LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Bob Zeidman wasn’t after the $5 million. It was something else that just didn’t sit right with him. That’s why he felt he had to challenge the 2020 election conspiracy theories espoused by Mike Lindell, the My Pillow chief executive.
“Really, my whole career has been spent looking for truth, even when the truth wasn’t what I wanted it to be,” said Zeidman, 63, the Summerlin software forensics expert awarded a $5 million prize last week. Ruling in Zeidman’s favor, an arbitration panel gave him the cash, saying the lifelong conservative disproved data Lindell presented in his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” during a cyber symposium Aug. 10-12, 2021,
At that Sioux Falls, South Dakota, symposium, Lindell provided data he claimed showed 2020 election fraud and issued his challenge. Under rules of the challenge set forth by Lindell, anyone disproving the data he provided would win $5 million.
Zeidman was one of the attendees. “I went there thinking I’d see this voter fraud,” Zeidman said Wednesday. “What I was seeing was not legitimate.”
Zeidman, who moved to the Las Vegas valley from California in 2019, said he tried getting through to Lindell’s people to tell them things weren’t right. “This data isn’t right,” Zeidman said, recalling what he told the My Pillow representatives. “Is there some reason for this?”
What happened then was the people who took Zeidman seriously were fired by Lindell.
“I just didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt,” Zeidman said. “I said if he’s not going to hear the truth, then I will tell the world the truth.”
Zeidman told CNN, which broke the story, that data analysis in such a challenge normally could take months, but he was able to show the data was fake in just a few hours.
The arbitration panel said in its ruling that Zeidman and other contestants were not required to disprove election interference. Their task was to prove the data presented to them was not valid data from the November 2020 election. In short, the arbitration panel said Lindell’s data was unrelated to the 2020 election.
Zeidman said he doesn’t expect to see any of the $5 million. With Lindell facing lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, Zeidman said the My Pillow CEO would most likely declare bankruptcy.
Lindell told The Associated Press he’d take the case to court.
“I never really expected to see the money,” Zeidman said. “I’d be very pleased if I do. I love money, love to see it. But I never had any expectation that I’d see it.”
Zeidman, who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, said he’s had some Democrats applaud his move. Some Republicans, he said, have come out to say they disapprove. “But most Republicans I’ve talked to, when they understand why I did it, they congratulate me,” he said.
These days Zeidman is consumed by poker. You might find him at a high-stakes table at The Venetian or Wynn Las Vegas. He also has a popular poker blog at goodbeatpoker.substack.com.
Should the impossible happen and the $5 million comes his way, Zeidman said he’d donate it to some type of voter integrity project.
“I don’t really need it,” he said of the $5 million. “My career’s going pretty good.”
