shakopee Valley News. SWNewsMedia.com. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
- ^ Strode, Tom (March 2, 2018). "MyPillow Inventor Mike Lindell Shares Testimony at NRB Media Leadership Dinner". National Religious Broadcasters. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ "A Year of Historic Action to Combat the Opioid Crisis". WhiteHouse.gov. October 24, 2018. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ Ord, Rich (October 23, 2018). "MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and His Story of Hope". WebProNews. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ ":{':(style="padding-left:0.2em"):}:The Mike Lindell Story: An American Dream' Exclusively on RFD-TV". RFDTV. Frankly, Inc. December 28, 2016. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
- ^ DeBilzan, Maddie (June 21, 2019). "MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to be on TV show, launch online help for addicts". SWNewsMedia. Retrieved July 26, 2019.
- ^ "What are the Odds? | Mike Lindell's Story". www.mikelindellsbook.com. Retrieved July 26, 2019.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellBizJournal_22-1) Williams, Nick (January 20, 2017). "What MyPillow's CEO got from Donald Trump at the inauguration". Minneapolis/St Paul Business Journal. Minneapolis, Minnesota: American City Business Journals. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellFoxNews_23-1) Lindell, Michael J. (July 24, 2017). "Mike Lindell: Here's why Made in America really will help make America great again". Fox News. New York City: News Corp. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-LindellRally_24-1) "Web Extra: Mike Lindell Speaks At Trump Rally". CBS Minnesota. CBS Broadcasting Inc. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ Klinker, Ryan. "MyPillow founder Mike Lindell gifts students with pillows and message of God's grace". Liberty University. Liberty University News Service. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
- ^ Mehta, Hemant. "Liberty University Students Just Got $600,000 Worth of MyPillow Products". Friendly Atheist. Patheos. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
- ^ "Live Reaction to Pres Debate". Facebook - Fox Business. Facebook. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ "MyPillow CEO on attending 'surreal' Trump party". KARE 11. KARE-TV. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ "Made in America Roundtable". Whitehouse.gov. United States Government. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
- ^ "MyPillow CEO Featured In White House Event With Trump, Paulsen". CBS Minnesota. Minneapolis, Minnesota: CBS Broadcasting Inc. July 19, 2017. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
- ^ Fernandez, Henry (June 27, 2018). "Trump: 'MyPillow guy' should be my ad buyer". FOXBusiness. New York City: News Corp. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ "Live: Thousands gather for President Trump's Rochester rally". Star-Tribune. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Star Tribune Media Company. October 4, 2018. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
- ^ "My Pillow founder Mike Lindell: Donald Trump was 'chosen by God' to run for president". Washington Times. March 1, 2019.
- ^ Casiano, Louis (March 30, 2020). "MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, at White House coronavirus briefing, tells people to pray during crisis". Fox News. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-GOPFuture_35-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-GOPFuture_35-2) Terris, Ben (May 27, 2020). "Is the MyPillow guy the future of the Republican Party, or is he just dreaming?". The Washington Post.
- ^ Tupper, Seth (July 4, 2020). "In Rapid City, My Pillow CEO Says He's '99 Percent Sure' About Running For Minnesota Governor". South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
- ^ Casiano, Louis (November 20, 2020). "Attorney: My Pillow founder Mike Lindell paid part of bail for teen charged in Kenosha shooting". KMSP-TV.
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-Murphy_38-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-Murphy_38-2) d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-Murphy_38-3) e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell#cite_ref-Murphy_38-4) Heather Murphy, Drug Pitched to Trump for Covid-19 Comes From a Deadly Plant, New York Times (August 20, 2020).
- ^ Oleandrin: Trump allies pitch extract from poisonous plant to fight Covid, The Guardian (August 25, 2020).
- ^ Jonathan Swan (August 17, 2020). "Trump eyes new unproven coronavirus "cure:{":(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". Axios. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
- ^ Lauren Frias (August 17, 2020). "Trump reportedly pushing new unproven coronavirus treatment that is also embraced by HUD Sec. Ben Carson and MyPillow's Mike Lindell". Business Insider. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
- ^ Levin, Mark; Lindell, Mike (April 14, 2019). "MyPillow's Mike Lindell opens up on his battle with addiction". Fox News. Retrieved November 18, 2020. I lost a 20-year marriage
- ^ "C.J.: Bride leaves, says MyPillow CEO is a snooze". Star Tribune. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
- ^ Keogh, Joey (June 8, 2020). "Inside the MyPillow guy's relationship with his ex-wife". TheList.com. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
- ^ Klinker, Ryan (August 21, 2019). "MyPillow founder Mike Lindell gifts students with pillows and message of God's grace". Liberty University. Retrieved August 26,2019.
External links
- Mike Lindell on IMDb
Authority control  |
- 1961 births
- American company founders
- Businesspeople from Minnesota
- Living people
- Minnesota Republicans
- People from Mankato, Minnesota
- 21st-century American businesspeople
an 1220
In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative commentator Matt Lewis expressed exasperation with evangelical leaders who are set to lead what has been dubbed the "Jericho March" in Washington D.C. on Saturday under the belief they can pray God into helping Donald Trump remain in the Oval Office for four more years.
Lewis, who wears his faith on his sleeve, has long condemned members of the Christian community who have attached them to the president who, by his actions and his deeds, has never exemplified any Christian values other than giving them occasional lip service.
As the Daily Beast columnist sees it, the group scheduled to appear are a motley crew who do not exemplify the best the evangelical community has to offer.
Writing that "some prominent members of the Christian church are undermining the church's witness," Lewis added, "For evidence, look no further than this Saturday, when former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn (who recently shared a message calling on Trump to declare 'limited martial law' and hold a new election) will give his first post-pardon speech at something called the Jericho March in Washington, D.C. Aside from Flynn, the roster includes other prominent MAGA names like Mike **Lindell**(the MyPillow guy), Eric Metaxas (a radio host who punched a protester and recently said, 'I'd be happy to die in this fight'), Ali Alexander (formerly Ali Akbar), and C.J. Pearson. Afterwards, the crowd will converge on the National Mall for the 'ROAR' prayer rally."
https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/rittenhouse/
no lnx twt
The headline was jarring: "Black Man Who Spent 25 Years Incarcerated for a Murder He Didn't Commit Has Been Exonerated," The Root's homepage shouted at me. The story of 62-year-old Jaythan Kendrick, who was arrested for a crime he did not commit on Thanksgiving Day 1994—when he was just 36—is a familiar one to anyone who's paid attention to the chronic miscarriage of justice Black people face: Had law enforcement and or prosecutors actually done their job, Kendrick could have been home in time for Christmas, or maybe never arrested at all. The evidence was thin—at best. It also was manipulated.
But this story is not about Jaythan Kendrick.
With a quick click of the Back button, and I was back to The Root's homepage; just below the Kendrick story I'd just read was the face of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old high schooler who definitely murdered two—almost three—Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisc. with an illegally obtained AR-15 rifle back in August. Rittenhouse was released Friday on a cash bail of $2 million, paid in part by Mike Lindell—the Trump fanatic usually referred to as the My Pillow Guy—and Rick Schroder, an ex-child actor best known for the vapid 1980s sitcom Silver Spoons.
While both Kendrick and Rittenhouse will be home just in time for Thanksgiving, the justice system journeys for these two men—one guilty, and one innocent, one white, and one Black—couldn't be more different. And so I rage.
Lin Wood, attorney for the newly-freed yet wholly unrepentant Rittenhouse, posted a photo of the grinning (and maskless) homicidal teenager to Twitter Friday evening.
Rabid militia enthusiasts, endorsers of white supremacy, and lovers of Donald Trump have all latched on to the murderous teen, elevating him to hero status in their hateful white power fantasies;over half a million dollars has been raised for Rittenhouse beyond the bail money, according to the local CBS affiliate.
Most of the money came from small donations, and Rittenhouse's attorney took to Twitter thanking donors and saying,"We the peopledid not let him down."
Rittenhouse, who again, absolutely killed two people, has a fucking fan base. A rabid one, with deep pockets.
The murderer, who has admitted to two murders and one attempted murder, told police "No, I don't regret it" at the time of his arrest, and is currently enjoying some surreal hero's life, admired by the sort of folks who vicariously watched cell phone footage of his cold killings and opened their wallets in support. These folks know exactly what Rittenhouse did and respect it. They consider his actions right and just, even as they smear his victims—all white men—to help justify their cold-blooded murders....
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From crack cocaine to Mar-a-Lago: The unusual journey of the MyPillow man
By
Kyle Swenson
April 6, 2018 at 2:38 a.m. PDT
The pillow salesman had so much crack cocaine pounding through his bloodstream he hadn’t slept for two weeks, he would later say. Even the drug dealers were counseling Mike Lindell to slow down.
It was March 2008, and the Minneapolis-area entrepreneur’s life was in free fall. Marriage broken. House lost. Business — a company he started four years earlier called MyPillow — struggling. Two weeks into this particular hot-wired bender, Lindell went to his usual drug dealers for a fix. But the guys had already put word out on the street: No one sell to Lindell until he sleeps.
“They were three of the biggest dealers in the cities,” Lindell recounted to the Salvation Army in 2015. “They refused to sell to me again. One of them tried babysitting me until I fell asleep.”
Instead, he sneaked outside to score elsewhere. But no one wanted his business. Lindell waved around a $100 bill for $5 worth of crack. Nothing. He tried to hide his distinct mustache behind his hand. No luck.
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“I get back to the apartment, and [the dealer] is sitting there, and he goes, ‘How’d that work out for you?’ ” Lindell said to CNBC last September. His dealer picked up Lindell’s phone and snapped a photo of the addict’s face — walking-dead skin tone, disheveled hair, mug shot scowl. It was a memento of what it looked like at rock bottom.
Lindell got clean the next year and powered ahead with MyPillow, turning an idea plucked from a dream into a successful international business claiming nearly 30 million sales. For years he struggled against addiction and long business odds. Today, Lindell finds himself up against a political backlash.
Last week, Fox News host Laura Ingraham hopped on Twitter to blast David Hogg, the Parkland massacre survivor and gun-control advocate. The comments — a cheap shot about Hogg’s college rejection — quickly sparked outcry, with at least 18 advertisers pulling their spots from the host’s show, according to Media Matters.
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Not the MyPillow frontman. Lindell, an avid backer of President Trump, proclaimed on Twitter this week: “I did not take my advertising down from @IngrahamAngle and @FoxNews, nor do I intend to.”
“Advertising decisions are based on what’s best for MyPillow, my employees and my customers,” Lindell added in a statement to the Shakopee Valley News. In response, there has been a call online to boycott Lindell’s own business. The Minnesota businessman, whose mustachioed face is familiar from MyPillow infomercials and ads, has now found himself in the national debate.
It’s the latest stop in a quintessentially American wild ride, a journey that has run from pig pens and Las Vegas card tables to QVC and the gold-plated halls of Mar-a-Lago.
As Lindell tells it, his success has the classic Horatio Alger shape — with cocaine and infomercials and divine inspiration.
Raised in Chaska, Minn., Lindell attended the University of Minnesota before dropping out, CNBC reported. He jumped from one business idea to the next in the following years, often pulling ideas from his experience. After his sister’s apartment flooded, he started a carpet cleaning company. He heard about the success of lunch wagon businesses in California, and he tried the same concept in the Twin Cities.
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Lindell also tried to fill his pockets counting cards at Las Vegas casinos and raising pigs. Eventually, he started pouring drinks behind a bar and eventually purchased the business. “Probably wasn’t a real good idea, because I was an addict at the time, a pretty hardcore cocaine addict,” he told CNBC.
He started using cocaine in 1982, Lindell told the Salvation Army, switching to crack in the 1990s. He was still deep into his addiction when a lifelong sleeping problem pointed him to his million-dollar idea.
Lindell never could find a comfortable pillow all his life. Then in 2004 he woke from a dream in the middle of the night with an idea for a pillow that would hold its shape. He jumped into the project, cutting up foam and material, learning to sew the pillows himself. When he finally had a finished model, he unsuccessfully pitched the items to chain stores.
While struggling to keep MyPillow going, Lindell finally bottomed out on Jan. 16, 2009. A Christian — today Lindell can always be seen with a cross dangling from his neck — he believed the MyPillow idea had come directly from God. He asked for the same intervention from above to end his addiction.
“I had one prayer that night,” he told CNBC. “God, I want to wake up in the morning and never have the desire again. … I woke up the next day — and you’ve got to realize this is years of crack addiction — I go, ‘Wow, something’s different.’ ”
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Lindell says his desire to get high was gone.
Infomercials would prove the key to ballooning the business. The 30-minute spots featured Lindell himself singing his product’s praises.
“I want to come across as an average guy, talking to his neighbor,” he told the Star Tribune in 2014. Business picked up after the spots started running in 2011. “By the end of the year, we went from five employees to 500,” Lindell told CNBC. In 2017, MyPillow’s founder estimated the company had spent $100 million on infomercials, with 30 million pillows sold to $300 million in annual revenue.
But the company has run into controversy. Prosecutors from nine California counties hit MyPillow with a lawsuit for running deceptive ads about the health and healing properties of the products. In 2016, the company settled the claims with $1 million in civil penalties, NBC News reported.
In January 2017, Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota downgraded MyPillow’s rating from an “A+” to an “F.”
“Among other issues, BBB has attempted to persuade MyPillow to discontinue their ‘buy one get one free’ (BOGO)/other discount offers without success,” Dana Badgerow, president and chief executive of BBB of Minnesota and North Dakota, said at the time in a news release. “Continuous BOGO offers, which can then be construed as an item’s regular, everyday price, violate not only BBB’s Code of Advertising — which all BBB Accredited Businesses agree to abide by — but also other state and national organizations’ rules.”
Lindell has since said he believes the downgrade could have been motivated by his vocal support of Trump.
The pillow entrepreneur first met Trump in the summer of 2016 when the then-candidate had a 30-minute meeting with Lindell about his business and all-American manufacturing process. Lindell told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal that Melania Trump asked for a pair of his pillows. “I overnighted him pillows from my Minnesota factory,” Lindell said. “I got a personal email from him saying he and his wife really liked MyPillow.”
Lindell was also invited to Trump’s 2017 inauguration, where he hobnobbed with other high-profile Trump backers like Stephen Baldwin and Scott Baio.
The relationship has continued. Last weekend, Lindell was invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago for dinner with the Trumps during the Easter holiday.
“The President shook my hand and told me, ‘You are doing a great job, Michael.’ He also said he is sleeping great on his MyPillow,” Lindell told the Star Tribune.
Despite millions in the bank and proximity to the Trump inner circle, Lindell still regularly talks about his crack cocaine days. As he told CNBC last year, he still has the photo his protective drug dealers snapped — walking-dead skin tone, disheveled hair, mug shot scowl — as a warning.
Lindell plans to use the photo as the cover of an upcoming autobiography.
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Jared Leto’s really quick ‘hitchhike’ across America
Kyle Swenson
Kyle Swenson is a reporter with The Washington Post's social issues team. He previously worked at the New Times Broward-Palm Beach and Cleveland Scene.
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