National Harbor, MD — Two prominent election deniers with Colorado ties pushed election fraud conspiracies at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell and former Trump attorney John Eastman, who was teaching at the University of Colorado’s Benson Center when he authored the infamous “coup memo,” both had speaking slots at CPAC. Lindell said he is continuing to investigate election fraud claiming there were “four senators and nine congressman” whose elections were stolen in the 2024 election. [Editor’s note: based on previous statements, Lindell is likely referring to the four Senate seats Democrats won in states that voted for Trump, and the nine House seats that flipped from red to blue.]
Lindell’s link to Colorado began with his support of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence for multiple felonies related to her tampering with secure voter data. Lindell flew her and other election fraud conspiracists on his private jet to his election integrity conference in South Dakota in August 2021. Lindell subsequently hired other Coloradans to work for him pushing election fraud conspiracies nationwide. Lindell was also sued by Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, two voting machine companies, for defamation because he claimed they rigged the 2020 election against Trump.
“I told people before the 2024 election, if they tried to steal it again, just like they tried to give us ‘Chinavirus’ 2.0 we would have not stood for it,” Lindell said. “We would have said open up those machines … we would not have tolerated another stolen election.”
He also advocated for all elections to use paper ballots that are counted on the same day people vote.
“One hundred thirty-two countries have banned electronic voting machines,” Lindell said during his speech. “More than 100 countries have banned early voting and mail in voting. The United States of America has the worst election platforms in the world. We now have to make elections great again.”
Lindell was not the only election denier at CPAC. John Eastman is currently in “the middle of the fight,” after he was indicted as a co-conspirator for overturning the 2020 election in Georgia. He was also charged with conspiracy, fraud and forgery in Arizona.
Eastman was a visiting scholar of conservative thought and policy at the University Colorado University of Boulder from 2020-2021. He is currently appealing the suspension of his law license in California, where a judge recommended permanent disbarment for his coordinated attempt to overturn the 2020 election. He has been similarly disbarred in the District of Columbia.
Eastman advised President Donald Trump on many issues, but also created a two-page memo that outlined a plan for former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election in January.
“My client was the President of the United States,” Eastman said. “And he asked me to help him get the legal challenges to the fraudulent and illegal election in 2020 for the course to actually consider that. And for that, I was named as a co-conspirator.”
In an interview with the Colorado Times Recorder, Eastman said that the difference between the 2024 and 2020 elections are that there were blatant illegalities in swing states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2020.
Eastman claimed that the Justice Department was weaponized against him in his cases. He filed an anti-SLAPP motion, which protects free speech, to dismiss the case in Arizona. A judge ruled that the charges are “at least in part some arguably lawful speech,” which could result in the case being dismissed.
“If we don’t get to the bottom of what they did and hold the people who did it accountable, they will do it again,” Eastman said during his speech, which resulted in cheers from the audience.
