Mike Lindell Won’t Let a Pesky Contempt of Court Finding Get Him Down

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Mike Lindell Won’t Let a Pesky Contempt of Court Finding Get Him Down

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Hello and welcome to La Franchise!

There’s a lot to discuss this week, but first a quick check-in with our favorite pillow pundit turned election conspiracy theorist, and now also a Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate (ugh, yes, that’s always happening), Mike Lindell.

Lindell was found in contempt of court late last month by a Trump-appointed federal judge for failing to pay more than $50,000 in penalties to Smartmatic related to Lindell’s “frivolous” lawsuit against the voting machine company. The court ordered Lindell to pay additional fees to Smartmatic if it does not comply.

I asked Lindell about this and the impact this order could have on his race for governor. He had a lot to say, primarily focused on his continued fight against voting machines and the allegedly stolen 2020 election.

“I’m not going back at all,” he told me. “We’re still going to court. This will end in a trial years from now. It’s still not a trial. I’ll go to a jury trial because we have to save our country.”

We truly must honor this man for his undying devotion to the Big Lie.

If the election system is so dangerous, how do you plan to run for governor and trust the results of the election, I asked him. Unfortunately, I never had a solid answer to this question.

However, here is what he said.

“People know that I’ve been out there, fighting to save our country…and like I said, I’ve had more problems with Republicans blocking me than Democrats, of course. Everybody wants a safe election.”

“Fraud is really a blessing in Minnesota because now we can open things up and show Minnesota the tip of the spear with all the fraud in our social programs,” he concluded, nodding incoherently at a current right-wing fixation on social services fraud in Minnesota that is under investigation but also used as justification for President Trump’s murderous immigration enforcement and withholding of federal funding there.

Anyway, that’s all that’s coming from Lindell for now…

There’s a lot more to unpack. Let’s go.

Election denier tries to run the show in Arizona

Arizona GOP Senate President Warren Petersen, who is an election denier and is running for attorney general, is asking the Justice Department to investigate the person whose job he is seeking, Attorney General Kris Mayes, as well as Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats. He says they should be investigated for obstruction of justice and witness tampering related to the DOJ’s investigation into 2020 election records.

Let’s back up a little first.

In March, the Trump administration expanded its so-called 2020 election investigation to Maricopa County, Arizona, which has for years been a hotbed of election conspiracy theories due to the county’s size and the fact that it is purple.

Following the 2020 election, Republicans in the Arizona State Senate launched a very obviously partisan “audit” of the 2.1 million ballots cast and 400 voting machines used in Maricopa County. The “audit” was not an audit at all, but a partisan election review that election deniers insisted on, even though the state had conducted several official audits that found no evidence of fraud.

The administration is currently reviewing the records of this “audit” – as all of Trump’s friends within his administration look for ways to examine his delusion that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Petersen had no problem complying with the subpoena last month.

After the state Senate received the subpoena, Mayes and Fontes rushed to send letters, warning county recorders not to turn over sensitive data to the DOJ as part of this 2020 election investigation.

Mayes also sent a letter to Petersen at the time, asking whether he had forwarded voter registration information to the DOJ that is “not generally available for public inspection,” according to the Arizona Mirror.

Petersen, of course, had a problem with all of this and is now calling on federal prosecutors to investigate Mayes and Fontes for failing to comply with the federal grand jury’s subpoena. This is absurd on its face because Petersen is trying to unseat Mayes as attorney general. clearly some other motives involved here!

“The threats from the Attorney General and Secretary of State are inconsistent with the United States Constitution, which enshrines the grand jury in our constitutional order, and serve only to undermine voter confidence in our elections. Instead of fighting over these issues, we should all work together to ensure the election integrity necessary to fulfill our country’s democratic promise,” Petersen wrote in an April 7 letter. “The Attorney General and Secretary of State’s phobia about fair and secure elections is impossible to explain absent nefarious motives. »

Mayes, in response to Petersen, issued his own statement the same day, railing against the years-old “audit” and emphasizing that Petersen is simply giving in to Trump’s will.

“After wasting taxpayer dollars on the ridiculous Cyber Ninja audit, Petersen has again wasted Arizona taxpayer dollars on a legal opinion that painstakingly attempts to justify his failure to uphold Arizona’s constitutional right to protect the privacy of its constituents,” she wrote. “This is yet another example of Petersen desperately courting favor with a president who cannot accept that he lost his 2020 re-election in a fair and equitable manner. Arizonans will not be fooled.”

Another update in the DOGE voter data deal saga

We have some updates in the ongoing saga of the DOGE Social Security Administration’s election data pact.

As a quick refresher: In January, the DOJ admitted that, in a March 2025 court filing, two DOGE team members working at the Social Security Administration signed a pact with an “advocacy group” to use Social Security data as a means to detect voter fraud to overturn election results in specific states.

The legal nonprofit Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration last month to force the agency to turn over records related to this apparent pact for sensitive voter data.

Last week, a federal appeals court called details of the case “alarming” and said there were “even more alarming” developments in the case that a lower court should review.

“The government’s recent acknowledgments are alarming and raise serious questions about its prior conduct in the district court,” the appeals court order said.

A few days later on Tuesday, according to Democracy Docket, a federal judge ordered discovery in the case, meaning the SSA and DOGE could be mandated to turn over the records and we could actually get more clarity on what happened here.

So stay tuned to find out more.

Across the States: The Latest Proof of Citizenship Bills at the State Level

As the SAVE America Act languishes in the Senate and Republicans in both chambers try to figure out how they could potentially incorporate provisions of the SAVE Act into a possible unrelated reconciliation package (they probably won’t be able to get away with it), red states across the country are trying to pass their own versions of bills stripping voting rights from proof of citizenship. Here is the last one:

Florida

Earlier this month, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida SAVE Act. The bill requires voters to provide proof of citizenship as part of the basic registration process.

Kansas

Last week, the Republican-controlled Kansas state legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the SAVE Kansas Act, which is also modeled after the SAVE America Act.

Kelly said the bill would “remove civic engagement and make it harder for Kansans to vote.”

Mississippi

Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves signed the Mississippi SHIELD Act earlier this month. The law, also modeled after the SAVE America Act, requires election officials to verify voters’ citizenship status using the federal SAVE system operated by the Department of Homeland Security.