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Oh shit: New pillow guy lawsuit coming "in two weeks"

Gil Bang

By Gil Bang
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ohhhh shit  

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32432

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At this point, it's as sad as it is hilarious.  Because it's obviously a mental illness he has, and he is going to his death bed someday convinced that the 2020 election was fraudulent, as is every other election afterwards.  You would have thought he would have found a new grift angle, but no---he's fully committed that he has evidence, or has seen evidence, and any day now he can show it to the world.

At any rate, fuck him.

 

 

 

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AnTiM

AnTiM 1672

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27 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

At this point, it's as sad as it is hilarious.  Because it's obviously a mental illness he has, and he is going to his death bed someday convinced that the 2020 election was fraudulent, as is every other election afterwards.  You would have thought he would have found a new grift angle, but no---he's fully committed that he has evidence, or has seen evidence, and any day now he can show it to the world.

At any rate, fuck him.

 

And ditto for his hero, donald JAIL trump.

 

 

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C-Man

C-Man 27286

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https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/politics/mike-lindell-2020-election/index.html

MPG ordered to pay $5M to software expert who debunked his false election data.

Quote

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has been ordered to shell out $5 million to an expert who debunked his data related to the 2020 election, according to a decision by the arbitration panel obtained by CNN.

Lindell, a purveyor of election conspiracies, vowed to award the multimillion-dollar sum to any cyber security expert who could disprove his data. An arbitration panel awarded Robert Zeidman, who has decades in software development experience, a $5 million payout on Wednesday after he sued Lindell over the sum.

CNN has obtained arbitration documents and video depositions, including a deposition of Lindell, related to the dispute.

“Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract,” the arbitration panel wrote in its decision. “He proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover.”

The decision marks yet another blow to the MyPillow CEO’s credibility after he publicly touted unproven claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Lindell has also faced defamation suits related to his election claims.

“The lawsuit and verdict mark another important moment in the ongoing proof that the 2020 election was legal and valid, and the role of cybersecurity in ensuring that integrity,” said Brian Glasser, founder of Bailey & Glasser, LLP, who represented Zeidman. “Lindell’s claim to have 2020 election data has been definitively disproved.”

In a brief phone interview with CNN, Lindell said “this will end up in court” and slammed the media and professed the need to get rid of electronic voting machines.

Lindell convened a so-called “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2021, designed to showcase the data he claimed to have obtained related to the 2020 election. He invited journalists, politicians and cybersecurity experts to attend.

“The symposium was to get the big audience and have all the media there and then they – the cyber guys – saying yes this data is from the 2020 election and you better look at how they intruded into our machines, our computers, and that was the whole purpose,” Lindell said in a deposition obtained by CNN.

He also announced a “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” – in which anyone who could prove his data was unrelated to the 2020 election could win the multimillion payout – to get more traction in the media for his election fraud claims.

“I thought, well what if I put up a $5 million challenge out there, then it would get news, which it did,” Lindell said in the deposition. “So, then you got some attention.”

Zeidman signed up for the challenge, agreed to its contractual terms and discovered Lindell’s data to be largely nonsensical.

While Lindell has made a variety of outlandish and unproven claims about the 2020 election, such as insisting foreign governments infiltrated voting machines, the arbitration panel made clear its judgment was solely focused on whether the data Lindell provided to experts was related to the 2020 election.

“The Contest did not require participants to disprove election interference. Thus, the contestants’ task was to prove the data presented to them was not valid data from the November 2020 election,” the arbitration panel wrote.

“The Panel was not asked to decide whether China interfered in the 2020 election. Nor was the Panel asked to decide whether Lindell LLC possessed data that proved such interference, or even whether Lindell LLC had election data in its possession,” according to the arbitration panel. “The focus of the decision is on the 11 files provided to Mr. Zeidman in the context of the Contest rules.”

The panel’s decision ticked through each of the data files provided Zeidman, determining repeatedly that the data was unrelated to the 2020 election.

It’s unclear when or if Zeidman will ever be able to collect his payout. Lindell recently told right-wing podcaster and former Trump administration official Steve Bannon that his company took out nearly $10 million in loans as he battles defamation suits related to his false election claims.

During his deposition, Lindell said he was never concerned someone might actually win the challenge.

“No, because they have to show it wasn’t from 2020 and it was,” Lindell said, chuckling.

 

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31628

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19 minutes ago, C-Man said:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/politics/mike-lindell-2020-election/index.html

MPG ordered to pay $5M to software expert who debunked his false election data.

 

One fun thing, though.  Assuming Zeidman got his judgment against an entity, he could execute that judgment against any assets of the entity that can be located, even if there's a lien on them.  And that can be fun shit.

Not only do you get the asset, but you trigger a "foreclosure" suit by the lien creditor.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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This dude had access to the White House to spread this stuff. And even with that, people barely elected Biden. 

"But muh gas prices!!!1!"

Photos Capture Notes From Mike Lindell's White House Visit - The New York Times

 

Photographer snaps notes of MyPillow CEO after visiting Trump | CNN Politics

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Blotto

Blotto 23585

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Lulz that his career arc is gonna bring him right back around to sucking dick for crack money. Its OK Mike, all your good friends in the GQP will still care about you and be there to pick you up when you're down. If there is one universal truth in the republican party, its that Donald Trump looks after those that look after him. 

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46303

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1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

One fun thing, though.  Assuming Zeidman got his judgment against an entity, he could execute that judgment against any assets of the entity that can be located, even if there's a lien on them.  And that can be fun shit.

Not only do you get the asset, but you trigger a "foreclosure" suit by the lien creditor.

Finally, some GOOD news from @TwiceHorn!

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31628

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38 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Finally, some GOOD news from @TwiceHorn!

Some years back. a lady had taken a default judgment against American Express Travel Services over some small JP matter.

She contacted a colleague about what to do next.  He sent a Deputy Sheriff out to one of their offices in the Galleria on a writ of execution, and the sheriff was getting ready to seize furniture, computes and shit.

Amex cut her a check almost immediately.  Didn't even try to set aside the default.

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Storm the Field

Storm the Field 5304

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2 hours ago, C-Man said:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/politics/mike-lindell-2020-election/index.html

MPG ordered to pay $5M to software expert who debunked his false election data.

 

This is honestly one of the funniest things to ever happen in politics. I mean, this is "Arrested Development in its prime" caliber comedy writing.

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TexasEd

TexasEd 8077

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4 hours ago, Thrawn said:

Damn, how in the hell did I not hear about this contest? This couldn't have taken much effort to debunk this shit. It was just eleven files. Run a few queries, wham bam, $5 million please.

Yeah, and the kicker is that you only had to prove the data was not from the 2020 election.  [Narrator: They weren't] 

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tx ind

tx ind 7013

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5 hours ago, Thrawn said:

Damn, how in the hell did I not hear about this contest? This couldn't have taken much effort to debunk this shit. It was just eleven files. Run a few queries, wham bam, $5 million please.

Bingo.  Just saw the guy that won the suit getting interviewed by Erin Burnett on CNN and he said it only took him a couple of hours.  The chef's kiss is the guy admitted multiple times that he voted for Trump twice.

image.thumb.png.266e80ac6f1569e963e5827ac2328b3c.png

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Bullneck

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2 hours ago, tx ind said:

Bingo.  Just saw the guy that won the suit getting interviewed by Erin Burnett on CNN and he said it only took him a couple of hours.  The chef's kiss is the guy admitted multiple times that he voted for Trump twice.

Eh, $5 million is $5 million.

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TwiceHorn

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What's kind of surprising is that he was stupid enough to actually have people sign some sort of agreement with an arbitration clause, apparently.

Most of those sort of things are "gratuitous offers" that are dubiously enforceable as contracts.  First-year law school contracts fodder.

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Underdog

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On 4/20/2023 at 7:27 PM, tx ind said:

Bingo.  Just saw the guy that won the suit getting interviewed by Erin Burnett on CNN and he said it only took him a couple of hours.  The chef's kiss is the guy admitted multiple times that he voted for Trump twice.

image.thumb.png.266e80ac6f1569e963e5827ac2328b3c.png

For the same election?  Isn’t that voter fraud? 

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26060

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If you watch TV, especially conservative TV, you know Mike Lindell. He’s the guy who comes on every 10 minutes or so to sell his pillows for “the best night’s sleep in the whole wide world.” He’s also the guy who has sunk tens of millions of dollars into supporting investigations and lawsuits that claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

And I just took him for $5 million.

You may have read a little about it. In the summer of 2021, Lindell announced that he was going to hold a “Cyber Symposium” in Sioux Falls, S.D., to release data that proved that U.S. voting machines were hacked by China. He said he would even pay $5 million to anyone who could disprove his data.

Right away, friends started calling to ask me if I was planning to go. After all, I invented the field of software forensics, the science of analyzing software source code for intellectual property infringement or theft. Still, I wasn’t sure. There are a lot of experts that could analyze data. And no one in their right mind would offer $5 million if the data wasn’t real and verified, right? Anyway, the symposium ran three days — not nearly long enough to analyze and verify any data.

But I’m also a tournament poker player. I love a good challenge. And as the calls and emails kept coming in, I started to think, I should go, just to be there when history was made. I voted for Trump twice. If Lindell’s data was correct, maybe a presidential election would be overturned. I’d at least get to meet some really interesting people. So I flew to Sioux Falls.

At the symposium, I saw the competition, about 40 or 50 of them. Some were highly qualified hackers and experienced cyber experts like me. Others were just interested parties with some experience in information technology.

We gathered in two small rooms that looked like stark public-school classrooms. After introducing ourselves, we began downloading Lindell’s Holy Grail — his “proof of election fraud” that came from an unspecified source — which consisted of seven files comprising over 23 gigabytes of data.

Two of the files were generic information about voting machines. Another file was a meaningless one minute, 20 second silent video of a computer screen showing some unknown program being debugged. A fourth file was a 23 gigabyte binary file containing ones and zeroes, allegedly containing packet capture data, or “PCAPs.”

If you’re not familiar with any of that language, packets are the small chunks of information that are sent over a network like the Internet and then reassembled at the receiving end as pictures of your grandkids or cute cat movies from YouTube. PCAPs are records of those packets as they flew around a network.

In numerous interviews, Lindell had claimed that his data showed packet captures of votes flowing outside the U.S. to China where they were modified to switch votes from Trump to Biden, and then sent back to U.S. voting machines.

We used a variety of forensic tools designed to understand and analyze PCAPs, but found this mysterious file didn’t contain any of the 37 standard PCAP formats. I even used the CodeSuite forensics tool I had developed to try to gain any information from the file. Nada.

So I decided to focus on the three remaining files, which were simple text files that could be opened up with any text editor like Notepad that comes preinstalled on every Windows computer. The contents were text representations of hex numbers, which are base 16 numbers used by computers as opposed to base 10 numbers, decimal, used by people.

I started with the ominously named file Chinese_SourceIP_HEX.txt. Having programmed computers for about 50 years, I recognized that each of these hex numbers seemed to represent a code for alphanumeric characters known as ASCII code. So I took a software tool I’d written years ago and ran this text file through it to turn the text representation of numbers into actual numbers.

Next, I opened the resulting file in the Notepad text editor. Sure enough, I saw letters and numbers representing some other kind of code — Rich Text Format code, a very old and simple way of coding word processor documents. (It turns out that it’s sometimes good to be old, wise, and experienced like me.)

I opened this converted file with Microsoft Word and… voila... a table with hundreds of rows of numbers appeared — numbers that looked like IP addresses (that is, the numbers associated with devices connected to a network).

58.250.125.174 7
49.7.20.81 7
58.53.128.88 7
39.103.227.160 7
49.7.21.119 7

With no other information, they were about as meaningful as a list of random words. At that point, it was obvious that the data in these text files were not anything related to the 2020 election. That’s when I knew I had stumbled onto the key. Not the key to showing election fraud, but the key to showing Lindell’s nonsense.

I repeated the same process on the other text files and found even stranger stuff. These files were also obfuscated word processor documents, but contained thousands of lines of gibberish — nothing more than random characters and numbers.

My eureka moment had arrived. While everyone else was looking at the sky, I had found the golden ticket on the ground; while they were trying to find packet data in the files, the truth was that it wasn’t packet data at all. I said something out loud like, “I’m going to take this back to my hotel room and work on it there,” to no one in particular. I quietly and deliberately packed up my laptop and strolled out of the room and out of the venue. On the way back to the hotel, I called my wife. “Start thinking about what you want to do with 5 million dollars,” I told her.

Back in my room, I wrote up my report and registered a copy online with the U.S. Copyright Office as proof that I had written it by the contest deadline. Just in case.

But Lindell’s game wasn’t over yet. The next day, a little before noon, I strolled into the cyber workroom and found everyone still going at it. It turns out there was more data to analyze — Lindell had given us about 50 gigabytes of additional data to plow through. There were four new files, but when I looked at them, they were essentially the same types as the first day’s files except with a spreadsheet containing 121,128 lines of generic information about internet service providers around the world plus their locations, their latitudes and longitudes, their IP addresses, and other miscellaneous information. I determined that nothing in the file was related to the 2020 presidential election, and wondered what my competitors were seeing.

Then came another giant batch of 509 files, comprising many more gigabytes. This was how Lindell planned to keep anyone from winning the challenge, I figured. Just inundate us with files and not nearly enough time to analyze them. That $5 million suddenly seemed to have slipped through my fingers in a way that felt very unfair.

But I had come too far to give up. On the third and final day of the symposium, an idea hit me. I decided to scan the file modification dates for all of the latest files we’d been given and, lo and behold, most of the dates were August 2021, right before the symposium.

In other words, the data were obviously modified right before we examined them. They could not possibly accurately represent data from the November 2020 election.

My flight was leaving early that evening, so I needed to be quick. I ran back to the hotel, added this new information to my report, double checked it, triple checked it, and saved it onto a flash drive. I hurriedly packed my things, rushed to the symposium as it was ending, handed my report on a flash drive to an official-looking person, and ran out to the Uber or Lyft waiting for me by the door. I made it to the airport just in time for my flight home to Vegas.

I guess the rest is history, as they say. I never talked to Lindell after the symposium; he never responded to my findings. So I hired great lawyers at Bailey Glasser and filed an arbitration lawsuit against him. It dragged on for a year and a half, during which his law firm quit and he hired a new one. During the leadup to the hearing with the three-person arbitration panel, his witnesses gave conflicting answers to critical questions like “What exactly was in the data you provided to the experts and how was it related to the November 2020 U.S. presidential election?”

In January 2023, the hearing was finally held. We presented our case. Lindell presented his case, though he only was there for about one hour — to testify — out of the four-day hearing. In April 2023, the decision was handed down, awarding me $5 million.

“Mr. Zeidman,” the arbitrators stated, “proved the data Lindell LLC provided … unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”

Last week, Lindell filed an appeal of the decision, though to win that appeal he needs to show that the arbitrators were corrupt. He also claimed that I was part of “a big cover-up to a much bigger picture” and should never have been allowed to enter the contest. My lawyers and I will continue to fight him in court. When and if I see the money, I plan to donate to a nonprofit to legitimately support voter integrity laws and processes.

Lately, people have been saying to me that I “saved democracy in America.” I’m really flattered, though I think that’s an exaggeration. But if more people sought truth, even when that truth is contrary to their beliefs — such as when a Republican like me destroys a Republican myth — then I think we really can save democracy in America. In fact, I think that’s the only way.

 

 

 

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