MANKATO., Minn. — Trump confidant Mike Lindell said FBI agents swarmed his car in a Hardee’s fast-food drive-through and confiscated his cell phone. He was not arrested. Lindell said the agents told him not to tell anybody. But he immediately called reporter Deena Winter at the Minnesota Reformer in St. Paul and then other news outlets. Lindell said his entire business correspondence was on the phone. If such is the case, it’s likely, said observers, that Lindell’s phone contains evidence related to criminal investigations into the Trump White House. Lindell was frequently with Trump in his final nine weeks in office after the 2020 election.
Hardee’s incident profile
The FBI’s Denver field office confirmed that a federal judge had signed a warrant for Lindell’s phone. This suggests that the FBI had presented compelling evidence that the phone likely had evidence needed to develop a criminal case. Other than that, all anyone knows about the confiscation is from Lindell himself. He said he and a friend were returning from an Iowa hunting trip and had stopped at Hardee’s for a quick sandwich. Four FBI agents in three cars surrounded his vehicle, Lindell said. Federal judges recently have issued dozens of subpoenas to former Trump advisers and seized their phones. Lindell, however, blamed the confiscation of his phone on a $1.3 billion libel suit against him by the Denver-based voting machine company Dominion.
Lindell profile
Lindell is the millionaire founder of the Minnesota bedding manufacturer MyPillow. He became a Trump toady in 2018 and talked about running as a Republican for governor. After the 2020 election he spent millions of dollars to develop a conspiracy theory that the Dominion voting machine company had rigged its machines to defeat Trump’s re-election bid. Dominion denied the allegation and has a $1.3 billion libel suit pending against Lindell. In the waning days of the Trump administration, including the general period of the Trump-fueled January 6 mob arrack on the U.S. Capitol, Lindell was in and out of the White House and encouraging Trump to fight the election results. Dominion’s fingerprints, he said. are “all over this phone subpoena.” Subpoenas, however, are a tool used in criminal investigations. The Dominion libel suit is a civil case. In the Minnesota Reformer interview after the Hardee’s incident, Lindell was plainly angry and not entirely coherent. But he was consistent that the Dominion was involved. He said the agents asked him questions about Dennis Montgomery, a former intelligence contractor who claims he created a supercomputer and software that changed votes. Lindell said the agents also asked him about his website, frankspeech.com, which claims to have proof that Dominion voting machines were corrupted. “That’s what they asked me about the most,” he said. Lindell said he asked the FBI agents if they were going to “come bash my door in” like, he noted, they have others in the Trump circle. By his account, the agents responded, no, that they weren’t going to arrest him and that they had a warrant only for his phone.
Lindell. Claims raid was the doing of Dominion Voting Machine Systems, which is suing him for $1.3 billion for libel. Lindell’s net worth: Estimated at $50 million.