A three‑judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously this Wednesday that MyPillow CEO and vocal Trump ally Mike Lindell cannot be forced to pay the $5 million previously awarded in arbitration to software developer Robert Zeidman, who had challenged Lindell’s claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election.
In 2021, Lindell launched his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” during his high‑profile Cyber Symposium, publicly betting $5 million that his packet‑capture election data proved foreign meddling.
Lindell appeared on the War Room podcast and said that he’s offering $5 million to any “cyber guy” who shows up at his symposium and demonstrates that the data doesn’t actually prove Donald Trump won the election.
According to the New York Times– Mr. Zeidman, who described himself as a “well-known” pioneer in the field of software forensics, said that he used his connections in the Trump world to obtain an invitation to Mr. Lindell’s symposium.
According to Mike and from what we could ascertain based on the rules provided to us by Mr. Lindell’s attorney, to win the $5 million payout, the participants must prove that the data used at the Cyber Symposium is NOT from the 2020 election. Mr. Zeidman’s claim is that the data is bogus.
Here’s a video showing Mike Lindell explaining to War Room host Steve Bannon the conditions of the contest to win $5 million at his upcoming Cyber Symposium.
Zeidman filed a detailed 15‑page report dismantling Lindell’s assertions. Although the private contest judges initially withheld judgment, an arbitration panel in 2023 sided with Zeidman—declaring that Lindell’s data was not relatable to the 2020 election and awarding him $5 million. A federal judge later confirmed the award.
A private arbitration panel, including one Lindell handpicked, ruled in Zeidman’s favor in April 2023.
A Minnesota federal judge then rubber‑stamped that award in Feb. 2024 — until the 8th Circuit stepped in to vacate it this week.
In a blistering opinion, the Eighth Circuit judges slammed the panel for ignoring the clear language of Lindell’s contest rules and inventing their own criteria for what constituted “election data.”
The panel “explicitly agreed with the parties that the relevant contract terms were unambiguous,” the court wrote, but then “used extrinsic evidence” — including media coverage and subjective expectations — to interpret the rules in a way that dramatically favored Zeidman.
“The panel thus did more than construe an ambiguous contract term. Adding a form-of-data requirement imposed a new obligation upon LMC, effectively ‘amending the contract,’” the court ruled.
In short: Zeidman didn’t win under the agreed-upon rules — the panel changed the rules after the fact to hand him the money.
“Huge win for our country… we will not stop fighting to get rid of the electronic voting machines!!” Lindell wrote on X.
Huge win for our country… we will not stop fighting to get rid of the electronic voting machines!!https://t.co/ghMZ45DkA5
— Mike Lindell (@realMikeLindell) July 24, 2025
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Read the ruling below:
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