Tears On My Pillow

A demand to subpoena two government officials in defamation litigation brought against Mike Lindell and My Pillow has been rejected by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia

The Court agrees with the United States. The testimony that Lindell seeks from Wells and Negroponte is not relevant to a claim or defense in the Dominion Litigation. First, as Lindell does not dispute, Wells and Negroponte do not have any personal or direct knowledge regarding the allegedly defamatory statements at issue. At most, because Lindell claims that he made his statements about Dominion in part based on what he “heard” from and about Montgomery related to Montgomery’s work with the U.S. Government, the only potential knowledge that Wells and Negroponte possess is information from almost twenty years ago about Montgomery’s work with the U.S. Government in an unrelated matter. See generally ECF No. 182-1; ECF No. 183. This information would, according to Lindell, corroborate or help make his reliance on information he heard from and about Montgomery more reasonable. Setting aside the fact that Wells and Negroponte’s role in this case is attenuated at best, a central problem with Lindell’s theory is that he does not claim that he actually relied on the information he now seeks back when he made statements about Dominion during the 2020 U.S. election.

Put another way, testimony from Wells and Negroponte about why the United States sought and enforced a protective order in unrelated litigation almost 20 years ago is irrelevant to this case because it is not the actual basis for Lindell’s statements about Dominion vis-à-vis the 2020 election. That Lindell did not seek to verify the information he “received” and “heard” about Montgomery’s work with the U.S. Government when making his statements related to the 2020 U.S. election does not now make that information relevant. See e.g., Alexander, 186 F.R.D. at 20 (finding irrelevant discovery requests for information and documents related to the White House recording system that went beyond how individuals may have been able to enter the White House to probing “technical and operational subject matter and capabilities of White House security.”). Nor does Lindell provide any authority for the proposition that he can rely on information discovered years after he made the statements to justify whether his conduct was “reasonable” under the circumstances as they existed at the time he made the statements. In sum, Lindell has failed to establish the requested discovery is relevant in to any claim or defense.

Cue Little Anthony. (Mike Frisch)