MyPillow’s Mike Lindell says he’s spent $25m and will pay ‘whatever it takes’ to push 2020 lies

CEO faces $1.3bn defamation case following a series of wild claims about the election

Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of MyPillow, vowed in an interview on Wednesday published in CNBC that he would spend “whatever it takes” to see the fraudulent claims about the 2020 election accepted as fact by the country.

He warned that the Trump-aligned faction of the GOP had until the 2022 election to reinstate Mr Trump as president or they would “lose our country forever”.

His dire prediction comes even as Republicans are predicted to make gains in both houses of Congress during the midterms next year. President Joe Biden is battling poor approval ratings, and inaction on major Democratic priorities by the Democratic-held Senate is seen as a major drag on voter enthusiasm heading in to 2022.

“I will keep spending it because there is no tomorrow. We lose our country. We either only have two paths: either it gets changed before the 2022 election or we lose our country forever. I will spend every dime I have,” said Mr Lindell. “I will spend whatever it takes.”

Mr Lindell has been one of the most prolific sharers of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the results in various states; his efforts against two voting machine manufacturers led to one suing him for $1.3bn for false claims about Venezuela, China, and other supposedly nefarious forces that Mr Lindell believes were afoot in the 2020 election.

He previously hosted a “cyber-symposium” during which he pledged to provide evidence to journalists and the public proving widespread voter or election fraud in the 2020 election results, but no actual evidence was ever presented.

The MyPillow CEO went on to claim that his operatives had uncovered a few thousand supposed cases in Florida where ballots were allegedly cast in the name of voters who had died; it was unclear why he would focus on that state, given that former President Donald Trump won it over Mr Biden.

“We are in 44 states now. We’re doing canvassing efforts. I’ll give an example. In Florida, we canvassed 10,000 people’s names, and 2,600 of them were phantom voters,” he said.

He has spent roughly $2m so far in his campaign, Mr Lindell told CNBC.

Mr Lindell interviewed his favoured candidate in November, during which the two repeated conspiracies about the 2020 election and Mr Lindell suggested melting down voting machines into prison bars.