Liberty Votes, formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems, dropped its $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and Trump ally. The case ends eight months after the company was purchased by Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican el
A billion-dollar lawsuit ended quietly, the kind of quiet that still feels like a thunderclap.
Liberty Votes. the voting machine company formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems. dropped its defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell on Wednesday. The case had demanded $1.3 billion. It had been filed in 2021. accusing Lindell—CEO of MyPillow—of pushing false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election despite allegedly knowing they were lies.
This is not a courtroom footnote for anyone who has watched Lindell’s claims travel from cable studios into lawsuits. then into verdicts. Dominion’s voting systems were used in 27 states during the 2024 election. placing the company at the center of a broader political battle over what people believe happened in 2020.
The dismissal came eight months after Dominion was purchased by a former Republican election official. The company is now known as Liberty Votes. and it was sold in October to a company run by Scott Leiendecker. His LinkedIn profile says he served as election director for the city of St. Louis until 2012, and news articles from that period indicated he is a Republican.
In the court filing submitted late Wednesday, the company and Lindell agreed to dismiss the $1.3 billion defamation suit. They also agreed that “each party shall bear its own attorneys’ fees, expenses, and costs,” ending not just the claims—but the fight over who would pay for the legal war.
Lindell, who is running for governor of Minnesota, called the outcome a “relief” when he discussed it with ABC News.
The end of this case also lands next to an earlier settlement Lindell brought up himself. He said. “I wonder what Fox News thinks. when they settled for $787 million?” He later added. “Maybe they should have held out.” Fox News had decided to settle a similar defamation suit by paying Dominion $787.5 million in 2023.
His comments echo a reality already shaped by juries and judges. Last year. a jury issued a $2.3 million judgment against Lindell after finding he defamed a former Dominion Voting Systems director with claims of election fraud. And a judge last September found Lindell defamed the voting company Smartmatic with similar false claims. though the court had not yet determined a dollar amount for damages at the time.
That Smartmatic dispute also came with consequences for Lindell. Earlier, he was ordered to pay Smartmatic more than $50,000 in sanctions tied to a “frivolous” countersuit he filed against the company.
The pattern here is stark: the legal record already includes judgments and sanctions over the same kind of election-fraud claims, even as this specific $1.3 billion Dominion lawsuit has now been dismissed with both sides absorbing their own costs.
With Liberty Votes dropping the case on Wednesday, the question shifts from whether Lindell’s assertions were worth defending to what the remaining legal outcomes will mean next—especially as he seeks to win political power in Minnesota.
Liberty Votes Dominion Voting Systems Mike Lindell MyPillow defamation lawsuit election machine Scott Leiendecker Minnesota governor race