Computer forensics expert speaks out on Lindell’s election fraud ‘proof’

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The founder and CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, is being ordered to pay five million dollars to a computer forensics expert from Nevada, stemming from a challenge issued at Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” that was held in Sioux Falls.

Lindell claims to have data that proves China interfered with the 2020 US election. This was the focus of the symposium in August of 2021, where he offered to pay five million dollars if anyone could prove him wrong. On Thursday, the American Arbitration Association ruled that Bob Zeidman, an attendee of the symposium with fifty years of computer programming experience, was able to debunk Lindell’s claims.

Mike Lindell is an outspoken denier of the 2020 election results, saying, “We have every packet capture and all the data from the whole election for the 2020 November third election.”

He received these packet captures to prove his case that China meddled in the election. To his surprise, it’s a conservative man, like Lindell, who is now challenging his so-called “proof.”

Bob Zeidman was skeptical heading into the symposium. Still, he attended to see if it was true.

Zeidman said that his first sign that something was wrong was the lack of organization at the event. He said there was no agenda and day one was mostly filled with Mike Lindell speaking on the stage nonstop. “Which is not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear the cyber experts who allegedly verified this data,” said Zeidman.

“If there was fraud that was done in a voting machine or via a voting machine, it would be found,” said Zeidman. “In an open society, an open internet like the United States, I was skeptical that anyone would even try that because it would be identified very quickly.”

It didn’t take long for many computer experts to become suspicious. According to Zeidman, Lindell’s “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge provided experts with too much data to process in such a short time, but the noticed flaws along the way.

“I can say with certainty that some of the files were just descriptions of voting processes and have nothing to do with any particular election,” said Zeidman.

According to Zeidman, some files were tables of a copious amount of numbers, some were just “gibberish”, and some were large binary files that Lindell’s team claims were the real packet data, but purposely encrypted and encoded it so that they would “be challenged to find the actual data in it” which turned out to be just a spreadsheet.

“And saying, ‘oh, this kind of looks like this kind of file’ and so I’d reverse engineer that kind of file and then that would look like a word processing document and it turns out that I ended up with a word processing document that was just a table of numbers. And that can’t happen by coincidence and I realized that somebody had just drawn up a table full of numbers and then done these processes to make it look like sophisticated data,” explained Zeidman.

On some of the data Zeidman didn’t have time to go through, he found that the file creation date was just a few days before the symposium, and therefore couldn’t be from the election.

“And I said, ‘ok, I’m going to look at this back at the hotel.’ And I packed everything up, walked across to the hotel, and on my way I called up my wife and said ‘think about what we can do with five million dollars,’” said Zeidman.

Zeidman showed some of his findings to another expert at the symposium, not aware that the person he was showing it to was Mike Lindell’s eventual testifying expert witness at the hearing. He asked the expert if he knew what it was and the man said he did not. This was when he realized it was a word-processing document file.

Zeidman, following the contest rules, submitted his report before he left Sioux Falls. He submitted the report on a flash drive and he even filed a copyright registration on his report because he suspected Lindell’s team would destroy the report. Mike Lindell’s team did receive the report and after a while of hearing no response from them, Zeidman and his attorneys went to the American Arbitration Association.

Zeidman believes that election fraud does occur, but that Lindell’s actions and alleged fake data is distracting in the battle for election integrity. For him, today’s ruling is a step in the right direction.

“I think there was fraud. I don’t know how much,” expressed Zeidman. “My main concern is that Lindell basically had overtaken the fraud examination with his money and influence, and so if there is legitimate fraud, it’s not getting examined because Lindell is sucking all that oxygen out of that room with his money and his voice saying ‘here’s the data’, and pointing to something that was bogus.”

“We need to have people willing to point out voter fraud where it occurred, but not make it up where it didn’t occur,” said Zeidman.

Zeidman says that he and his wife live comfortably and that this is not about the money. He said that when he does get his five million dollar payout, he will be donating it to non-profits committed to election security. Of course, that won’t come until after a potential battle with Lindell in court.

This is not the only legal battle Lindell is involved in. Dominion Voting System is suing Lindell right now. Zeidman says that through this process, he’s writing a book about his side of the story.

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