US firm Dominion Voting Systems has sued MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for $1.3 billion, alleging the Donald Trump supporter tweeted ballot fraud claims just to boost sales.
Dominion launched its case against Lindell on Monday, claiming he launched a "defamatory marketing campaign" against it, Axios reported.
"Lindell’s statements have exposed Dominion to the most extreme hatred and contempt," the firm wrote in its 115-page complaint. "Lindell himself called it the 'biggest crime ever committed in election history against our country and the world'," it added.
"Acting in concert with allies and media outlets that were determined to curry favour with one of their biggest sponsors and to promote a false preconceived narrative about the 2020 election, Lindell launched a defamatory marketing campaign about Dominion that reached millions of people and caused enormous harm to Dominion," the voting machine maker alleged.
Twitter banned Lindell in late January after a series of tweets accusing Dominion and voting machine software firm Smartmatic of conspiring to steal last November's presidential election from Trump and install Democrat candidate Joe Biden. Days later the social media site also blocked MyPillow's corporate account after Lindell used it to continue tweeting.
Conservative media commentators and websites responded in solidarity with the pillow tycoon, encouraging readers to buy from his company. Lindell has even offered discount promotion codes to their audiences.
"I want Dominion to put up their lawsuit because we have 100 per cent evidence that China and other countries used their machines to steal the election," Lindell told Axios in January after receiving a cease-and-desist demand from the firm.
Dominion is also suing Trump's personal attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for the same amount of $1.3 billion each, while earlier this month Smartmatic sued Giuliani, Powell, Fox News and some of the network's hosts for $2.7 billion.
Smartmatic also provided the software for the 2017 election to Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly. The firm's Venezuelan-born founder and CEO Antonio Mugica later flew to London for a press conference in which he claimed the National Electoral Council (CNE) had used his programmes to alter the results by around one million votes to hand victory of the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) — even though the main opposition parties had guaranteed their own defeat by boycotting the election.
