Late last month, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was busy working with staunchly pro-Trump lawyers on a plan to sue House speaker Kevin McCarthy. On Monday afternoon, the plan collapsed entirely, a “very disappointed” Lindell tells Rolling Stone.
“The lawyers came back this afternoon and said after working on this and researching, I cannot sue [McCarthy] now,” he says. “They found too much [precedents] against doing it…I had five different law firms looking into this, from every which way and direction and I was pushing to have the lawsuit filed as soon as possible. But [on Monday], I got word from my lawyers that we can’t do it—because it would just be inviting sanctions and have no chance in court.”
Lindell has been arguing that the Republican House speaker’s decision to grant Fox News and Tucker Carlson Tonight exclusive access to unreleased video of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — and to refuse to do the same for Mike’s “Lindell TV” streaming program, for instance — was “disgusting[ly]” unconstitutional. McCarthy’s move didn’t only perturb Lindell; It quickly garnered criticism from other MAGAworld luminaries, as well, including longtime Trump associates Rudy Giuliani and Eric Bolling.
But in a written message from the attorneys that Lindell shared with Rolling Stone, the lawyers break the news to him: “After researching the two issues that would be the basis for the challenge to the Speaker’s decision to give Tucker Carlson exclusive access to the Jan. 6 videotapes of the Capitol, we discovered an April 2021 decision denying reporters access to press briefings held by Wisconsin Governor Evers … To prevail on a discrimination claim, we would be confronted with a rational basis test that would allow the Speaker to point to any plausible justification for treating Carlson differently than the rest of the media and the public … [Furthermore], The Supreme Court has held that the press and the public have no absolute right to access government documents.”
The note concludes saying Lindell’s counsel “wish the research had given us a path to bring the action against the Speaker, but the precedents are lined up against us.”
Lindell, a close ally of former President Donald Trump’s and a top bankroller of the MAGA election-denialism movement, isn’t typically shy about filing lawsuit after lawsuit, at a variety of targets, even if success is a steep uphill battle. But it appears that this one would simply be too far for even his incredibly MAGA-fied legal team.
The Trumpist pillow mogul had previously said that he and his lawyers were hard at work on a draft of the lawsuit, with an aim to file early this week. Lindell has repeatedly said he does not trust Fox, and has routinely trashed the network for not being sufficiently extreme.
But on Monday, his plan of legal action against the Republican Speaker of the House came to a screeching halt.
This week, Carlson’s primetime Fox show, which is a leading source of conspiracy theory-fueled Jan. 6 revisionism, began rolling out its segments on the footage; Democratic lawmakers slammed McCarthy and Carlson for obvious efforts to absolve Trump and rewrite the history of the Trump-instigated, deadly Capitol assault.
“I am very disappointed in our legal system, and that there are precedents such that we can’t do this this week. I’m still upset with McCarthy for only releasing it to Fox. More than one news outlet, not just Fox, deserves to see it all! … It’s just wrong,” Lindell adds. “I have Jan. 6 prisoners reaching out to me. Maybe they and their lawyers could use what’s in there. They should have access, too.”