This weekend, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell will address the El Paso County GOP as the keynote speaker for their annual Lincoln Day Dinner. Lindell, who is facing a defamation lawsuit from former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer, is one of the handful of election conspiracists still pushing claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former Donald Trump.
High-profile entities like Fox News, One America News Network, and Newsmax, as well as individuals like Sydney Powell, the famed “kraken lawyer,” have settled their lawsuits with Coomer or his former employer, Dominion Voting Systems. Coomer’s lawsuits have ensnared numerous figures from the election denial movement, including former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Other “election integrity activists,” like former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, have faced criminal charges for their efforts to prove fraud in the 2020 election, or for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, which was inspired in part by “election integrity” rhetoric. Those who haven’t been charged with crimes or named in civil suits are now trying to distance themselves from their connections to the “Stop the Steal” movement.
“I don’t really know,” said retired General Michael Flynn, when asked if the 2020 election was rigged by Dominion voting systems during an April 4 deposition as part of Coomer’s lawsuit against Oklahoma entrepreneur Clay Clark. “I mean, I don’t really know. I know, I know that there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot being contested. I know that. And I don’t know that to be true or not.”
Clark founded the ReAwaken America Tour, and with Flynn as his headliner traveled across the country for multi-day speaking events packed with election deniers, COVID deniers, faith healers, and various QAnon figures.
Flynn’s guarded response from the Coomer deposition is a far cry from the statements he would make less than a month later during an interview with Chris Cuomo.
“I think the 2020 November election was filled with fraud and there’s all kinds of evidence that shows that,” said Flynn, who was pardoned by Trump after being convicted of lying to the FBI, during the interview with Cuomo. ”It’s undeniable now.”
During the April deposition, Flynn also distanced himself from Joe Oltmann, the Douglas County podcaster and gun store owner whose outrageous claims of catching Coomer on an “Antifa conference call” are at the heart of nearly all the lawsuits currently in litigation.
“If he walked in the door right here in this office, I mean, I wouldn’t even recognize him,” said Flynn of Oltmann, who has bragged about his connections to Flynn and other high-profile figures in the election denial movement. Oltmann has also had Flynn’s brother, Joe, as a regular guest on his Conservative Daily Podcast.
Flynn also admitted that he doubted Oltmann’s claims of an anthrax attack following a Dec. 11, 2021 appearance at the Dallas, Texas ReAwaken America tour stop.
“[Lawyer]: Was that tour event the victim of an anthrax attack?
[Flynn]: Say that again?
[Lawyer]: Did somebody attack that event with anthrax?
[Flynn]: Is that a serious question?”
Flynn claims he and Clark found the idea of an anthrax attack at their event humorous: “If we did [discuss the incident], we were — we probably laughed about it, because anthrax is a very serious, you know. It’s a very serious thing, and if it was, we would know about it. Everybody. The world would have known about it.”
Ultimately, Flynn refused to substantiate Oltmann’s claims. “I had no reason to believe that Joe Oltmann’s claims were true,” said Flynn. “And I guess the reverse — the reverse of that is I had no reason to believe that they weren’t. I mean, I just don’t — I don’t recall.”
In June, a U.S. Magistrate Judge recommended Oltmann be held in contempt for fleeing a deposition in lieu of substantiating his claims of the Antifa conference call by providing his source for the alleged call.
