Smartmatic has already sued MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Now they're going after his lawyers.

• Mike Lindell alleged in court that Dominion and Smartmatic formed an illegal enterprise to rig the 2020 election.
• In addition to suing the MyPillow mogul, Smartmatic is trying to get him and his lawyers sanctioned.
• A Smartmatic lawyer said Lindell's claims were "akin to a Flat Earther demanding evidence that the planet is round."

Of all the people who have lied about the 2020 presidential election, no one has fought harder than Mike Lindell.

Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani have studiously defended themselves against defamation lawsuits from Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. The MyPillow CEO, on the other hand, has become more worked up, livid at what he sees as nothing less than the theft of American democracy.

Taking the offense, the MyPillow CEO has filed countersuits and refused to hand over discovery information to Dominion after a federal judge said the technology company's lawsuit could proceed. As part of one counterclaim, he alleged in court filings that Smartmatic and Dominion are both owned by Chinese nationals and that they colluded with a public relations firm to suppress his free speech and ruin him financially.

"This was the biggest crime family, probably bigger than the mafia crime family," Lindell told Insider in an interview. "They were part of the biggest crime in human history, period. That's where we're at."

Smartmatic has denied the claims and repeatedly pointed out that it played a role in only one county's election administration in 2020. But the outlandish nature of the accusations pressed them to take another step: Asking the judge to sanction Lindell and his lawyers before the case is even over.

"There's no legal precedent for the claims that are being brought," Smartmatic's attorney J. Erik Connolly told Insider. "I understand that someone can throw a lot of spaghetti on the wall. But that doesn't provide you a factual or a legal predicate for a claim."

Lindell's purpose in filing his lawsuit, Connolly wrote in court filings, was "to undermine confidence in the 2020 US election" — something he said should result in sanctions.

"His complaint does not raise a viable claim against Smartmatic because Mr. Lindell has none," lawyers for Smartmatic wrote in a February filing. "Instead, he is using this court as a platform and abusing its legitimacy to promote his narrative that the 2020 election was rigged. Forcing Smartmatic to defend against a case that has no proper purpose is sanctionable."

Smartmatic asked US District Judge Carl J. Nichols, who's presiding over the case, to order Lindell and his lawyers to hand over any money they've made from their litigation. Jan Jacobowitz, a legal ethics advisor, said that Lindell's lawyers may have run afoul of Rule 11 in the federal rules of civil procedure, which requires attorneys to file only motions that have a basis in fact and law. While lawyers don't always have to think they have a slam-dunk case, Jacobowitz said, it's the duty of every lawyer to make sure their cases make sense.

"It doesn't matter how passionate someone is," Jacobowitz said. "If there's no support for what they want to do, then an attorney shouldn't be filing the suit."

Mike Lindell dragged Smartmatic into Dominion's lawsuit

The knotty fight over whether the judge will sanction Lindell and his lawyers is tied up with a larger, more complicated lawsuit over whether he defamed Dominion.

In early 2021, Dominion filed separate defamation lawsuits against Mike Lindell and MyPillow, Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. All three conspiracy theorists falsely claimed, in one way or another, that Dominion and the rival election technology company Smartmatic rigged the 2020 presidential election results against then-President Donald Trump and in favor of now-President Joe Biden.

Nichols, a federal judge in Washington, DC, where the cases were filed, combined them all into one docket. In August, he denied motions from Lindell, MyPillow, Giuliani, and Powell to dismiss the lawsuits. But Lindell and MyPillow are appealing that decision and have refused to hand over discovery information until that appeal is settled.

"The judge never looked at anything on there. They don't look at all the evidence, Lindell told Insider. "The judge made a terrible ruling against our first amendment rights of free speech. So did many other judges in this country."

In December, Lindell dragged Smartmatic into the mess.

His answer to Dominion's lawsuit — which came months after Powell and Giuliani already filed their own — brought a RICO claim. He alleged that Dominion, Dominion's public relations firm Hamilton Place Strategies, and Smartmatic formed a de-facto illegal criminal organization designed to suppress "dissenting speech," a reference to his false claims about the election, through "lawfare."

Separately, Lindell and Smartmatic had been tangling on two different fronts. In June, Lindell sued Smartmatic and Dominion in Minnesota, making similar claims about them trying to suppress his opinion (that case was transferred to DC, where Nichols took it over and consolidated it into Dominion's case as well). In January, Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit against Lindell, calling him "crazy like a fox" and alleging he purposefully stoked dangerous conspiracy theories "for the noble purpose of selling his pillows."

All of this led to Smartmatic, on February 11, to decide that enough was enough.

In addition to asking the judge to dismiss Lindell's counterclaims, Smartmatic's lawyers, led by Connolly, asked Nichols to sanction Lindell and his attorneys. They said in the filing Lindell has made it clear "both in the complaint and in his out-of-court statements" that the lawsuit was politically motivated.

"Mr. Lindell predicates his claims on allegations that: lack factual support; are implausible; have been disproven by credible, publicly available evidence; and have been rejected by other federal district courts," Smartmatic's lawyers wrote. "Any minimal inquiry into Mr. Lindell's allegations would have demonstrated that they lack evidentiary support and cannot possibly be proven in violation of [Rule 11]."

For some lawsuits, Connolly told Insider, there's a reasonable difference of opinion for whether a judge should dismiss the case. But for a complaint that "lacks a good faith basis in law or fact," he said, seeking Rule 11 sanctions is a proper remedy.

That includes Lindell's lawyers. While Lindell may be deluded about the 2020 election, his lawyers should know better, Smartmatic said.

"An 'empty-head' but 'pure-heart' is no justification for patently frivolous arguments or factual assertions," the lawyers wrote.

It's up to the judge to decide who among Lindell's lawyers would be sanctioned. In the counterclaim against Smartmatic and ensuing court filings, Lindell has been represented by the attorneys Douglas A. Daniels, Heath A. Novosad, and Earl N. "Trey" Mayfield III.

On Monday, after Insider reached out to the attorneys for comment, Daniels and Novosad told the judge they were withdrawing from the case. Andrew Parker, who first brought Lindell's lawsuit against Dominion, said he would take over their responsibilities.

None of Lindell's attorneys responded to Insider's requests for comment.

"Akin to a Flat Earther demanding evidence that the planet is round"

On February 25, Lindell fired back. In a response to Smartmatic's motion for sanctions, his lawyers said that all the reasons Americans have to believe the 2020 election was secure — the numerous recounts, the dozens of judicial decisions, the statement from CISA about it being "the most secure in American history," Trump's attorney general William Barr saying fraud claims were nonsense — were not the whole story.

No state has produced evidence that the 2020 election results were fraudulent, and an Arizona audit that Lindell personally backed found that Biden won the state by a bigger margin than previously reported. But Lindell's filing pointed out that some state legislatures are still investigating the 2020 election and "have even begun introducing legislation to recall their electors."

When Insider quoted that part of the filing in an interview with Lindell, he said he wasn't certain what his lawyers were talking about.

"That's all lawyer 'blah, blah, blah' that's written down there. I don't know what they all wrote there," he said. "You just said that to me. A hundred percent my lawyers are right. Because the legislature, they're all seeing this now."

Lindell pointed to recent events in Wisconsin to back his claims. A special counsel hired by Republicans in the state legislature suggested in a report that Wisconsin lawmakers should "de-certify" the 2020 election results and abolish the state's election commission. State representative Timothy Ramthun — who Lindell is backing in the state's gubernatorial election — introduced a bill that would adopt those stances into law, Lindell said.

He alleged that evidence of election machine tampering and that "Dominion deleted the election and we caught it" is available on his Frank Speech website. It's all there if anyone wants to do their own research, he claimed.

Smartmatic was not amused by Lindell's lawyers continuing to cast doubt on the 2020 election results. Slinging back in a March 4 filing, they argued that conjecture could not replace evidence.

"His question is akin to a Flat Earther demanding evidence that the planet is round," Connolly wrote. "Joe Biden was sworn in as the President of the United States over a year ago. All legal challenges to the outcome of the 2020 election failed."

Quoting "a math teacher at a charter school for kindergarteners through 12th graders" in their court filings as expert evidence was not a proper use of the court's time, Smartmatic's lawyers said.

"An expert cannot create a fact where no fact exists," Connolly told Insider. "And so Mr. Lindell's lawsuit is making a factual allegation regarding collusion between Smartmatic and Dominion, as just a factual matter. There is no basis for that, and an expert can't create a factual basis for that."

A decision to sanction Lindell's lawyers could come soon

It was no excuse, Connolly argued, that a lot of people think the 2020 election was fraudulent. Lindell's lawyers should know better, he wrote.

"This case is not about a negligent litigant or counsel who failed to turn over the right stone or overlooked a critical piece of information," he wrote. "Rather, Mr. Lindell and his counsel know what lies under the stone and do not care."

It's this conviction — that Lindell and his lawyers knew better — that drove Smartmatic to ask for sanctions so quickly. Compare it to the case of Sidney Powell who filed a nonsense lawsuit trying to overturn Biden's election win in Michigan. It was only after the judge ruled against Powell that lawyers for the City of Detroit asked for her to be sanctioned. The judge ultimately ordered Powell and other lawyers who worked on the case to pay $175,000 in legal fees.

But in Lindell's case, there was already a vast corpus of evidence that he was peddling junk. According to Jacobowitz, Rule 11 requires attorneys to file motions for sanctions "upon your conclusion that someone has filed a frivolous complaint that violates Rule 11." 

"They didn't necessarily need discovery to make their argument because of all the other federal lawsuits, and all the publications, everything they're using to fight in there," she said. "They erred on the side of getting right out of the gate and getting the motion filed."

Nichols, the presiding judge, can decide whether to sanction Lindell and his lawyers whenever he wants, Jacobowitz said. The litigation with Dominion could take years, and he could issue sanctions at the very end of it.

More likely, though, he will make a decision at the same time he rules on Smartmatic's motion to dismiss Lindell's claims. If the judge decides that Lindell's lawyers' claims are junk, he may issue sanctions, or hold a hearing to issue sanctions, at the same time. That could come as soon as April.

Lindell, or his part, believes his claims against Smartmatic will stand and that his countersuit against the "corrupt, crime-ridden machine companies" claiming $1.6 billion in damages will be victorious.

"I have absolutely zero worry because they did the crimes that I have said they have done," he told Insider. "They did the crimes and they're all gonna end up in prison."