Mike Lindell, the Minnesota businessman and backer of former President Donald Trump, said Tuesday that Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend him is the climax of an intentional, weekslong effort by the social media company to silence him and added it will not stop his efforts to prove the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
Lindell, who founded Chaska-based My Pillow Inc., told the Star Tribune that he was locked out of his Twitter account for nearly two weeks before regaining control of it Monday.
“They froze me out. Everyone thought it was still up, but I couldn’t like or do anything,” Lindell said. “They really had already banned me without the public knowing. I don’t want Jack Dorsey tweeting for me.”
A Twitter spokesman told the Associated Press early Tuesday that it suspended Lindell’s account due to “repeated violations” of its civic integrity policy. The policy was implemented last September and is targeted at fighting disinformation.
The move is likely to intensify the debate over the role of social media companies like Facebook and Twitter in the nation’s discourse. Democrats are beginning to coalesce around the idea of more regulations aimed at data privacy, hate speech, disinformation and antitrust issues. Republicans have complained for several years their views are disproportionately suppressed on the tech platforms.
It’s unclear what specific tweets by Lindell led to the company’s decision. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request from the Star Tribune for more information.
Lindell said he was able to tweet Monday a blog post that portrayed him in a positive light, written by the executive director of Lindell Recovery Network, an addiction recovery organization Lindell started.
Leading up to the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Lindell routinely shared claims that the election was riddled with fraud. Lindell met Trump just five days before he left office with more ideas for challenging the election. A photo of a document Lindell was holding outside the White House had the words “martial law.”
Major retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s have said that they would stop carrying My Pillow’s products, Lindell said last week.
Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol earlier this month, Twitter has banned over 70,000 accounts for sharing misinformation. Trump, who had urged on the mob, has also had his account permanently suspended.
In his efforts to challenge the election results, Lindell blamed the technology used to tally votes, specifically voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems.
Dominion’s attorneys sent Lindell at least two letters since last month demanding that he publicly apologize and retract his claims, some of them made on Twitter, that the company stole “millions of votes” through its voting machines.
The company provided screenshots of several December posts from Lindell in which he shared claims of wrongdoing by Dominion first posted elsewhere. “Dominion machines stole millions of votes from @realDonaldTrump!” Lindell wrote on a Dec. 15 Twitter post.
Dominion filed a lawsuit against Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani on Monday.
Lindell reiterated Tuesday that he was not backing down from a fight with Dominion.
“I want to get sued by Dominion because then both sides have to show in court … Dominion’s lawyers are not going to bother me because they know I have all this (evidence),” Lindell said. “My support of Donald Trump has never wavered since the time I met him and it never will. Never ever, ever. They stole this election from him, these machines.”
Lindell said he has spent $2.5 million investigating the election and challenging its results. He also berated the mainstream media for repeatedly calling his claims baseless and unsubstantiated.
“I have piles and piles of evidence if anyone wants to publish it,” Lindell said. He said he is trying to furnish the evidence to the U.S. Supreme Court, though he did not say how.
In an earlier interview, Lindell told a Star Tribune reporter that “Minnesota was taken by the machines, too” and claimed without evidence that Trump had actually won the state by 60,000 votes. However, just six Minnesota counties use Dominion machines and Trump won all but one of those counties.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Kristen Leigh Painter • 612-673-4767
Twitter: @kristenpainter
Stephen Montemayor • 612-673-1755
Twitter: @smontemayor