Democracy Dies in Darkness

Another year, another high-profile voter-fraud summit goes bust

Analysis by
National columnist
August 15, 2022 at 1:37 p.m. EDT
Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, applauds during a news conference in Las Vegas on July 12. (Bridget Bennett/Reuters)
8 min

It was just over a year ago that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell convened supporters and data experts in South Dakota for a multiday summit at which he pledged to show his evidence that foreign actors had interfered in the 2020 election.

As presented, the idea was straightforward: Lindell, who believed fervently that the election had been stolen, would finally offer up the raw information that he claimed showed how voting machines had been hacked and the results altered from overseas. This wasn’t his analysis, obviously; he’d hired guys who said they’d uncovered a pattern that could be replicated by others. But when the moment came … it couldn’t. The data was invalid and/or useless. There was no proof. None has since emerged.