Mike Lindell plans to pay for recount after losing Minnesota primary for governor

Key Points:

• Mike Lindell, founder of MyPillow and a Trump ally, plans to pay for a full recount of Minnesota’s GOP gubernatorial primary, which he lost by 11 percentage points to Lisa Demuth.
• Lindell has hired a team to investigate the race and contacted the Minnesota secretary of state’s office for a cost estimate, which was about $825,000 for a full hand recount and audit, with Lindell expecting total costs to exceed $1 million.
• The secretary of state’s office has not yet received an official recount request, which Lindell plans to submit in person by Monday, along with the required bond or surety for the estimated costs.
• Lindell alleges “irregularities” linked to electronic voting machines and views the recount as a step toward eliminating such machines, despite his claims about election fraud being widely debunked.
• Lindell faces ongoing legal challenges from voting machine companies, including a defamation case with Smartmatic USA Corp., and continues to dispute court rulings and fines related to his false 2020 election claims.