A federal judge last week affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, shown June 24, 2021, in Washington, in favor of a Las Vegas software forensics expert who challenged data that Lindell claims proves that China interfered in the 2020 U.S. elections and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden.
A federal court last week upheld a $5 million arbitration award in favor of a Las Vegas software forensics expert who disproved claims that China interfered in the 2020 presidential election by right-wing activist and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who falsely asserted the race had been rigged to favor President Joe Biden.
The ruling stems from a so-called cybersymposium where Lindell launched a “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” in 2021 and offered a $5 million prize to anyone who could prove that “packed captures” and other data he was in custody of was not valid from the 2020 presidential election, according to The Associated Press.
The beneficiary of the ruling is Las Vegas resident Bob Zeidman, 64, who accepted Lindell’s challenge and concluded in a 15-page report the data contained no “packet data” of any kind and “do not contain any information related to the 2020 election,” according to the AP. A panel of contest judges, which included Lindell’s attorney, declined to declare Zeidman a winner, leading the local man to file for arbitration.
Arbitrators in April 2023 unanimously ordered Zeidman be paid the $5 million prize and concluded he had sufficiently satisfied the rules of the challenge. In the ruling last week, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim expressed concern how the arbitration panel interpreted a “poorly written contract” but ruled that the court did not have authority to overrule the arbitration award.
Tunheim ordered Lindell to pay the $5 million with interest within 30 days.
Lindell plans to appeal the ruling, according to multiple outlets, telling the AP, “Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming.”
The Sun caught up with Zeidman. Here’s what he had to say about the challenge, his findings and his quest to seek the truth:
How did you find out about Lindell’s so-called “cybersymposium” and what compelled you to go?
If we go back to January 2021, which is when Biden’s inauguration took place, Lindell came out with public statements saying he had proof that the voting machines had been hacked. And at the time, I remember he wasn’t clear about who had hacked the voting machines, whether it was the Democrats, Russia, the deep state, the FBI, CIA or China, but I guess he eventually settled on China.
He held his symposium in August 2021 to show proof to the press and to the public, and he invited cybersecurity experts to come and meet. He challenged them with $5 million if they could prove him wrong, that I had to prove that the data was not related to the election, not that it didn’t show hacking, but it wasn’t even related to the election. So I thought, “That’s a pretty high bar for me.”
My friends had convinced me to go. I thought there was no chance I would ever prove anything. It’s too much in too little time: Three days to look at what turned out to be hundreds of gigabytes of data. But I went because I thought I would see history in the making, either that the election could be overturned or that he’d be proven wrong by somebody. So I went there, and while looking at the data and within about three hours, I noticed the data was just a bunch of gibberish and word documents.
So I wrote a 15-page report and submitted it. I was supposed to find out that evening, and I thought how could anyone go through my report within just a couple of hours and come to a conclusion, but I didn’t hear from them. Then in October I reached out to attorneys. They took my case and we filed for the arbitration … and it was April 20, 2023, the decision was I had won, and Lindell’s lawyers immediately filed an appeal, and we had that hearing in January. It was just a couple days ago I got word the court had denied the appeal and enforced my judgment.
What do you plan to do with the winnings? Do you anticipate you’ll actually ever see any of it?
I think my chances are a little better than they were before this court decision. But I still think my chances are small of getting the money.
Lindell is in a lot of financial trouble. That’s what he says, though he goes back-and-forth on that. But I’m a little more optimistic because we’re gonna go after it.
It wasn’t about the money, though I’d love to have the money. But if I do see it, it’s going to go to some nonprofits, including voter integrity nonprofits, because I do believe voter integrity is a serious issue. I think both parties are interested in voter integrity only when it affects the specific outcome. It should be a bipartisan issue. And I’m already working with the Nevada Policy Research Institute on some voting issues.”
Given that, why is it important we operate under a baseline set of facts we can all agree on – especially as it relates to voter integrity and elections?
I wrote a book about my experience, called “Election Hacks: Exposing the $5 Million Election Myth” and the message of the book, what I want people to take away is that we should, first, all challenge our beliefs. We should seek the truth even if the truth goes against some of what we believe in. I think, unfortunately, people aren’t doing that these days. I’ve had people tell me they enjoyed my book until they found out I was a Republican. And it shouldn’t be that way. You should look at the facts, and if you agree with the facts you agree with them. It shouldn’t matter who is saying them.
You just described yourself as a Republican, and Lindell, of course, was one of Trump’s fiercest allies who falsely claimed the 2020 election had been stolen. Did you initially find yourself in Lindell’s camp, or was it different for you?
I had even written an article before the symposium saying the chances that the voting machines were hacked was extremely unlikely. For two reasons: One is that if it was Dominion Voting or Smartmatic, or anyone designing the voting machines, got caught, they would go to jail and there would be serious consequences. But if the machines were hacked by China, for example, it would be discovered. There are teams like mine all over the place who monitor internet traffic and all kinds of things, and they would have found something. So I really doubted that the machines were the problem.
Now, I do believe that things like ballot harvesting are open to fraud. And I’m sure there was a small amount of fraud in the 2020 election because there’s fraud in every human endeavor.
I work as an expert witness, and I do well in my business because people are constantly cheating.
How did you get into your line of work? Does it relate at all to your Las Vegas ties?
I’m technically not in cybersecurity. I’m in software forensics, which is related. I grew up in Philadelphia and started programming at age 14 on my high school’s computer. I would stay for many hours at the computer after school. And then I got into software and went to Cornell for a degree in physics and electrical engineering. I went to Stanford and got a master’s in electrical engineering and worked in Silicon Valley for 40 years. I only got into software forensics – and by that I mean that I developed some tools and processes for examining and presenting software in court – as well as expert witness work because of a professor at Stanford that needed some help.
I eventually started playing poker with friends and came out to Vegas to play in a poker tournament. Actually, it was with the Republican Jewish Coalition, and the tournament was at the Venetian. Sheldon Adelson had invited two of the world’s greatest poker players, Barry Greenstein and Daniel Negreanu, and I was excited to be playing. This was about 12 years ago, and I ended up winning the whole tournament. I couldn’t believe it.
So I started playing more poker tournaments and coming out to Vegas. My wife would come with me many years ago and we thought it was fun, but we didn’t want to live here. It’s like living in Disneyland. But in California, we just got so uncomfortable with the high taxes, homelessness, crime, traffic, so we decided about five years ago to pack things up and come to Vegas.
