Mike Lindell, a Republican candidate for Minnesota governor, flashes two thumbs up as he arrives to take part in a Minnesota Governor Candidate Forum in Morgan, Minn., Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026 (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt).
A declassified “CIA report” released by the White House is “newly discovered evidence” that should lead a judge to “reconsider” a finding that Mike Lindell defamed Smartmatic with his stolen election claims, the MyPillow founder and Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota said in a letter on Monday.
Nearly one year ago, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan granted partial summary judgment in the voting technology company’s favor, ruling that “no reasonable juror could conclude that any” of the 51 statements alleged to be defamatory “was true.”
Starting with the claim that Smartmatic’s machines helped steal the 2020 election from President Donald Trump, the Joe Biden-appointed judge said it couldn’t be true “as a matter of law” based on the “evidence in the record” — that Smartmatic “has never stolen any election” in another country and that its “technology has never been used to manipulate ballots.”
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One reason it couldn’t be true, the judge noted, is that Smartmatic had “only one customer in the United States: Los Angeles County, California,” where former President Joe Biden won 71.04% of the vote.
Nonetheless, Lindell has sent a letter to the judge, telling him that “newly discovered evidence” raises “material fact disputes regarding the truth of the challenged statements relating to the 2020 presidential election.”
But the “evidence,” a CIA report declassified by the Trump administration and released on July 16, didn’t help Lindell on his most fundamental claim about 2020, his letter acknowledged in closing.
Lindell noted that the CIA report said “neither Smartmatic nor the Venezuelan Government had the capability … to manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela in a predictable fashion,” and described the company’s 2020 presence in LA County as a “small footprint in the domestic election picture.”
Still, he claimed the CIA report at least supported his claims that the technology is vulnerable to hacking and is “demonstrably manipulatable.”
“This is particularly true where the CIA Report details a number of techniques that were developed to hide election manipulations. Given that, Defendants seek the opportunity to introduce this newly discovered evidence which, when combined with existing evidence, raises material fact disputes regarding the truth of the challenged statements relating to the 2020 presidential election,” the letter ended.
Lindell, who recently stepped down as MyPillow CEO amid his gubernatorial campaign, previously told Law&Crime that his employees “had nothing to do with me standing up for our elections and trying to get rid of voting machines.”
The post ‘CIA report’ released by Trump White House should lead judge to ‘reconsider’ findings about Smartmatic and 2020 election, Mike Lindell insists first appeared on Law & Crime.
