MyPillow CEO doesn’t have to pay $5M in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ election-fraud challenge, 8th Circuit says
Contracts
MyPillow CEO doesn’t have to pay $5M in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ election-fraud challenge, 8th Circuit says
July 28, 2025, 3:42 pm CDT
MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell on April 4, 2023, in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press)
A federal appeals court has refused to affirm an arbitration panel decision that awarded $5 million to a software development expert who asserted that he won a “Prove Mike Wrong” election-fraud challenge by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis ruled against computer forensics expert Robert Zeidman in a July 23 opinion, saying the arbitration panel had imposed contract terms that were not in the official contest rules.
Publications promoted an August 2021 “cyber symposium” in which Lindell said he would prove China’s interference in the 2020 election through cyber data and “packet captures,” a reference to the file format for archiving internet traffic. The contest rules that established a contract, however, were not that specific, the 8th Circuit said in the opinion by Judge James B. Loken.
Zeidman said he won the contest because 11 files provided to him did not contain packet capture data and therefore did not contain data related to the 2020 election. An arbitration panel agreed after Lindell’s contest judges rejected his claim to the $5 million prize.
But the contest rules said nothing about packet data. Instead, they said the winner would have to prove that data supplied to contestants “unequivocally does not reflect information related to the November 2020 election,” the appeals court said.
According to the rules, a three-member panel of contest judges would identify winners who, in their professional opinion, proved “to a 100% degree of certainty that the data shown at the symposium is not reflective of November 2020 election data.”
The rules also said Minnesota law would govern the contest and disputes that arise. Under that state’s law, the intent of the parties is governed by the plain language of the written agreement as long as it is unambiguous.
The arbitration panel said if the phrase “relating to the election” is broadly construed, “the contest would not really be a contest at all.”
But the arbitration panel “effectively amended the unambiguous challenge contract” when it required packet data, the 8th Circuit said.
“There is no way to read ‘information related to the November 2020 election’ as meaning only information that is [packet capture] data,’” Loken wrote.
Reuters, Law360 and the New York Times are among the publications covering the 8th Circuit’s decision.
The case is Zeidman v. Lindell Management.
See also:
Lawyers for MyPillow CEO sanctioned for fake case citations; judge questions their explanation
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