MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks to the media before former President Donald Trump delivers a speech at his Mar-a-Lago home on Nov. 15, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — MyPillow.com boss Mike Lindell is getting the cold shoulder from election officials after he claims to have created a device to prevent vote fraud.
Lindell says he has contacted some state election officials to promote his new device that supposedly detects if a voting machine is connected to the internet, a key claim made by supporters of former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
“We hope to have them in all 50 states,” Lindell told ABC News. “It’s already been checked out … 100% legal.”
There’s just one problem: Election officials say they don’t need or want Lindell’s gizmo. They say election machines aren’t equipped with WiFi, so the devices are not needed, among other issues.
Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams said through a spokesman that Lindell seems to believe that because there is WiFi in a polling place that the ballot counting machines are linked up to the internet.
Other officials noted that election officials do not simply adopt new technology like Lindell’s gadget without a lengthy approval process.
Lindell’s unveiling of the supposed anti-fraud device appears to be a way of winning renewed publicity for his claims that President Joe Biden’s win over Trump was illegitimate. Those claims led to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
One of the more dubious claims of Lindell and other election deniers was that voting machines were hacked to send data to Italy or other foreign countries where they could be doctored to assist Biden.
Lindell says he is facing financial ruin over multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits filed against him by voting machine makers Dominion and Smartmatic.
Dominion already won a $787 million settlement from Fox News over the networks spreading election lies in the weeks following Trump’s loss.
The voting machine lies play a key role in the Georgia racketeering case against Trump and others. Prosecutors accuse Trump campaign officials of orchestrating an effort to hack into voter data in a deep red county in a fishing expedition aimed at uncovering supposed irregularities.
Trump has pleaded not guilty but several co-defenders have agreed to plead guilty and testify against him and others. Lindell has not been charged in the Fulton County RICO case, and it is not clear if he is one of many unnamed unindicted co-conspirators.
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