Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and right-wing conspiracy theorist, has filed paperwork to run for governor of Minnesota subsequent 12 months.
The Minnesota Marketing campaign Finance Board web site indicates that he created a “Mike Lindell for Governor” committee on Wednesday. Nevertheless, in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, Lindell mentioned he “isn’t 100% but” selected whether or not to run, and can make an announcement subsequent week.
Lindell, who many People acknowledge from showing in his MyPillow advertisements, is a notorious 2020 election denier and supported Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcomes that 12 months.
He has championed the lie that voting machines flipped thousands and thousands of votes from Trump to Joe Biden and bankrolled a “cyber symposium” to promote his false conspiracy theories. He was additionally linked to an allegedly legal scheme to breach election systems in Colorado in an try to show mass fraud.
If Lindell runs and secures the Republican nomination, he would face off towards incumbent Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2024, who announced in September that he’s working for a 3rd time period.
Lindell’s path to the Republican nomination is much from assured. There are already different outstanding GOP candidates vying to problem Walz subsequent 12 months, together with the occasion’s 2022 nominee and the present state House speaker.
Lindell remains to be going through defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Methods and Smartmatic – two of the voting know-how firms that he falsely accused of manipulating the 2020 end result. A federal choose recently ruled that he defamed Smartmatic, however a jury will resolve potential damages.
Lindell denies wrongdoing within the Colorado breach and the defamation fits.
CNN has reached out to contacts for Lindell searching for remark.
Earlier this 12 months, a federal jury found Lindell liable for defaming a former Dominion government, and ordered Lindell to pay about $2.3 million in damages. Regardless of these authorized troubles, Lindell nonetheless commonly promotes false conspiracy theories concerning the 2020 outcomes on his social media platforms.
Some Democrats immediately slammed Lindell’s potential candidacy.
“Mike Lindell is the newest excessive, out of contact candidate to leap into what’s turning into a extra chaotic and harmful race to the far-right by the day,” Izzi Levy, a spokesperson for the Democratic Governors Affiliation, mentioned in an announcement that additional accused Lindell of being a “sleazy businessman.”
