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Mike Lindell Loses Defamation Case Against Daily Mail

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Editor’s note: An original version of this story featured a promotion that Conservative Brief did for Mike Lindell. The promotion cited allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. Elections officials have affirmed the integrity of the 2020 vote and Joe Biden was declared the winner.

The media has been on a non-stop attack against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell since he expressed doubts about the results of the 2020 presidential election and Mike took action against one outlet.

But Lindell was defeated in his court case against the British tabloid The Daily Mail who he accused of defaming him, Newsweek reported.

A federal judge sided with the news outlet, saying that the article that Lindell cited as defaming “cannot be reasonably construed as defamatory.”

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Lindell, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, first sued the Daily Mail tabloid in January after it published an article alleging that he and 30 Rock actress Jane Krakowski had a secret romance. The report was based on a tip from an “anonymous friend” and Lindell and Krakowski quickly denied the claim. Lindell even said he’d never heard of the actress.

While the report may have been inaccurate, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Crotty, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, ruled on Friday that nothing in the article rose to the level of defamatory.

“Dating an actress—secret or not—would not cause ‘public hatred,’ ‘shame,’ ‘ridicule,’ or any similar feeling towards Lindell,” The judge said. He argued that the lawsuit “has not identified any statements in the Article that a reasonable person would view as defamatory.”

Lindell is a recovering drug addict who, through his face in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, has bettered his life and risen to fame and fortune.

He argued that a line in the article about him romancing the actress with champagne was defamatory as a former addict, but the judge rebuffed that assertion by Lindell.

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“The purchase of alcohol is a legal and ordinary act,” he said in his decision. “If even more problematic depictions of alcohol consumption, such as underage drinking or alcoholism, routinely fail to qualify as defamatory in New York courts surely no reasonable reader could find it offensive to exchange champagne or other bottles of liquor as gifts between romantic partners.”

That judge said that the MyPillow CEO “might have been embarrassed or annoyed by this tabloid Article, to be sure. But he only challenges aspects of the Article that describe routine acts accepted by society.” Crotty contended that such statements “cannot be reasonably construed as defamatory, and he, therefore, fails to state a viable defamation claim.”

The Daily Mail, in its defense against Lindell, the tabloid attacked the character of the CEO and his beliefs.

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“Plaintiff Michael Lindell is no stranger to scandal. In the last year alone, the self-described crack-addict-turned-CEO ventured beyond pillow sales to become a peddler of an unproven COVID-19 ‘cure,’ and a leading proponent of baseless election fraud theories; stores dropped his company’s product after Plaintiff was photographed leaving the White House in January 2021 with a notepad referencing ‘martial law,'” it argued.

“He and his company have been mired in litigation—previously, in several suits alleging fraudulent advertisement practices, and more. Yet Plaintiff [literally] has made a federal case out of statements in an article about his rumored consensual romantic relationship with a popular, award-winning actress, claiming that these references irreparably harmed his reputation,” it said.

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