Mike Lindell, also known as the My Pillow Guy, listens to former President Donald Trump speak in July 2024 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Mike Lindell’s management company is now on the hook for $4,508 in attorney’s fees to a two-time Donald Trump voter already awarded a $5 million judgment over the ill-fated 2020 election interference-focused “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge that the pillow mogul issued at a cyber symposium years ago.
On Thursday in Minnesota federal court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dulce J. Foster didn’t give petitioner and software engineer Robert Zeidman all that he asked for in attorney’s fees, but nonetheless concluded that a fee award was warranted, as Lindell Management LLC was admittedly “delinquent” in its responses to document production requests Zeidman made in post-judgment discovery, requests that took at least 11 hours for the petitioner’s lawyers to work on.
“The Court held a hearing on the Motion on July 17, 2024 and largely ruled on the Motion from the bench. During the hearing, Respondent admitted that it had not provided any responses—at all—to Petitioner’s Interrogatories,” the magistrate recounted. “Though Respondent produced a handful documents in response to Petitioner’s Document Requests, it did not provide comprehensive responses to those requests and failed to produce any written responses or objections explaining why any documents were withheld.”
Lindell issued the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge at a South Dakota election fraud symposium in 2021, claiming that data proved China had interfered with the 2020 U.S. election. But Zeidman proved Lindell wrong, a court ruled, upholding a $5 million arbitration award.
“The panel concluded that Zeidman proved that each file did not include packet capture data and thus was not related to the November 2020 election, so he had satisfied the Challenge rules, and was entitled to the $5 million reward,” the February opinion said.
Thereafter, Lindell’s lawyers began withdrawing from the case.
On Wednesday, attorney Thomas Miller submitted a declaration on behalf of Lindell Management LLC to respond to Zeidman’s “pending request for monetary sanctions for tardiness in responding to interrogatories and requests for production of documents.”
Miller made clear that there is “no dispute that the responses have been delinquent.”
“Nor do I dispute that the time records submitted by opposing counsel are accurate,” he added, only quibbling with the “extremely overbroad” nature of the requests and asserting that the fee award “should be adjusted accordingly.”
In the end, the magistrate on Thursday decided that Zeidman’s lawyers would not get the $12,800 in fees sought, reducing the number of billable hours by five and the hourly rate of $800 to $400.
“Petitioner has not produced any evidence or affidavits supporting his requested rate of $800 per hour. Without more, the Court cannot conclude that $800 per hour is in line with reasonable rates prevailing in this community,” the judge said. “Based on the information in the record and the Court’s own knowledge and experience regarding prevailing market rates, and taking into account the uncomplicated nature of this discovery dispute, the Court concludes that an hourly rate of $400 per hour is most in line with those prevailing in the community for similar services.”
And rather than crediting Zeidman’s lawyers for 16.1 billable hours, Foster agreed that the petitioner’s attorneys created more work for themselves with “overbroad as drafted” discovery requests.
“Petitioner’s refusal to narrow the scope of those requests contributed to the costs he incurred,” the judge said, so “the Court applies a 30% deduction to counsel’s hours for purposes of calculating the attorney’s fee award.”
Doing the math, Foster “directed” Lindell Management LLC to pay up $4,508 for 11.27 hours of work — roughly $8,300 less than Zeidman’s lawyers sought and about five hours fewer.
Still, Business Insider reported, Lindell reacted to the ruling by saying: “More attacks!”
Zeidman previously told NPR that he’s a conservative Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and hadn’t made a decision (as of 2023) on whether he would do so in 2024, saying he hoped to have “another choice in the upcoming election.” The status quo is unchanged on that front.
In the NPR interview, Zeidman said that he believes Lindell “is hurting Trump much more than he’s helping him because everything Lindell is presenting is so obviously bogus that it just makes any talk about voter fraud or voter integrity look silly.”
“So even big Trump supporters thanked me,” he said.
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