Nap time. |
The MyPillow Company is really, really struggling right now.
The winners and losers of 2024.
Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow is a conservative activist, conspiracy theorist and election denier. He is losing money fast. Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Kohl's dropped the pillow company.
Now its main headquarters in Minnesota is evicting the company. He still has six facilities in the U.S.
MyPillow is facing a court-ordered eviction from a warehouse in Minnesota amid his ongoing legal battles related to his claims about the 2020 election and voting machines, Lindell confirmed to ABC News.
But Lindell claims the eviction does not stem from financial difficulties, and rather is just a formality related to a mutual agreement between himself and the owner of the warehouse to vacate the property, which he says has not been used by MyPillow since the spring of 2023.
Lindell said MyPillow had subleased the space to a candy company last year and was planning on subleasing it to a sugar beet company this year -- but the sugar beet company backed out of the contract at the last minute, leaving himself and the warehouse owner "stranded."
He said he considered finding another subleaser, but he and the warehouse's owner, First Industrial, eventually decided to officially end their contract through the eviction process.
"And I said that's fine," Lindell told ABC News.
MyPillow does owe the owner of the warehouse $217,489 in past-due rent, according to court records.
"Plaintiff seeks to have Defendant evicted from the Premises for failing to pay Rent and other payments and charges due under the Lease Agreement in the amount of Two Hundred Seventeen Thousand, Four Hundred Eighty-Nine and 74/100 Dollars," a complaint from First Industrial says.
But Lindell insisted that his pillow company is doing fine financially.
"MyPillow is in great shape," Lindell said. "We have our best commercial out right now that launched on Monday, the most successful one in five years. It's amazing."
First International did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Over the years, MyPillow has lost numerous advertising opportunities due to Lindell's pushing of false and unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election and election systems around the country.
Last month, a federal judge in Minnesota affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against Lindell, siding with a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden. Lindell had offered a $5 million reward to anyone who could prove that "packet captures" he provided were not valid data "from the November 2020 election," leading software engineer Robert Zeidman to file for arbitration when a panel of contest judges failed to declare him the winner after he concluded the data contained no such information.
Lindell says everything is okay despite his company woes. |
Lindell again said on Thursday that he's appealing this decision, and that the case will "go into next year."
Lindell says he has spent more than $45 million of his own money on claims about the security of voting machines and his push for the use of paper ballots in the 2024 election.
Lindell acknowledged in January that Fox stopped running MyPillow commercials amid a billing dispute.
Lindell confirmed Wednesday that MyPillow owes around $217,000 to Delaware-based First Industrial LP for rent for the facility in Shakopee. He said MyPillow no longer needed the space and removed its remaining property from the warehouse last June before subleasing the space to another company through December.
Another company was going to start subleasing the space in January but backed out and “left us all stranded,” he said. MyPillow offered to find another tenant, he said, but the landlord just wanted to take back control of the warehouse instead. The $217,000 is for unpaid rent for January and February, he said. He also said MyPillow continues to lease space elsewhere.
The Star Tribune reported that a Scott County judge held a hearing Tuesday on the warehouse owner's request to formally evict MyPillow, which did not contest the landlord's request.
“MyPillow has more or less vacated but we’d like to do this by the book,” attorney Sara Filo, representing First Industrial, said during the hearing, the newspaper reported. “At this point there’s a representation that no further payment is going to be made under this lease, so we’d like to go ahead with finding a new tenant.”
Judge Caroline Lennon filed the eviction order Wednesday.
Lindell, who continues to propagate former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, in part by rigged voting machine systems, still faces defamation lawsuits by two voting machine companies. Lawyers who were originally defending him in those cases quit over unpaid bills.
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