Software detective debunked Mike Lindell’s election fraud claims, awarded $5M | Hacker News Reader

Software detective debunked Mike Lindell’s election fraud claims, awarded $5M

spectrum.ieee.org

27 pointsgeox14 comments

So, by happenstance I know a little about some behind the scenes things of Lindell.

This isn’t about election fraud. Not really.

This is about a foolish wealthy guy who was very much taken advantage of by a con artist, and convinced of clearly stupid things.

I won’t type the guys name here, but Lindell met a guy who gave him all this “election data”. (Iirc there was literally some lorem ipsum in there). Lindell was dumb enough to go full bore on it.

The topic could have been anything but the con artist knew election data would be hot and Lindell couldn’t resist. This doesn’t excuse Lindell, but the topic could have been anything.

If you contain an amount of character that allows you to empathize with Lindell at all, he wasn’t being a bad guy. He actually thought that he had proof of election fraud, given to him by his magic friend, and was doing the righteous thing by exposing it. But again, extremely foolish. If you thought the election had issues, you should be furious at Lindell for making a mockery, the rest of us got to enjoy the show, and the hardline faithful got an unearned confirmation; this wasn’t about the election.

It's grifts all the way down!

Thanks for sharing your perspective. Lindell being a victim too unfortunately tracks.

Dennis Montgomery, the man that sold Lindell the “evidence” in the first place, is a fascinating character. He has been pulling con after con, including $30MM from the Department of Defense, with seemingly no consequences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_L._Montgomery

Of course he was hired by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Of course he was.

While it's unfortunate that neither this nor any other amount of evidence are likely to convince Lindell et al that they're wrong, at least we can hope that they'll continue to hoist themselves on their on petards.

> The data had, the report indicated, been sent to a so-called “Red Team” for vetting, but, according to the panel’s report, “none of the Red Team cyber experts were able to open the files.”

This has to be the best part of this article.

And naturally, Mike Lindell didnt believe the results. Not surprising at all.

At least someone in the audience can now always heckle him with, "What about that $5 million you had to pay for being debunked?"

Has any major national election ever been proven fraudulent?

The most widely publicized election fraud examples, usually but not always coming from openly despotic regimes, never are proven per se. They are just accepted as fraud by the international community because the results are unlikely. (Eg putin got 100% of the votes.)

To be clear, I’d never claim America has election fraud. It’s a dangerous claim to make, and not just in despotic regimes. It’s the proverbial crying wolf.

Congratulations to Zeidman for successfully parting a fool with his money

He debunked the data. He didn't debunk election fraud claims. If someone frauded Mike with bogus data the detective and Mike both win.

"I have data that proves there was election fraud" "No you don't".

He didn't debunk election fraud as a whole (not that he should need to at this point), but he definitely debunked Lindell's claims specifically.

True. I don't have a dog in this fight but if Mike sues the person who gave him the bogus data and wins there is a scenario where the detective, Mike and citizens all win. If anyone wants to pull this stunt again they will likely be caught getting cute with election data.

From the article:

Nobody "got cute with election data". There was no data to begin with, it was all gibberish. Claiming that you have proof an election was stolen is Serious Business, and Lindell didn't do his due diligence before going to public with the so-called data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com