Source: Politics<\/p>\n
CHASKA, Minn.\u2014<\/span>One day in mid-May, after a rally in South Dakota to promote his new website, Mike Lindell, the pillow magnate and indefatigable election-conspiracy promoter, barreled into his company headquarters, sat himself down at a long table in a conference room he uses as a makeshift office and slid a dropper under his tongue.<\/p>\n The dropper was full of oleandrin, a plant extract that he touts\u2014alarmingly, to scientists<\/a>\u2014as both a preventative and \u201cmiracle\u201d cure for Covid-19. He squeezed.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at this \u2026 I can never get the virus,\u201d he said, near the beginning of the roughly six hours I spent with him over two days at MyPillow. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible for me to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindell is 59, with the frenzied energy of an auctioneer, a lock of hair he alternately combs back or lets flop down in front of his forehead, and an assertive mustache that evokes a mid-1980s Mike Ditka. He speaks loudly and nonstop\u2014\u201cYou need to listen,\u201d he says\u2014about oleandrin, in whose development Lindell has a business interest<\/a>; about pillows; and about his absolute certainty that cyberattacks threw the November election to Joe Biden. Two assistants sat with us in his office, while MyPillow executives flowed in and out hen he yelled for them, or waited to catch his attention from halfway through the door. He was often on his phone, in a series of conversations that at times could leave unclear who exactly he was speaking to.<\/p>\n A former crack addict and born-again Christian, Lindell says God has given him a platform\u2014\u201cthe voice,\u201d he says\u2014to help people see \u201cone of the biggest miracles in history unfold,\u201d which means saving democracy by overturning the results of the 2020 presidential vote and handing the White House back to its rightful occupant, Donald Trump. Starting the week of the election<\/a>, he has pushed this idea relentlessly and seemingly at every level of American politics: He met with Trump at the White House<\/a> in mid-January, shortly before Trump left office; he offered MyPillow customers a discount code<\/a>, \u201cFightForTrump.\u201d He founded a website, called Frank, that has served as a clearinghouse for election conspiracy disinformation. And on Saturday in Wisconsin, he held an all-star rally of Trump-megaphone celebrities, including Diamond and Silk, Dinesh D\u2019Souza and Charlie Kirk. Trump himself appeared \u201clive,\u201d via video, over a Jumbotron.<\/p>\n Lindell travels constantly\u2014where, he won\u2019t say\u2014staying mostly away from home because he says he fears for his safety. He\u2019s planning a \u201cstate to state\u201d tour to convince politicians the election was rigged; at his rally on Saturday, he promised to \u201crent some huge place, I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s a stadium,\u201d and invite politicians and \u201ccyber guys from all over the world\u201d to pore over what he claims is incriminating \u201ccyber evidence\u201d from the election. But for these few days, he is back in his hometown, in a nondescript suburban office with a small MyPillow store attached to it, up the road from the Chaska Curling Center and a Kwik Trip.<\/p>\n In his conference room, Lindell introduced me to two executives he\u2019d grown up with, Bob Sohns and Brad Carlson, then launched into a protracted conversation with them about \u201cGiza cotton\u201d bed sheets (shipping problems were delaying delivery), a new line of children\u2019s blankets with Bible stories on them (Lindell liked the concept, but not the \u201chorrible\u201d edging on one sample), couch pillows that were too thick (\u201cTerrible,\u201d he told them) and pet blankets that his executives wanted him to sell.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, that\u2019s dumb,\u201d said Lindell, whose existing catalog, in addition to its pillows, sheets, slippers and towels, includes a life-size Lindell carboard cutout<\/a> ($39.99), a Lindell bobblehead<\/a> ($13.99, or autographed for $6 more) and his memoir<\/a>, \u201cWhat are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO\u201d ($9.97 with a promo code). <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s got to be the stupidest thing in the history of mankind,\u201d Lindell said of the pet blankets. \u201cWhy would I make them?\u201d<\/p>\n Reminded \u201cthat\u2019s what you said about pet beds,\u201d which Lindell does sell, and told that there\u2019s a market for pet blankets, he relented. \u201cGet it, get it, get \u2018em. \u2026 Go, go, go, go, go.\u201d<\/p>\n On the conference room table, among a clutter of cloth samples, pillows and boxes of oleandrin, sat a stack of fan mail, Lindell\u2019s phone\u2014he doesn\u2019t use a computer\u2014and several \u201cBoston Broadside\u201d newspapers. The right-wing monthly, on its March cover, called Lindell \u201cTHE BRAVEST MAN IN AMERICA<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n More than half a year after Trump lost the presidential election, and with establishment-minded Republicans growing weary of re-litigating its outcome, Lindell has become the embodiment of a specific friction point in the Republican Party\u2019s post-election identity: where the belief that the election was rigged, still widely held among the populist Republican voting base, is crashing into a political and legal system that long ago accepted the reality that it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Just last month, a judge in Antrim County, Michigan, dismissed one of the last remaining election fraud lawsuits<\/a> brought after the November election, a case to which many supporters, including Lindell, had pinned their hopes. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, declared recently<\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindell hasn\u2019t let go. For that, he\u2019s becoming less welcome in some GOP circles. Last month, he was kicked out of a meeting of the Republican Governors Association<\/a> in Nashville, Tennessee, to which he said he\u2019d originally been invited. His business has also suffered. More than 20 retailers have dropped his product<\/a>, and Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine maker, filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against MyPillow and Lindell earlier this year, accusing Lindell of spreading false accusations that the election was rigged.<\/p>\n Lindell calls the Dominion suit a \u201cbig joke.\u201d But in a lawsuit filed recently<\/a> against Dominion and another voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, Lindell estimates he could suffer damages exceeding $2 billion from what he claimed is the companies\u2019 \u201creign of litigation terror and conspiracy to deprive Lindell and others of their constitutionally protected freedom of political expression.\u201d In addition, he said his reputation has suffered and that he has been subjected to \u201cthreats to his personal safety and life.\u201d<\/p>\n Not long ago, Lindell was considered a potential contender for public office in Minnesota, a business-entertainer-turned-politician not unlike Trump or Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler who served a term as Minnesota governor. Today, Lindell complains he can\u2019t even get booked on TV. (His recent appearance on ABC\u2019s \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d<\/a> was \u201ca miracle,\u201d he said, even if Kimmel mostly mocked him.) <\/p>\n Lindell has said the election will be \u201cpulled down\u201d and that Trump will be back in office by August, something Trump himself has reportedly been telling people<\/a>. At the MyPillow headquarters, Lindell hedged on the exact month, suggesting he \u201cmight be off by, maybe it\u2019s September.\u201d Regardless, he offered another firm deadline he\u2019s certain of: \u201cI will tell you this. The election is coming down, 100 percent, and there will be no machines in 2022.\u201d <\/p>\n Even in Minnesota\u2019s Republican-leaning Carver County<\/a>, southwest of Minneapolis\u2014and even among some supporters of Lindell\u2019s who have known him for decades\u2014there is a sense that that might not happen, and that if it doesn\u2019t, the fallout might be too much for Lindell.<\/p>\n In her living room overlooking the Minnesota River not far from the MyPillow offices, Jeanette Lenzen, who with her husband, Dick, once rented Lindell an old bus shed where he made some of his first pillows, said, \u201cMike makes me nervous because he\u2019s so hyper. \u2026 I like what he\u2019s trying to do, but I think he might be going too far.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindell, she said, is up against \u201cthe tweeters and the Facebook people,\u201d who she said have \u201cso much power.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s done so well, I worry that he\u2019ll lose everything,\u201d Lenzen said. \u201cHe just has all the faith in God that God\u2019s going to help him get all this stuff. But sometimes, God says \u2018No.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n If you understand Mike Lindell\u2019s biography, however, it\u2019s not clear what, if anything, will make him stop.<\/p>\n Before Lindell was ever talking<\/span> about God or Trump or election machines, before the idea for a pillow came to him in a dream, there was Schmitty\u2019s Tavern, the bar he owned in Victoria, Minn., and whose atmosphere\u2014if you plucked Lindell off a stage and dropped him back behind the bar\u2014would approximate, in miniature, the election conspiracy circus he orchestrates today.<\/p>\n Before he purchased the bar with gambling winnings in 1990, a friend who had scouted it out for him told him the clientele was \u201cfalling-down drunk. They\u2019re rowdy and throwing stuff. It\u2019s a nut house!\u201d Lindell recalled in his memoir. The friend \u201cdidn\u2019t want to have anything to do with Schmitty\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindell thought: \u201cThis sounds like my kind of place.\u201d<\/p>\n Raised in a trailer park not far from the bar, near a pickle factory in Chaska, Lindell wrote that as a boy he never felt like he fit in with other kids, but \u201clearned a technique that made up for it, a new habit that would become a pattern that lasted well into adulthood: showing off.\u201d There were little things, like jumping into a snowbank from the window of a moving school bus. And there were things that nearly killed him, according to Lindell\u2019s account.<\/p>\n \u201cI fell into a lake and was trapped under a sheet of ice,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI was nearly electrocuted by a bolt of power so massive that it shut down half the town. I bought a motorcycle and wrecked it twice\u2014the second time on the way to a skydiving lesson, during which I smashed into the ground at 60 miles per hour because my parachute didn\u2019t fully open.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI began to feel invincible,\u201d Lindell wrote.<\/p>\n By the 1980s, Lindell, after dropping out of college, had a part-time job as a bartender in Chaska and had learned to count cards, a skill he\u2019d return to over the years at blackjack tables in Nevada when he needed money to cover debts. He was addicted to alcohol, cocaine and gambling, on the hook to his bookies for tens of thousands of dollars, with multiple DUIs and a theft conviction on his record. <\/p>\n In Schmitty\u2019s Tavern, across from Steiger Lake, he created \u201ca daily escape from reality,\u201d he wrote. In his book, Lindell describes \u201cpeople dancing on the bar, spraying each other with Super Soakers, hanging upside down from the rafters \u2026 someone setting off a brick of firecrackers.\u201d Lindell was an accommodating host, allowing customers to write bad checks and waiting to cash them until payday, and he had a loyal following. He wrote, \u201cI was selling alcohol, but I wasn\u2019t selling alcohol, if you know what I mean. I was selling fun. Family. Belonging.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindell added, \u201cMaybe that was because, beginning in childhood, I never felt like I belonged.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Lindell is recognizable in living rooms across the country for the late-night infomercials that, beginning in 2011, sparked a massive expansion of MyPillow\u2019s brand. The privately held company says<\/a> it now employs more than 1,600 people and has sold more than 50 million pillows. Lindell is wealthy enough that he said he spent \u201cmillions of dollars\u201d on network security for his Frank website and $2 million on private investigators to pursue his election fraud claims. He flies on a private jet.<\/p>\n Schmitty\u2019s Tavern has since been re-named and remodeled by new owners, and it\u2019s no longer as uninhibited as when it belonged to Lindell. But some of Lindell\u2019s old friends and clients still drink there. When I walked in with a list of nicknames mentioned in the book\u2014\u201cSkelly, Petey, Pokey, Fly Man, Mohawk, Sibby,\u201d among others\u2014and asked if anyone knew them, Paul Johnson, who was drinking a Budweiser, said, \u201cI\u2019m Pokey.\u201d<\/p>\n He recalled Lindell going \u201con benders for days, not just hours, days,\u201d he said, a memory that squares with Lindell\u2019s own memoir. At the time, Johnson said his expectation for Lindell was that \u201cwe\u2019d end up finding him dead.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a hyper guy,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut he loves people.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson isn\u2019t convinced, as Lindell is, that Trump will be reinstated. But he said, \u201cI like what he\u2019s doing. He ain\u2019t going to back down, either.\u201d<\/p>\n Sitting nearby, a man ordered two Jacks and Coke and said Johnson was probably right. But he felt like he\u2019d seen this already\u2014in Lindell\u2019s two failed marriages, in a career that, before MyPillow took off, was always up and down.<\/p>\n \u201cHe always built things up and lost,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Nearly 20 years since Lindell sold the bar,<\/span> it\u2019s not hard to see the spirit of Schmitty\u2019s still alive in Lindell\u2019s new obsession. If Schmitty\u2019s was, as Lindell wrote, \u201ca place that made you forget your troubles for a while,\u201d today he offers Trump loyalists a comforting fantasy that they don\u2019t really live in an America where 7 million more people picked Joe Biden.<\/p>\n Lindell, in fairness, has a different takeaway from his time running Schmitty\u2019s. The bar, he said, helped him learn marketing and how to \u201cread people.\u201d But when I suggested to him that in both instances he was creating a community around him, he did not disagree.<\/p>\n One difference today, Lindell said, is \u201cthe community\u2019s a lot bigger. A lot bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n It may also be more dangerous, at least to the nation, than drunk people shooting Super Soakers in a bar. In an interview at MyPillow with Eric Metaxas, the evangelical author and radio host, Lindell described himself as \u201ca hub of a wheel\u201d when it came to unsubstantiated claims about the election, when \u201cpeople just started pouring it onto me because I was the last voice, so to speak. \u2026 There was nowhere else to go.\u201d<\/p>\n The first piece of collateral damage might be Lindell himself. If Trump had won re-election in November\u2014or had Lindell not plunged himself so completely into Trump\u2019s fantasy that the election was rigged\u2014Lindell would today have a credible future in Republican politics in Minnesota. The chairman of Trump\u2019s 2020 campaign in the state, Lindell had been encouraged by Trump to run for Minnesota governor<\/a>. The chair of the state Republican Party, Jennifer Carnahan, pre-endorsed Lindell, writing on Twitter last year<\/a> that \u201cwe are going to make him our next Governor,\u201d and Lindell himself said he was \u201c99 percent\u201d sure<\/a> he\u2019d run.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of Trump\u2019s defeat, both Lindell\u2019s interest in running and any chance of doing so effectively appear to have diminished. In January, shortly before Biden\u2019s inauguration, Lindell was photographed walking into the White House with notes mentioning the possibility of declaring \u201cmartial law<\/a>,\u201d tying Lindell inextricably to the fringiest excesses of a president who lost Minnesota by about 7 percentage points. Responding to this newfound prominence, the in-state press in Minnesota began to examine him more critically. The Minnesota Reformer news site unearthed old allegations of abuse<\/a> against Lindell by an ex-girlfriend and an ex-wife, claims Lindell has denied.<\/p>\n Like Trump, Lindell was banned from Twitter<\/a> for spreading election disinformation. Then came the Dominion lawsuit and the flight of retailers like Kohl\u2019s and Bed Bath & Beyond<\/a>.<\/p>\n In an effort to show support, John Thomas, a Republican strategist from California who got to know Lindell at past Conservative Political Action Conferences, said he told Lindell recently that he\u2019d purchased some of his sheets. (They were better after washing, Thomas said. Initially, \u201cthey chafed me a little bit.\u201d) He was worried about Lindell\u2019s business, he said, but Lindell didn\u2019t share his concerns. He said Lindell told him, \u201cThey\u2019ve already done their worst. What else can they do to me?\u201d<\/p>\n Lindell\u2019s outsider status owes at least partly to his total personal commitment to Trump\u2019s conspiracy claims. There\u2019s a class of successful Republicans who, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who have managed to maintain allegiance to Trump while moving on from constant re-examinations of the election. And then there\u2019s Trump himself, who remains obsessed with the election, but is in a class of one. If there\u2019s an illustration, politically speaking, of how not to play it, it might be Lindell.<\/p>\n The unveiling of Lindell\u2019s platform, Frank, was, to put it mildly, a debacle. The website\u2019s launch, in April, was marred by technical glitches that prevented people from signing up and that Lindell blamed on a \u201cmassive attack.\u201d Billed as a \u201cfree speech\u201d social media haven, especially for people banned from other platforms, the site does not yet include a social media component. Instead, it offers a smorgasbord of one-directional content, much of it debunked<\/a>, including Lindell\u2019s documentaries: \u201cAbsolute Proof: Exposing Election Fraud and The Theft of America by Enemies Foreign and Domestic,\u201d \u201cAbsolute Interference: The Sequel to Absolute Proof with New Evidence Foreign and Domestic Enemies Used Computers to Hack the 2020 Election,\u201d and \u201cScientific Proof: Internationally Renowned Physicist Absolutely Proves 2020 Election Was Biggest Cyber-Crime in World History.\u201d<\/p>\n During a 48-hour livestreamed \u201cFrankathon\u201d to promote the site, which featured a cast of Trump-world characters like Mike Flynn, Ben Carson and Steve Bannon, Lindell was pranked by a caller pretending to be Trump<\/a>, obsessed over Kimmel\u2019s jokes about him and, when the studio momentarily went dark, suggested that in addition to \u201cdeath threats and everything else,\u201d his enemies were \u201cattacking our power grid here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt one point maybe five or six months ago, I think people considered him a likely Republican nominee for governor,\u201d said Arne Carlson, a former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota who was banished by the state party for his moderate politics in 2010. \u201cBut once you get on those late-night comedies on TV, that\u2019s a tough ordeal to survive \u2026 I think he\u2019s just being laughed at.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlson said, \u201cHe became a personality when he was advertising MyPillow, then evolved into this caricature.\u201d Lindell, he sighed: \u201cOne of the great intellects of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n One feature of conspiracy theories,<\/span> researchers have found<\/a>, is that they can function as a coping mechanism in times of uncertainty or angst, offering straightforward and satisfying answers to conditions believers can\u2019t accept. The fact that a large majority of Republican voters believe<\/a> Trump\u2019s claims that the election was rigged has allowed the party to forgo the kind of soul-searching post-mortems that traditionally follow electoral defeats<\/a>. For Lindell, no introspection is required if Trump didn\u2019t really lose. Voting machines were hacked, he believes, and Trump will be reinstated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of batshit crazy,\u201d said Mike Webb, a coffee shop owner in Chaska and former mayor of Carver.<\/p>\n Nearly a decade ago, while in office, Webb was involved in land use discussions concerning the bus shed-turned pillow factory Lindell operated out of. Lindell said local regulations were overly burdensome; Webb said Lindell was only using the city as a stopgap before moving to a facility in Shakopee, a nearby town.<\/p>\n \u201cThe guy is so out there, and he\u2019s so narcissistic that everything he says is about him,\u201d Webb said. \u201cSo, he follows his own meandering river in whatever he wants to do and expects everyone to follow him, and when they don\u2019t, they\u2019re just wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Dave Pokorney, a former longtime Chaska city administrator, described Lindell as \u201cso random\u2014at one point he\u2019s doing something rational, and then he\u2019s off.\u201d He said he\u2019s \u201cnot surprised\u201d that Lindell believes the election was stolen.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m surprised other people believe it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Lindell\u2019s theories, to be clear, have been roundly rejected by experts.<\/a> Trump\u2019s own Justice Department said it had found no evidence of fraud<\/a> on a scale that would change the outcome of the November election. A council of federal officials and election supervisors, including a representative of the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, called the election \u201cthe most secure in American history,\u201d <\/a>and Trump and his allies have lost more than 60 lawsuits<\/a> seeking to overturn the election. Still, about two-thirds of Republicans believe Biden did not legitimately win the November election, according to a CBS News poll last month<\/a>, a finding in line with other surveys.<\/p>\n For people like Lindell, the belief that Trump didn\u2019t lose is an invitation to replace grief with something more comforting: a sense of purpose.<\/p>\n \u201cLindell found Jesus, right? He got sober. That\u2019s the real important piece to me. He found truth. He\u2019d been making money \u2026 and doing drugs and all of that stuff. That\u2019s all emptiness,\u201d said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project before stepping down in December. \u201cWhat gave him the certainty he was looking for was evangelical Christianity. He was born again. \u2026 He needs the rigidity of a social structure to say this is right and that is wrong and that\u2019s what keeps me straight.\u201d<\/p>\n Madrid said, \u201cYou upset that, and you start to become a little unhinged. \u2026 I don\u2019t think he\u2019s a bad man. I think he\u2019s a lost man.\u201d In the election conspiracy, he said, \u201cHe found something he could hold onto.\u201d<\/p>\n Judging by public opinion polling, lots of Republicans seem to be in this camp. They believed Trump. Or they believed pastors who told them that he was chosen by God, and it makes no sense to them that he didn\u2019t win. For those people, Lindell offers a special kind of reassurance. Here\u2019s a man who not only says Trump won and will be reinstated, but whose own redemption story\u2014quitting crack, building a business and amassing a fortune, gradually finding God before making a \u201cfull surrender to Jesus Christ\u201d while at a religious retreat at Lake Tahoe in 2017\u2014was so unlikely that if he believes Trump might come back, it just might happen.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s part of who God sent to save us, and I really believe that,\u201d a woman named Lori Wallender, from Minocqua, Wis., told me outside Lindell\u2019s rally last month at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D. Todd Taylor, who is Lindell\u2019s stepbrother and oversees the MyPillow production facility, said, \u201cI know Mike gets these messages and follows what he\u2019s told, maybe in a dream, and he\u2019s following that path.\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cThere\u2019s something to be said about that. He\u2019s had a lot of things happen you can\u2019t explain.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindell says that what he is offering, simply, is \u201chope.\u201d Of all the sideshow acts from the Trump era, he has the wherewithal to keep the Trump faithful engaged\u2014operating a website, producing documentaries, hiring investigators and putting on rallies. He is, at once, the entertainment they are missing in the post-Trump era, and the promise that the Trump era isn\u2019t really gone.<\/p>\n It still exists, unquestionably, at MyPillow. Metaxas told Lindell that visiting the headquarters felt like a \u201cpilgrimage to something more than what it is. It represents something.\u201d Trump supporters with less access to Lindell than Metaxas sometimes call the pillow company\u2019s customer service line instead.<\/p>\n On one of the days that Lindell was in town, I was waiting in the MyPillow store connected to Lindell\u2019s headquarters when Sue Wiebe, who answered the phone there, told a caller from New Jersey, \u201cKeep on praying. He\u2019s going to do this. I have faith.\u201d<\/p>\n When she hung up, she said that kind of call isn\u2019t uncommon.<\/p>\n She said, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people calling and saying Mike is a disciple of God.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month,<\/span> the week Lindell visited Chaska, the local amateur baseball team, the Chaska Cubs, held its home opener at Athletic Park, not far from where Lindell grew up. As fans filled the wooden benches in the grandstand, Bob Roepke, a former mayor of the city and until recently a board member of MyPillow, lingered down the right field line. Lindell\u2019s former peewee hockey coach was there, too.<\/p>\n Eating popcorn while he leaned against the fence, Roepke said what Lindell is going through now isn\u2019t all that different from when he owned Schmitty\u2019s, the bar where \u201call heck was breaking loose.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t you think if you\u2019ve lived on the edge and kind of the extremes, it\u2019s just how he approaches life?\u201d Roepke told me later. \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019ll ever say \u2018Uncle\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Roepke left the board because of his difference of opinion with Lindell about the election, deciding it was \u201cmaybe not the healthiest thing for me to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s also conflicted. He still respects Lindell. He\u2019s personally fond of him. For many years, Lindell has been a generous benefactor to local charities. He employs people, including recovering addicts, who other companies would pass over. As a member of MyPillow\u2019s board, Roepke saw Lindell exhibit an uncommon degree of loyalty to former business associates and longtime friends. Those qualities, Roepke suspected, came from Lindell\u2019s growing up in a Chaska that, at the time, was relatively small.<\/p>\n But at the Cubs game, Roepke could also point out people who had worked as volunteer election officials in the stands, and people like him, who had worked in government. If Lindell was right, all those people were engaged, wittingly or not, in defrauding their friends and neighbors out of their vote. As were countless thousands of other people like them across the country\u2014all without any detectable evidence or motive.<\/p>\n As for where Lindell\u2019s conspiratorial side came from, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n He shook his head. Lindell had built a life, wrecked it, built it again more grandly and a little chaotically. But this? Roepke said, \u201cIt\u2019s off the rails.\u201d<\/p>\n