Mike Lindell, President and Chief Executive Officer of My Pillow Inc., speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, the United States, on Thursday, February 28, 2019.
Aaron P. Bernstein | Bloomberg | Getty Images
MyPillow, the bedding company led by Pro-Trump CEO Mike Lindell, on Monday filed a $ 1.6 billion lawsuit against Dominion Voting Systems, which is currently suing Lindell and its company for defamation.
“This is a free speech case. This is a first amendment case,” Lindell said on a livestream broadcast announcing the lawsuit.
Election technology firm Dominion sued MyPillow and Lindell in February, accusing them of spreading the false claim that the company manipulated the 2020 election for President Joe Biden by manipulating votes. Former President Donald Trump’s election campaign and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits as they sought to reverse the election results of major states and change the outcome of the race.
Dominion is demanding more than $ 1.3 billion in fines and damages. The “virus disinformation campaign” spread by Lindell and others had “irreparably damaged” the company’s reputation. Dominion has filed similar lawsuits against Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, attorney Sidney Powell, and Fox News.
MyPillow’s new complaint, filed in Minnesota federal court, accuses Dominion of “an illegal campaign to punish and silence its critics”.
MyPillow’s lawsuit also distinguishes between Lindell and his company, arguing, “MyPillow has had no discussion of the 2020 election.”
“In making these statements, Lindell spoke for himself, not MyPillow,” the lawsuit said.
Andrew Parker, an attorney for MyPillow, denied that MyPillow’s lawsuit was a counterclaim against Dominion.
However, the lawsuit itself states that “the aim is to repair the serious damage MyPillow has suffered from the suppression of language and attacks by Dominion on the company.”
“This is an unsubstantiated retaliation suit filed by MyPillow to distract attention from the damage it has caused Dominion,” Dominion legal adviser Stephen Shackelford said in a statement to CNBC.
Dominion has signaled that more lawsuits may be on the way. Shackelford said last month that the company “has not excluded any parties, including individual Fox News agents.”
MyPillow filed a motion to dismiss Dominion’s libel case Monday morning.
