Mike Lindell must pay man $5M in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ challenge, judge says

silence7@slrpnk.net to politics @lemmy.world – 312 points –
washingtonpost.com
21

Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert who voted for Trump twice, did just that

It’s heartwarming to see that there are still some Trump voters willing to set partisanship aside for the sake of personal greed.

Personal greed was probably why he voted for Trump both times anyway.

"look sure he says some mean tweets but taxes and immigrants, etc."

Yep. "All I know is my taxes are lower."

And probably can't comprehend that Trump's tax cut expiration was purposely set during the next administration as a political ploy

“And if the minorities, women, queer, immigrants are losing their livelihood in the process, that’s just icing on the cake”

That could be something they really want, that could be an added bonus for them or they could just not give a fuck about any of those people dying in a ditch.

It's a big tent party!

You can either get eaten by leopards or the capitalism machine. Sometimes one feeds the other.

Heh, and the more charitable explanation he provides:

Wednesday’s ruling, Zeidman said, made him feel “a little more optimistic” about receiving the $5 million.

“I still think chances are probably small that I’ll see it,” he said. “But again, I wish people would get the lesson that it’s okay to challenge your own beliefs.”

“When I called the challenge Prove Mike Wrong, I wanted people to validate my own false opinions, not actually prove me wrong.” - Mike, probably

Sounds like Mike has the burden of proof all wrong. If he says that he has data that proves something, it's his job to present a representative sample of that data, to explain what it represents, and why it means what he thinks it means.

Which is funny, because even though he reversed the burden of proof, this guy was still able to prove him wrong.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


In 2021, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell offered $5 million to anyone who could disprove his claim that he had data showing voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Lindell, a prominent election denier and staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump, claimed to have data showing Chinese interference in the 2020 race.

If someone could “Prove Mike Wrong,” as the challenge was called, and show the data was unrelated to the election, they would get the payout, Lindell said ahead of an August 2021 “cyber symposium” held in South Dakota where contestants would review the files.

Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert who voted for Trump twice, did just that, a federal judge in Minnesota determined Wednesday, upholding a previous ruling from a private arbitration panel.

In recent years, Lindell has been embroiled in legal and financial troubles, including a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems over false election claims.

To receive the challenge’s $5 million prize, Lindell asked his symposium participants to prove that the data “unequivocally does NOT reflect information related to the November 2020 election.”


The original article contains 714 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Why did the trump supporter prove him wrong? Or has his personal greed risen above his support, and the realisation that that support meant ignoring truth?

It sounds like that was his field so this was probably the equivalent to scratching a scratchie for them. And once you've found out you've won $5 million I suppose it's hard to pass up.

Again? I thought he already won the 5mil in court

He won 5 million in arbitration. This was a court saying that yes, it really is enforceable.

More info

tl;dr Lindell provided a garbled Word doc, Zeidman thought he might make history by helping overturn the election

Lindell’s claims that he had packet captures intrigued Zeidman, who has served as an expert for tech firms in intellectual property lawsuits. Describing himself as a “reasonable” and “moderate conservative” who voted twice for Donald Trump, Zeidman told the arbitration panel he was skeptical of Lindell’s claims. But he said he also did not believe Lindell would promote unvetted data, so he thought the conference could offer a “great chance to see history in the making, perhaps an election overturned.”

At the event, Zeidman received the contest rules. There was no mention of disproving Chinese interference, according to contest forms submitted in the arbitration case. Rather, winners would have to prove that the data provided “does NOT reflect information related to the November 2020 election.”

[...]

The files provided to Zeidman and other experts were primarily text or PDF files. Zeidman testified that one was a flow chart purporting to show how elections generally work. Another, when unencrypted, was a list of internet IP addresses, and others were enormous files of what appeared to Zeidman to be random numbers and letters.

The packet captures that Lindell had promised were nowhere to be found, according to Zeidman.

Zeidman laid out his findings in a 15-page report. “I have proven that the data Lindell provides … unequivocally does not contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election,” he wrote.

&

Zeidman, who said he voted twice for Trump and describes himself as a conservative Republican, said some of the data from Lindell amounted to "a simple Word document and a table" that had been made "to look sophisticated, and it wasn't." Part of the document included IP addresses — a unique address that identifies a device on the internet — that Zeidman said were "meaningless."

Good Lord. I wonder if it ever occurs to this guy that aligning himself with Rapey McTinyD was a bad idea...how much meth/crack did he do, anyway?