- MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told Insider he had to borrow $10 million in 2022 to keep MyPillow afloat.
- Lindell said he'd also sold a building for $2 million and borrowed a further $2 million for himself.
Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, says he had to borrow $10 million in 2022 just to keep his pillow company afloat.
Speaking to Insider on Wednesday night, Lindell said that to keep MyPillow going, he borrowed "about 4 million in May, 2 million in the summer, and 4 million in September."
And on top of that, Lindell said he's personally been borrowing money to stay liquid, too.
"I sold a building I had in Savage, in Minnesota, in October," Lindell told Insider. "And I had to borrow 2 million too. I've spent it all on fighting for this country."
Lindell told Insider that some creature comforts — like his private jet, which had a door come off it in October — haven't been sold yet.
"I have to get around, you know," Lindell said.
Lindell declined to reveal who loaned him the money but told Insider that a majority of the borrowed cash had gone to defending MyPillow against the lawsuits filed against the company. One of the major ongoing lawsuits is a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which cites both MyPillow and its owner, Lindell, in the case.
Dominion sued Lindell in February 2021, alleging that the pillow mogul defamed it by falsely claiming Dominion helped rig the 2020 election. Lindell is countersuing Dominion for $1.6 billion.
Lindell has been facing financial issues for months. In January 2022, one of Lindell's banks, the Minnesota Bank & Trust, described him as a "reputation risk" and cut ties with him a month later. And in June, Walmart, MyPillow's biggest distributor, pulled Lindell's pillows from its stores.
Lindell has also been burning through his cash. In March, he told Insider he was spending "at least $1 million a month" to build social media apps like his Facebook-like platform, Frank Social.
Lindell told Insider on Wednesday night that his "burn rate" is currently still at "a million a month," though part of this now goes to funding his newly formed "Election Crime Bureau." The bureau consists of 40 staff members who he says are working hard to uncover more information about the 2020 election.
When asked if he's finally run out of money, Lindell said he's "still earning money" but is spending the majority of any profit he reaps on attempts to try to prove the 2020 election was rigged.
"I pay people all over the country to keep on going to get rid of these electronic voting machines," Lindell said. "So you know, I'm still earning money. And whenever I get my paychecks, whenever I get money, I stick it right back into that."
None of these attempts — from bankrolling lawsuits to try to halt the use of voting machines, to appealing to the Supreme Court to try to overturn the 2020 vote — have succeeded thus far. There is also no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Lindell did not respond to Insider's question on how much money he has left.
But the pillow CEO told "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" during an interview in February — where Lindell was filmed sitting inside a gigantic claw machine — that he has spent more than $40 million of his personal net worth pushing Trump's baseless voter fraud claims. This figure amounts to four-fifths of Lindell's estimated $50 million net worth.