The ruling is less about a viral MAGA-on-MAGA clash than the legal fate of 2020 election claims. Smartmatic still must prove what Lindell knew or recklessly ignored.
Mike Lindell was criticized by a judge — U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan in Minnesota — in the court case involving Lindell and Smartmatic, the election-technology company he accused of helping rig the 2020 vote. The viral framing, Trump ally Mike Lindell torn apart by MAGA judge, points to the political sting. The legal setback is sharper: in a Sept. 26, 2025 ruling, Bryan said 51 Smartmatic statements by Lindell were false, a finding that matters because damages and actual malice are still unresolved.
The ruling does not end Smartmatic’s case against the MyPillow founder and Trump ally. It does, however, strip away one major defense: the court said the statements at issue could not reasonably be found true on the record before it.
The ruling hit falsity first
CBS News, citing Associated Press reporting, said Bryan ruled that Lindell defamed Smartmatic through false statements claiming the company’s voting machines helped rig the 2020 presidential election. The judge focused on statements Lindell made in documentaries, media appearances and other public settings.
The most important line was not a personal insult. It was a legal finding: Bryan wrote that no reasonable trier of fact could find the disputed statements true, based on the record presented.
That is why the rebuke landed so hard. For years, Lindell has publicly insisted that voting-machine companies played a role in stealing the 2020 election from Donald Trump. In this case, the court said Smartmatic had shown that the specific statements at issue were false.
Political coverage turned the moment into an intra-right spectacle, especially because Lindell remains one of the most recognizable promoters of Trump’s 2020 election narrative. The court order is more consequential than the label attached to the judge: it narrows what Lindell can argue as the case moves forward.
Why the Smartmatic claims matter
The disputed claims centered on Los Angeles County, California, where Smartmatic’s technology was used in the 2020 election. CBS News reported that Los Angeles County was Smartmatic’s only customer for that election cycle.
Joe Biden carried Los Angeles County with 71% of the vote and won California’s 55 electoral votes. Lindell alleged that Smartmatic machines were rigged to switch Trump votes to Biden votes.
Smartmatic has maintained that its systems could not have altered the national result because its 2020 U.S. election work was limited to that county. Its attorney, Erik Connolly, said the company would seek nine-figure damages from Lindell and MyPillow for spreading lies about the company.
The scale matters because defamation cases over 2020 election claims have become one of the few arenas where broad political assertions are being tested against evidence rules. Cable interviews and online videos can reward certainty. A courtroom demands proof.
Lindell still has one opening
Bryan’s ruling did not decide everything Smartmatic must prove. The judge deferred the question of whether Lindell acted with actual malice — the legal standard requiring proof that a defendant knew statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
That distinction is crucial. A court can decide that a statement is false while still leaving open what the speaker believed, what evidence the speaker had, and whether the speaker recklessly ignored contrary facts.
Lindell’s defense has argued that he held an unwavering belief in the truth of his statements. Bryan noted that there were genuine disputes over Lindell’s state of mind, which means that part of the case remains alive for later proceedings.
For Lindell, that is the remaining path. For Smartmatic, it is the next hurdle. The company has won a major ruling on falsity, but the potential size of any financial judgment depends on proving more than just that the claims were wrong.
The damages fight could be large
Smartmatic has said it will seek nine-figure damages, a figure that signals the company views the statements as commercially devastating as well as reputationally damaging. Lindell and MyPillow have already faced years of legal pressure tied to election-fraud claims.
Lindell rejected the ruling when contacted by the Associated Press, saying he had not yet seen it and calling it bizarre. He continued to attack Smartmatic and said he would keep pushing against voting machines, even if that fight reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
That response shows why the case is likely to remain politically charged. Smartmatic sees the litigation as an effort to hold public figures accountable for false election claims. Lindell frames it as part of his broader campaign against machine voting.
The court, for now, has separated those narratives from the legal question already answered: whether the 51 statements identified in the case could be defended as true. Bryan said they could not.
A wider courtroom reckoning
Smartmatic is not the only election-technology company to pursue defamation claims after 2020. Dominion Voting Systems also sued prominent figures and media outlets over similar allegations that voting systems were used to manipulate the election.
Lindell lost a separate case involving Dominion in June, when a jury found that he defamed a former Dominion employee by accusing him of treason. The jury awarded $2.3 million in damages. In July, however, Lindell won a different legal victory when a federal appeals court ruled he did not have to pay a $5 million arbitration award tied to a software engineer’s challenge to data Lindell promoted.
Those mixed outcomes explain why the Smartmatic ruling is not the final word on Lindell’s legal exposure. It is a serious setback, but it sits inside a larger patchwork of cases where different claims, standards and defendants can produce different results.
The political timing also matters. Lindell told CBS News he was considering a run for governor in Minnesota, where MyPillow is based in the Minneapolis metropolitan area. If he enters politics more directly, the same election-security claims at the center of his brand could follow him into courtrooms and campaign stops alike.
What remains unresolved
The next phase is not about whether Smartmatic’s machines secretly flipped votes in Los Angeles County. On the current record, the court has rejected that as false. The remaining fight is about Lindell’s knowledge, recklessness and potential financial liability.
That is why the judge’s criticism matters beyond one viral headline. It shows how far courts are willing to go in rejecting unsupported election claims while still preserving the tougher factual questions that determine damages.
For Lindell, the ruling is a courtroom setback, not a final defeat. For Smartmatic, it is a major step toward proving harm. For the broader politics of 2020 election denial, it is another reminder that claims made loudly in public can face a much colder test under oath.
Leave a Reply