MyPillow’s Mike Lindell ordered to pay $2.3m in voting machine defamation trial; The Guardian, June 16, 2025

Rachel Leingang, The Guardian; MyPillow’s Mike Lindell ordered to pay $2.3m in voting machine defamation trial

 "MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, has been ordered to pay $2.3m to a former employee of a voting machine company who sued him for defamation, adding to the legal woes the prominent election denier faces.

A Colorado jury decided the case and amount after Eric Coomer, who formerly worked in security and voting technology strategy for the voting machine company Dominion, filed a lawsuit against Lindell and a host of others who spread false conspiracy theories that upended his life. Coomer’s attorneys had originally requested $62.7m...

Coomer testified that he had gone into hiding and experienced death threats as a result of the persistent lies about him. An expert hired by his side said it would cost about $2.8m for him to repair his reputation, according to Colorado Public Radio.

“Ultimately it’s to try to regain some semblance of my life. I didn’t just lose my livelihood, I lost my life as a direct result of statements by Mr Lindell accusing me of being a traitor,” Coomer said.

Using defamation law to go after people and companies trafficking in election lies have become more common after 2020. Several lawsuits have been settled, including a claim Coomer brought against conservative outlet Newsmax, while juries have awarded damages in others, including a major judgment against Rudy Giuliani."

Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of disinformation?; The Guardian, April 4, 2021

David Smith, The Guardian; Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of disinformation?

"“Libel laws may prove to be a very old mechanism to deal with a very new phenomenon of massive disinformation,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist. “We have all these fact checkers but lots of people don’t care. Nothing else seems to work, so maybe this will.”...

Eisen, a former White House “ethics czar”, suggests that the Dominion case could provide at least one model for dealing with the war on truth.

“The United States and the world need to deal with disinformation,” he said.

“There can be no doubt that every method is going to be required but certainly libel law provides one very important vehicle for establishing consequences and while there’s no such thing as a guarantee when you go to court, this is an exceptionally high risk for Fox with a large price tag attached as well.”...

 RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, told the Washington Post: “We are seeing the way that libel has become a real battleground in the fight against disinformation."