Supreme Court declines Lindell appeal over phone seizure

The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Trump ally Mike Lindell on Monday over his attempt to block the seizure of his phone in an identity theft case related to his election denial activism.

Lindell, the founder of My Pillow and a prominent election denier and conservative activist, has been under investigation on suspicion of criminal identity theft since 2022 over claims he was involved in a Colorado scheme to tamper with voting machines during the 2020 election.

Prosecutors seized Lindell’s phone as part of the investigation, which he had challenged in court. His challenge was denied in 2022, but has been under appeal since.

“Lindell’s irritation as to where and how the government took possession of his cell phone does not give rise to a constitutional claim, let alone a showing of a callous disregard for his constitutional rights,” U.S. Circuit Judge Ralph Erickson wrote in his appellate decision against Lindell last September.

The investigation centers on Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County, Colo. She was indicted in 2022 on accusations that she allowed someone to access and copy information from the county’s voting machines during the 2020 election and post it online, including access to private information that could make the machines vulnerable to hacking.

Peters was accused of participating in a “deceptive” voting breach scene. She was ousted from the office of clerk later that year.

Lindell has a history of legal cases related to 2020 election denialism, including a pair of costly defamation cases with voting machine companies. He was also ordered in February to pay up a $5 million bounty to a man who proved that the election was not stolen.