Election conspiracy theorist sticks by false 2020 claims in defamation trial

DENVER — One of the nation's most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, stuck by his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen while testifying Monday during a defamation trial over statements he made about a former official for a leading voting equipment company.

Taking the stand for the first time during the trial, Lindell denied making any statements he knew to be false about Eric Coomer, the former product strategy and security director for Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems. Among other things, Lindell accused Coomer of being ''a part of the biggest crime this world has ever seen."

Lindell also distanced himself from a story told by a conservative podcaster who accused Coomer of helping to rig the 2020 election. It was discussed during a 2021 symposium Lindell hosted to discuss election fraud. Lindell said he did not know about the story before it was discussed onstage at the event and only learned about it during the trial.

Coomer said his career and life have been destroyed by statements Lindell made about him and allowed to be promoted through his online media platform, Frankspeech.

During sometimes rambling testimony in federal court in Denver, Lindell painted himself as the victim of ''lawfare'' — when people are sued to scare them into silence.

Several conservative news organizations, including Fox News,Newsmax and One America News, have settled defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies over allegations that they promoted falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. In 2021, Newsmax also apologized to Coomer for airing false allegations against him.

Nevertheless, Lindell said he hoped his trial would lead people to look at what happened in the election and get rid of electronic voting machines, which have been targeted in a web of conspiracy theories.

Reviews, recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his 2020 loss all affirmed Democrat Joe Biden's victory. Trump's own attorney general at the time said there was no evidence of widespread fraud, and Trump and his allies lost dozens of court cases seeking to overturn the result.

Lindell said he never accused Coomer of rigging the election, but he testified that Coomer's claims led Newsmax to block him from being able to go on air to talk about voting machines.

''You're part of the biggest coverup of the biggest crime the world has ever seen,'' he said to the Coomer lawyer questioning him, Charles Cain.

Lindell said he used to be worth about $60 million before he started speaking out about the 2020 election, and now he has nothing and is $10 million in debt.

''I believe what you did to me and MyPillow was criminal,'' he said to Cain during questioning.

Both Cain and U.S. District Judge Nina Wang had to remind Lindell several times to listen to the questions and only provide the answers to them, rather than head off on tangents.

During the trial, Coomer's attorneys have tried to show how their client's life was devastated by the series of conspiracy theories about him. Lindell was comparatively late to seize on Coomer, not mentioning him until February 2021, well after his name had been circulated by other Trump partisans.

Coomer said the conspiracy theories cost him his job, his mental health and the life he'd built and said Lindell's statements were the most distressing of all. He specifically pointed to a statement on May 9, 2021, when Lindell described what he believed Coomer had done as ''treason.''

Asked by his attorney what he wants out of the trial, Coomer said he would like an apology, compensation and ''a chance of rehabilitating my public image.''

Lindell's attorneys argued that Coomer's reputation was already in tatters by the time Lindell mentioned him — partly because of Coomer's own Facebook posts disparaging Trump, which the former Dominion employee acknowledged were ''hyperbolic'' and had been a mistake.

''Your reputation was shattered long before Mr. Lindell said a word about you,'' Chris Katchouroff said to Coomer.

Katchouroff noted that Lindell also is known for making hyperbolic statements and that what he said about Coomer was simply the result of his sincere concern over vote-rigging in the 2020 presidential election — a claim for which there is no evidence.

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Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.