MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell speaks with reporters at his company’s factory in Shakopee, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb, on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, while announcing his campaign for the Republican nomination to run against Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in 2026. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)
Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive and a familiar figure in high-profile legal battles, is once again asking a court to spare him from paying a $2.3 million defamation judgment.
Lindell and Frankspeech LLC, his conservative media venture also known as LindellTV, filed their opening appellate brief Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
The appeal comes a little more than a year after a Denver jury sided with Eric Coomer, the former director of product safety and security at Dominion Voting Systems, in his defamation case against Lindell and FrankSpeech.
As Lindell pushed claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from President Donald Trump, he personally labeled Coomer a “traitor,” accused him of criminal conduct and tied him to broader election conspiracy allegations.
Jurors ultimately found both Lindell and his streaming platform liable for defamation after the defense submitted a court filing that contained numerous errors and was generated with artificial intelligence. The claim against FrankSpeech centered largely on the platform’s decision to host commentary targeting Coomer.
The dispute that led to the lawsuit, however, began with someone who was not named as a defendant in the case.
“Defendants began this targeted defamation campaign after Lindell aligned himself with an Antifa-obsessed Colorado podcaster and conspiracy theorist, Joseph Oltmann, who had made up a story about overhearing someone identified only as ‘Eric, the Dominion guy’ claim to have rigged the election against former President Trump on a supposed ‘Antifa conference call,’” Coomer alleged in his 2022 lawsuit.
Though MyPillow was also sued, jurors declined to find the bedding company liable for defamation — an aspect of the verdict Lindell celebrated during an interview with Rudy Giuliani on LindellTV.
In the end, the Denver jury put Lindell on the hook for $2.3 million. In the aftermath, Giuliani remarked that the penalty was “measly” and “like peanuts compared to what they were asking.”
Measly or not, Lindell would rather not pay at all.
“Lindell and Frankspeech LLC ask the Court to reverse judgment in favor of Coomer and enter judgment in favor of Appellants on all of Coomer’s claims as a matter of law,” the brief reads.
The appellants say the judgment “must be reversed for several reasons.”
Chief among those reasons is an argument that Frankspeech itself is statutorily immune from liability under internet safe harbors for websites that allow other users to engage in speech online.
Those protections have been called “Better Than the First Amendment” by internet law scholars and appear in Section 230 of the largely struck down Communications Decency Act of 1996.
Here, Lindell and FrankSpeech say the company should be wholly insulated from Coomer’s defamation claims.
“Frankspeech is an interactive computer service, like YouTube or Rumble, that merely hosts and livestreams content that was originated by others,” the appellate brief goes on. “Because Frankspeech is an interactive computer service that merely hosts and livestreams content that is originated by others, it did not create or develop the challenged content within the meaning of the statute.”
In the case, the defamatory comments attributed to Frankspeech were actually made by another man, David Clements, during an August 2021 Cyber Symposium hosted by Lindell.
The court held that Clements’ streamed statements could be attributed to Frankspeech because it “sponsored, promoted, and broadcasted” the event, and jurors were allowed to conclude Clements was an agent of Frankspeech for purposes of the symposium.
Lindell insists that is not the law.
“If that were the legal standard, then no online provider would ever be entitled to this statutory immunity, which eviscerates the public policy underlying the Communications Decency Act,” the brief continues.
The appellants also say Coomer failed to prove the defamatory comments in question were made with actual malice.
Actual malice is the most exacting standard to prove in defamation law. The standard typically becomes operative when the person claiming to be defamed is a public figure – though Coomer alleged the standard was met.
In order to satisfy the actual malice standard, a plaintiff who is a public figure must present clear and convincing evidence that the defendant published the statement knowing it was false, or with reckless disregard for the truth — meaning the defendant actually entertained serious doubts about its accuracy. That standard is a lower bar for plaintiffs who are not public figures; they only need to show negligence on the part of the defendant.
Lindell says that high standard simply was not met — and cast blame on the judge who oversaw the matter.
“The jury’s explicit rejection of any punitive damages award against Lindell by finding that he did not act with willful and wanton reckless disregard, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, eviscerates any finding of actual malice where the inquiry as to both is based on the same set of facts,” the brief goes on. “The district court’s reliance on evidence of Lindell’s alleged ‘hostility’ toward Coomer also fails to support the district court’s finding of actual malice under the applicable legal standard.”
