Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press File (2021)
Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024 | 2 a.m.
A federal court last week upheld a $5 million arbitration award in favor of a Las Vegas software forensics expert who disproved claims that China interfered in the 2020 presidential election by right-wing activist and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who falsely asserted the race had been rigged to favor President Joe Biden.
The ruling stems from a so-called cybersymposium where Lindell launched a “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” in 2021 and offered a $5 million prize to anyone who could prove that “packed captures” and other data he was in custody of was not valid from the 2020 presidential election, according to The Associated Press.
The benefactor of the ruling is Las Vegas resident Bob Zeidman, 64, who accepted Lindell’s challenge and concluded in a 15-page report the data contained no “packet data” of any kind and “do not contain any information related to the 2020 election,” according to the AP. A panel of contest judges, which included Lindell’s attorney, declined to declare Zeidman a winner, leading the local man to file for arbitration.
Arbitrators in April 2023 unanimously ordered Zeidman be paid the $5 million prize and concluded he had sufficiently satisfied the rules of the challenge. In the ruling last week, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim expressed concern how the arbitration panel interpreted a “poorly written contract” but ruled that the court did not have authority to overrule the arbitration award.
Tunheim ordered Lindell to pay the $5 million with interest within 30 days.
Lindell plans to appeal the ruling, according to multiple outlets, telling the AP, “Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming.”
The Sun caught up with Zeidman. Here’s what he had to say about the challenge, his findings and his quest to seek the truth:
How did you find out about Lindell’s so-called “cybersymposium” and what compelled you to go?
If we go back to January 2021, which is when Biden’s inauguration took place, Lindell came out with public statements saying he had proof that the voting machines had been hacked. And at the time, I remember he wasn’t clear about who had hacked the voting machines, whether it was the Democrats, Russia, the deep state, the FBI, CIA or China, but I guess he eventually settled on China.
He held his symposium in August 2021 to show proof to the press and to the public, and he invited cybersecurity experts to come and meet. He challenged them with $5 million if they could prove him wrong, that I had to prove that the data was not related to the election, not that it didn’t show hacking, but it wasn’t even related to the election. So I thought, “That’s a pretty high bar for me.”
My friends had convinced me to go. I thought there was no chance I would ever prove anything. It’s too much in too little time: Three days to look at what turned out to be hundreds of gigabytes of data. But I went because I thought I would see history in the making, either that the election could be overturned or that he’d be proven wrong by somebody. So I went there, and while looking at the data and within about three hours, I noticed the data was just a bunch of gibberish and word…
Read More: Las Vegas resident debunked MyPillow guy’s challenge in 2021. Now he’s one step