Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, claimed the FBI had weaponized the search warrant to seize his phone at the drive-through at a Hardee’s restaurant in Mankato during a Facebook broadcast on Tuesday night.
The incident occurred when Lindell and a friend were on their way home from duck hunting in Iowa when they stopped at a fast-food restaurant surrounded by three cars and four FBI agents.
“In a rambling interview with the Reformer at The Lindell Report, Lindell repeatedly attacked the Reformer and other media outlets, raged against Dominion Voting Systems, and claimed the company was trying to destroy his pillow business. The FBI had seized his cell phone in Mankato, Minnesota.
An FBI spokesperson, Vikki Migoya, confirmed that a federal judge authorized the FBI to execute the search warrant.
Since becoming a Trump acolyte in 2018, Lindell has become increasingly interested in politics and even considered running for governor before claiming that the election was stolen in 2020. In addition to researching fraud, he has produced documentaries that debunk various election claims.
The Washington Post photographer captured Lindell’s notes as he headed into a meeting at the White House during the final days of the Trump administration. As Philip Bump reported in the Post, the notes showed Trump’s plan to move around administration officials and use the military if necessary to remain in power.
As its investigation into President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election intensifies, the U.S. Justice Department recently issued dozens of subpoenas to former Trump aides.
Mike Lindell told the Reformer he was talking on another phone, and the FBI agents said they weren’t going to “bash my door in” like they had others, but they did have a warrant for his phone.
Dennis Montgomery, a former intelligence contractor who claims to have created a supercomputer and software that changed votes, was once called a “Reno casino con man” by the TV show “Frontline.” He said the agents asked him questions about Montgomery.
According to Lindell, the agents also asked him about frankspeech.com, a website claiming to show that the Dominion voting machines were corrupted.
“That’s what they asked me about the most,” he said. “It shows the election gets flipped. It shows that they deleted evidence in my Dominion lawsuit.”
He claimed Dominion’s fingerprints are all over “this phone subpoena.”
“My goal is to eliminate the voting machines and have a paper ballot, hand-counted election.”
(Officials say counting ballots by hand would take weeks and be much less reliable than current systems.)
He has falsely accused Smartmatic and Dominion of committing voter fraud, and right-wing media outlets have increasingly distanced themselves from his claims as he has become more unhinged.
When Lindell created a Minnesota company with 2,000 employees, he asked where reporters were. “They depend on their jobs.”
“Democrats, Republicans, Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, whites. We work hard. Our families depend on us. We’re company-owned, employee-owned, and we were attacked by a company called Dominion for billions of dollars while you sit and protect them.”
While he repeatedly denounced the Reformer, he said it’s “way better” than Fox News or Newsmax, which haven’t reported on voting machines since last year. Those networks also face massive defamation lawsuits by Dominion, which has won several early legal hurdles as both cases approach trials.
“I got CNN to call. They’re the next one I get to call,” he said. “You’re way better than Fox News or Newsmax. I will say this — those two rotten, rotten outlets will not even bother to call me.”
Then he hung up.