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MyPillow CEO Meets With President About Plan To Install New CIA Director

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This article is more than 3 years old.
Updated Jan 15, 2021, 10:32pm EST

Topline

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, photographed Friday outside the White House carrying a document appearing to suggest replacing CIA Director Gina Haspel with Trump loyalist Kash Patel, reportedly met with the president on behalf of an attorney he refuses to name to present a voter fraud conspiracy theory roundly dismissed by the president’s lawyers.

Key Facts

Lindell was photographed outside the West Wing on Friday afternoon by Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford holding a document appearing to bear the phrases “insurrection act now,” “martial law if necessary” and “Move Kash Patel to CIA Director.”

The document also makes reference to Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump attorney so conspiratorial even the Trump campaign distanced itself from her, and evokes numerous viral voter fraud conspiracy theories that falsely posit Trump actually won the election.

Lindell told multiple outlets he met with the president only briefly – around five to ten minutes – before Trump referred him to the White House lawyers.

Lindell told the New York Times and the Washington Examiner that he was acting as a messenger on behalf of an anonymous attorney and that the lawyers he met with were dismissive of his claims, possibly because his plan includes firing White House counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the Times.

Lindell also denied that “martial law if necessary” appeared on the documents he was brandishing, despite the photograph – though the Times reported: “An administration official says they definitely referenced martial law.”

Forbes has reached out to the White House for comment.

Key Background

Trump has long been receptive to outlandish and factually inaccurate theories that benefit him politically, most recently latching onto any and all conspiracy theories that falsely posit his loss to Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. That has proven deleterious, culminating in an attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters – committed in an effort to overturn the election – that resulted in five deaths.

Surprising Fact

Haspel threatened to resign in December over a plan to install Patel – a former staffer to Trump-ally Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) who won the president’s favor with his rebuttals to the Mueller investigation – as her deputy, according to Axios. The plan reportedly nearly came to fruition, with paperwork drawn up and Patel called back to Washington while on a trip to Asia, but was called off after Haspel impressed Trump aides in a briefing.

Chief Critic

Two of the people apparently mentioned in Lindell’s document have denied involvement in his schemes. Patel told Axios he has “never met, spoken to, seen, texted, or communicated with Mike Lindell.” Frank Colon, a cyber attorney at Fort Meade seemingly floated by the document as a replacement for National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, told New York Magazine he’s “just a government employee who does work for the Army” and that it would be “odd to reach that far down” in the Pentagon ranks for such a position.

Tangent

Lindell, the founder of a pillow company with no medical background, claimed in August that the White House asked him to find “sanitizers and cures” for coronavirus and that Trump even allowed him to pitch a potentially toxic extract later rejected by the FDA. 

What To Watch For

Though Trump has begrudgingly conceded the election and urged his supporters to be non-violent, reportedly out of fear of the legal consequences of his actions once he leaves office, he doesn’t appear to be curbing all his bad habits. He’s reportedly considering a number of controversial pardons, and, according to Bloomberg, he is planning a “defiant final week in office.”

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