Returning from a successful morning hunt at his favorite duck pond, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and a friend pulled into a southern Minnesota Hardee’s drive-thru for a bite on the way home. While awaiting their order, three cars surrounded Lindell’s vehicle from all sides.
Lindell says he told his friend, ‘those are either bad guys, or the FBI.’ It was the FBI, with a search warrant for his phone.
Reached by phone, Lindell tells the Colorado Times Recorder they wanted to talk to him about indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and former math teacher turned Big Lie propagandist Douglas Frank.
“They asked me when I first met Tina. I told them what I’ve always said: I never met her until she arrived at the Cyber Symposium. They asked me about Doug Frank too. I told them I met him when we made the [election fraud conspiracy movie] Scientific Proof.”
Lindell says he considered refusing to hand over the phone in hopes of forcing the FBI to arrest him and thus generating headlines, but that his own lawyer, whom he called while being detained, told him to give the agents his phone. He says he and his lawyer are now working on getting it back from the Department of Justice.
Lindell shared images of a cover letter and search warrant on his podcast yesterday. He told the Colorado Times Recorder that federal agents gave him the documents during the encounter at Hardee’s.
The DOJ declined the Colorado Times Recorder’s request for comment, but the FBI confirmed to multiple news outlets that it executed a search warrant at the location Lindell described.
The warrant authorized federal agents to search Lindell and seize his cell phone. The search request, which comes from an Assistant U.S. Attorney based in the Department of Justice’s Grand Junction office, lists the phone data of concern to the DOJ. It specifies any records involving Lindell, Frank, Peters, her staffers Belinda Knisley and Sandra Brown, (who have already been charged).
Also named is longtime Peters’ ally and former Lauren Boebert campaign manager Sherronna Bishop as well as Conan Hayes, the surfwear millionaire alleged to have copied the Mesa County election files. The DOJ describes them all as “co-conspirators” in the various alleged charges related to the copying and theft of Mesa County election data. Those data files eventually appeared on a QAnon-linked blog and later were presented at Lindell’s 2021 Cyber Symposium as proof of voter fraud, a claim election experts promptly debunked.
Federal and state law enforcement searched the homes of Bishop and Peters last November, before eventually charging Peters with multiple felonies.
More recently, Peters claims that she, Bishop, Hayes and Congresswoman Lauren Boebert dined together in Grand Junction the night after Hayes allegedly copied the secure drives. Peters herself was subpoened just last week as part of Dominion Voting Systems billion-dollar civil suit against Lindell.
Lindell has funded numerous election fraud conspiracy projects, including multiple in-person conferences and several documentary-style movies, as well as a national organization, Cause of America, which was modeled upon a Colorado group, U.S. Election Integrity Plan, and still employs several Coloradans, including at least one Republican statehouse candidate.
Lindell says he asked the agents why they weren’t instead looking for evidence of election fraud, specifically referencing infamous conspiracy huckster Dennis Montgomery. Lindell also claims that additional proof of election fraud remains under seal in a Nevada court case.
“If [the Nevada judge] lift that gag order, all you guys are going to owe me the biggest apology this world’s ever seen,” says Lindell. “And I’m looking forward to it. I’ll have a big reception- I’ll pick out some big stadium somewhere and I’ll invite all you terrible reporters around the country. You can all just say sorry, apologize, and have some good food.”
