MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is trying to fight back after the FBI seized his cell phone at a Hardee’s drive-thru last week.
Lindell filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday claiming that his First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights had all been violated when FBI agents executed a search warrant for his phone on Sept. 13 at a Hardee’s in Mankato, Minnesota. The warrant was part of the DOJ’s investigation into the Mesa County election equipment security breach masterminded by indicted clerk Tina Peters, an ally of Lindell.
The lawsuit (which lists Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Chris Wray and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota as the defendants) demanded that the government return his phone and any data it may have accessed on the device.
The pillow tycoon, who’s spent nearly two years branding himself as an expert on cyber hacking to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, claimed in his lawsuit that he doesn’t own a computer and that he depends on his phone as his “exclusive method” of operating his businesses, aside from face-to-face communications.
“Mr. Lindell has no ready access without his cell phone to passwords that are necessary for his access to essential computer programs, and financial transactions through the company banks,” the lawsuit stated. “The cell phone is also programmed to operate Mr. Lindell’s hearing aids.”
The lawsuit also accused the FBI agents of trying to “elicit allegedly incriminating evidence” from Lindell at the Hardee’s when they asked him about Peters and Dominion Voting Systems, the voting tech company at the center of MAGA World’s voter fraud conspiracy theories.
Peters was indicted after data from Mesa County’s breached election system was leaked during Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” that she attended last year.
Read lawsuit filing below:
