Judge rejects Mike Lindell's bid to reopen Smartmatic defamation case by citing 'CIA report' on Venezuela, says MyPillow CEO has 'not offered new evidence' that is relevant

A federal judge in Minnesota has rejected a request by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to reopen, “reconsider,” and relitigate the extent of his liability for defaming voting software and hardware company Smartmatic Corp. with pro-Donald Trump election denial claims.

In September 2025, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan, a Joe Biden appointee, found Lindell made several defamatory statements about Smartmatic and its voting machines in 2020 and 2021.

Ruling on a motion for summary judgment, the court’s 63-page order determined that “no reasonable juror could conclude that any” of the 51 statements alleged to be defamatory “was true.”

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Last week, however, Lindell played a late card.

The erstwhile bedding maven told the court that a declassified “CIA report” released by the White House is “newly discovered evidence” that raises “material fact disputes regarding the truth of the challenged statements relating to the 2020 presidential election.”

While conceding that the report dashed the notion that either Smartmatic or “the Venezuelan government” could “manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela,” Lindell said the declassified document showed voting technology is vulnerable to hacking and is “demonstrably manipulatable.”

In his long-shot bid to reopen the case, Lindell said the report, which was released in mid-July, also “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 motion to the court concludes.

On Thursday, the court rubbished the notion.

In a three-page order, Bryan briefly recalled the upshot of his partial summary judgment ruling in favor of the voting company plaintiffs.

“[T]he Court ruled, in relevant part, that the undisputed factual record demonstrated that statements published by Lindell accusing Smartmatic of manipulating the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election were false and, therefore, comprised actionable defamatory statements,” the order reads.

The judge then gets to the heart of the matter:

Specifically, the Court ruled that the undisputed factual evidence showed that it was mathematically impossible for Smartmatic’s voting machines, which were used only in Los Angeles County during the Election, to have altered the ultimate result of the Election; that the undisputed factual record showed that the Smartmatic voting machines actually used in the Election were not connected to the internet; and that there was no evidence that Smartmatic designed its voting machines for the purpose of manipulating Election results.

Bryan goes on to cast Lindell’s reopening request as based “on the issue of falsity.” The judge also notes that such requests are typically “dimly viewed” by courts and only used “to correct manifest errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence.”

Here, the court says, that is not what Lindell found.

“According to Defendants, the recently declassified CIA report describes intelligence regarding a belief that election manipulation was ‘technically possible and operationally feasible’ in Venezuela and that Smartmatic had conspired with Venezuelan intelligence services to tamper with Venezuelan elections,” the judge notes.

Bryan — without remarking upon the actual truth or falsity of the intelligence — says this allegation still elides the Los Angeles issue.

“The Court concludes that Defendants have not established the ‘compelling circumstances’ required to obtain the Court’s permission to file a motion for reconsideration because they have not offered new evidence that would alter the Court’s analysis in the Order on the issue of falsity,” the order continues. “The alleged contents of the declassified CIA report do not create genuine issues of material fact regarding the mathematical impossibility of Smartmatic voting machines in Los Angeles County changing the outcome of the Election or regarding the other conclusions reached by the Court.”

Lindell’s “request for leave to file a motion for reconsideration … is denied,” the order concludes.

The post Judge rejects Mike Lindell’s bid to reopen Smartmatic defamation case by citing ‘CIA report’ on Venezuela, says MyPillow CEO has ‘not offered new evidence’ that is relevant first appeared on Law & Crime.