More litigation involving Minnesota Republican governor candidate Mike Lindell is tied to his work to discredit the 2020 presidential election and fallout from that.
This week, Lindell's MyPillow company filed a lawsuit in which it links business problems to him and his company being subject of a federal investigation and records seizure. The lawsuit is against a slippers vendor in California — ACI International — that pulled back from MyPillow.
Lindell is one of more than a dozen candidates running for the GOP endorsement for governor. A call to Lindell wasn’t immediately returned.
The lawsuit says the slippers supplier put curbs on MyPillow's Amazon account over unpaid debts. An email included in the filing said the debt is $15 million.
MyPillow attorney Barbara Podlucky Berens writes in the complaint that the company has been trying to enforce its contract rights and that the dispute has pushed the Minnesota manufacturer to the brink.
“MyPillow will be irreparably injured because MyPillow will be forced out of business and into default of other contracts and its employees (who are part owners of My Pillow), will lose their jobs at My Pillow as result of defendant’s failure to lift its levy on My Pillow’s Amazon account,” she wrote in seeking a court order.
MyPillow lawyers tie it back to Lindell's election denial advocacy. Court papers say MyPillow came under investigation in 2022 by the FBI as part of an operation called Arctic Frost.
“It is only recently that My Pillow learned that it had been a target of Arctic Frost,” the lawsuit reads.
Documents released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, confirm that federal investigators pushed at least one bank linked to MyPillow to turn over details about wire transfers to a political group in November 2020.
MyPillow’s financial troubles have lingered even as the investigation faded. The new court filing said MyPillow turned over “highly confidential documents” to ACI to try to clear up the business matter. ACI asked for a security agreement that includes settlement information between MyPillow and the federal government.
“The actions taken against MyPillow in the name of Arctic Frost were improper, unwarranted and legally actionable,” Lindell’s lawyers write, hinting at possible legal action against the federal government over the investigation.
Lindell’s work to further the false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election has drawn other lawsuits and legal judgments against him. Many of the cases are still in progress.
In December, a Minnesota court issued a judgment against Lindell for more than $2.7 million he owes Federal Express over past debt and interest.
