A court in Minnesota has ordered MyPillow to be evicted from the warehouse it formerly used.
MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell, a prominent election denier, told The Associated Press that the eviction is a formality because the landlord wants to take the property back.
The Minneapolis warehouse is approximately 125,000 square feet and has been leased to Lindell since December 2015. The lease agreement between Lindell and the landlord, First Industrial LP, has been amended twice. It lasts 10 years, 7 months and 20 days, and the monthly rent was $57,794.12, according to the eviction complaint.
According to the complaint, dated March 7, Lindell did not make rent payments for February and March 2024. Since it is not the first time MyPillow failed to pay its rent on more than two occasions in the previous 12-month period, per the lease agreement, the landlord is entitled to retake possession of the premises.
As of Wednesday, Lindell did not answer the eviction complaint or appear at the scheduled hearing, forcing the judge to order the eviction. He confirmed to The AP that MyPillow owes around $217,000 to the Delaware-based company for the rent.
Lindell said the company no longer needed the space and removed its property from the warehouse last June before subleasing it to another company through December. The company backed out in January and “left us all stranded.” MyPillow offered to find another tenant, but the landlord wanted to take the warehouse back, he told the newswire.
Sara Filo, the attorney representing First Industrial LP, said MyPillow had “more or less vacated but we’d like to do this by the book,” The Star Tribune reported.
Lindell faces multiple defamation lawsuits from two voting machine companies, after he spread lies that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent and stolen from former President Donald Trump. In February, a federal judge ruled he must pay $5 million in an election data dispute case.
Several major retailers pulled MyPillow products from their shelves in July 2023, prompting the company to begin auctioning off its equipment, such as forklifts and conveyor belts.
Lindell also engaged in a dispute with Fox News, which stopped airing MyPillow’s ads, in January. He acknowledged that he owes Fox about $7.8 million, but said the network canceled the ads because the company wants to silence him over his election claims.
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