- MyPillow CEO
Mike Lindell estimates he's spent $25 million trying to overturn the 2020 election. - Lindell told Insider he's willing to spend everything he had and "sell everything" for his cause.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — estimated to have a net worth of about $50 million — said this week that he'd spent a whopping $25 million pushing voter-fraud claims.
This staggering number was first reported by CNBC's Brian Schwartz, who spoke with Lindell about how much he'd invested in his efforts since Election Day to try to prove widespread
Speaking with Insider on Thursday night, Lindell repeated the $25 million figure, adding that the breakdown included $10 million that he said he spent building Frank Speech, his social-media platform from which he broadcasts nightly.
He told Insider the sum included building the social platform "so I have a place for free speech," adding that he thought the "biggest obstacle" to saving America was conservative media. "Especially Fox, Newsmax, Salem, etcetera," he said. "They are the worst, as they have canceled our voice! They won't talk about the 2020 election or anything against the vaccines."
"I will spend everything I have and sell everything I have if that's what it takes," Lindell added, referring to his campaign to overturn the result of the 2020 election and reinstate
Lindell estimated that about $500,000 had gone into paying lawyers representing him in his legal battle with Dominion Voting Systems. The company sued Lindell for $1.3 billion, and MyPillow is countersuing Dominion for $1.6 billion.
The pillow executive added that part of the cash invested into his post-2020 election-fraud crusade had also funded a legal team for Tina Peters, a GOP clerk in Colorado's Mesa County. Prosecutors accuse Peters of allowing an unauthorized consultant to gain access to the county's voting machines.
Insider has reached out to Peters to confirm Lindell's claim.
According to CNBC's report, Lindell is also said to have contributed cash to Women for America First, one of the permit holders for the January 6 rally in Washington, DC, where Trump called on his supporters to march to the US Capitol. Lindell denied that he was a donor for the group but said he paid $100,000 for an ad on the bus that brought members of the organization to Washington.
"I spent a lot on flying myself and teams to different states to prove that the election crimes happened in their states too," Lindell told Insider on Thursday night. "I am spending a lot more of late."
In a separate estimate to CNBC, Lindell said MyPillow lost about $80 million when retailers stopped selling his bedding products. This is up from an earlier number reported by Insider in February, in which Lindell said he expected to lose $65 million in pillow revenue because of the retailer boycotts.
Fueled by a staunch belief in the baseless theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, Lindell has continued to push a slew of Trump's voter-fraud claims.
In a court filing, the voting-machine maker Smartmatic in December accused Lindell of going on a "crusade without a cause," arguing that his voter-fraud allegations involving voting machines were "fictitious."
There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Lindell, however, has held multiple events, including the cyber symposium and a 96-hour marathon "Thanks-a-Thon" livestream in November, in a bid to convince more people that voter fraud did occur.
Lindell earlier promised his supporters that he'd get a Supreme Court complaint — which baselessly claims widespread election fraud in the 2020 election — to the court before Thanksgiving. He failed to make the deadline, however.
Lindell told Insider on Thursday that changes had since been made to the complaint that "should be done" by this coming Monday.