Thread by @questauthority

Y'all, the arbitration award in the case where some guy sued Mike Lindell for failing to pay a $5 mil contest award is kind of amazing.

Not so much the award itself, which is pretty basic, but the picture of utter insanity it paints.

Here's the tl:dr:

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

It appears - a lot of this is my reading between the lines - that Mike Lindell put together the contest because he was really excited about some "election data" that he'd been given.

And, apparently, put the contest together before even his own people had reviewed everything.

Where did the data come from?

Here's where it gets fun, dear reader, because the cast of characters is such a Who's Who of the fringe right-wing grifters who serve as the unraveling yarn in the...well...the...y'know.

So the data comes from <drumroll> comes from <extended drumroll>

Dennis Montgomery.

Yes, really.

Who is Dennis Montgomery, you ask? Don't worry, I'll get there in a second.

Montgomery claimed to have special software tools that he used to capture secret information which revealed frauding and criming. If you're at all familiar with Dennis, this probably sounds familiar.

Why does it sound familiar? (For those of you new to Dennis, here's where you get caught up.)

Claiming to have special software that captures special information that reveals sekrit conspiratorial ties and crimes and frauds and everything is Dennis Montgomery's grift.

Well, I say "grift." Might be more accurate to say "his M.O." Or maybe his "trademark fraud."

Because this isn't the first time he's done that. Oh no. Not by a mile.

The last time, it was when he grifted Joe Arpaio and Joe's "Cold Case Posse" nimrod Mike Zullo.

Who figured out that they'd been scammed in 2014, but changed their minds when they realized they could drag another 15 minutes of stupidity out of the deal.

azcentral.com/story/news/pol…

Those claims - which were based on data that Montgomery collected using secret software tools - purported to show that the government was surveilling all kinds of people. Including Zullo and Arpaio.

Oh, and Jerome Corsi of swiftboat infamy.

And also Larry Klayman, who is (or at least was) Dennis Montgomery's lawyer.

And the judge in the lawsuit against Arpaio, which led to Arpaio demanding (again) the judge's recusal, which may have contributed some to the ultimate decision to have Arpaio prosecuted for contempt.

And before that, there was the Nevada bribery scandal (which fizzled out when the data didn't pan out.)

And before that was the time he convinced the Pentagon that he had secret software tools that could pull secret messages to terrorists from Al Jazeera.

That one was back in the early Oughts, and led to Orange terrorism alerts, flight groundings, and probably almost got people killed.

Good times.

So that's the source of the data that Lindell bet $5 million was accurate.

How bad was the data? How thoroughly did Lindell get scammed?

I think, friends, that the only possible answer was "it was pretty damn bad given who figured out it was bad."

Because this data was so bad that Josh Merritt figured out it was bad.

Remember Josh Merritt? Of course you do, right?

Mr. Merritt is the "military intelligence" "expert" that Sidney Powell relied so heavily on for the Kraken lawsuits.

The one whose expertise ultimately turned out to be based on his extensive experience failing out of Military Intelligence school.

And who had failed out of combat medic school also, and ultimately had a 10-year Army career that was cut short by his apparent inability to meet the standards required to get promoted to Sergeant.

Yeah, that guy.

And then Lindell apparently responded to the fact that he'd been grifted by trying to create a set of conditions for the contest - which he didn't, despite Spyder's advice cancel - that in Mike's mind made the contest unwinnable.

Only one of the people who went to the symposium and entered the contest didn't like being grifted by the grifter who had been grifted by the other serial grifter.

And the arbitral panel looked at all of it, and Lindell, and were like "LOL No."

And there you have it.

A grift onion that came undone.