Lawyers bail on MyPillow’s Michael Lindell, saying he owes millions in fees

Prominent election conspiracy theorist and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell faces money woes so serious that two law firms defending him are seeking to dump him as a client.

A Minnesota-based law firm, Parker Daniels Kibort, and Washington-based Lewin and Lewin notified federal judges in Washington and St. Paul Thursday that they are owed millions of dollars in legal fees by Lindell and his company in connection with lawsuits where voting machine makers Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems and a former Dominion employee are suing Lindell for defamation.

One of the attorneys, Andrew Parker, said in court filings that MyPillow stopped paying his firm’s invoices on time this year and has paid only a fraction of them in recent months.

“Beginning in August 2023 and again in September 2023, PDK warned Defendants that if they did not pay the outstanding invoices and continue to pay new invoices as they came due, PDK would have to withdraw its representation of Defendants,” Parker wrote. “Two relatively small payments were made in August 2020 and two relatively small payments were made in September 2023, but these were only a fraction of the total owed….At this time, Defendants are in arrears millions of dollars to PDK.”

In an interview with POLITICO Thursday, Lindell acknowledged he hasn’t paid the lawyers and said he doesn’t fault them for seeking to pull out.

“These guys were courageous lawyers. They took on the case when nobody else would….Over the last two months, we haven’t been able to pay these lawyers at all,” Lindell said. “They came to me and said we can’t go on if we can’t get paid. I said, there’s no money.”

Lindell said his company experienced money woes in recent months after American Express cut a line of credit he had from $1 million to $100,000. At the moment, he said, he needs to use all the funds he has access to to make payroll for his company.

“The lawfare has just ran us out of money. That was probably what they wanted to accomplish in the first place. It’s disgusting,” he said.

While Parker’s submissions said Lindell is trying to line up new lawyers, he said he has no immediate prospects on that front. “People are going to be afraid to be lawyers. I don’t know where I go from here,” he said.