Attorney Alan Dershowitz says he is advising lawyers representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in the $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems in connection to the businessman’s conspiracy theories involving the 2020 election.
Dershowitz, a former Harvard law professor who defended former President Trump in his first impeachment trial, confirmed to The Hill on Tuesday that he is “consulting with his [Lindell’s] lawyers” but added that he has a “limited role.”
“I think it is a very important First Amendment case,” Dershowitz, who is also an opinion contributor for The Hill, explained.
Dershowitz added that he is more concerned with Dominion limiting the “free marketplace of ideas” with its defamation suit and is not necessarily supportive of the content of Lindell’s arguments.
Dominion in its lawsuit filed last month argued that Lindell disparaged the company’s brand by advancing unsubstantiated claims that its voting machines were rigged and used in efforts to steal the 2020 election from Trump.
Dershowitz said Tuesday that he is not directly advising Lindell, but is instead offering guidance to the business executive’s lawyers, noting he has done the same for other attorneys in free speech cases in years prior, including those surrounding the Pentagon Papers and WikiLeaks.
However, CNB, which first reported Dershowitz’s involvement in Lindell’s case on Tuesday, noted that Lindell in a Monday radio interview said Dershowitz was “part of the team.”
“I’ve got probably over 12 attorneys now, including Alan Dershowitz,” Lindell said. “He came on board because he believes this is going to be the biggest First Amendment lawsuit in history.”
The MyPillow CEO made similar statements in a separate interview Monday with former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon, saying, “He’s one of a team of lawyers.”
Dominion spokesperson Kay Stimson said in a statement to The Hill that “nothing will change the facts in the case,” pointing to a newly declassified report from the U.S. intelligence community about foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 election.
Stimson said the facts of the case “have only been further substantiated by today’s U.S. government intelligence reports from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice on foreign threats to the 2020 US elections, finding ‘no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections.’ “
Dominion in its lawsuit argued that despite continued evidence disproving Lindell’s election fraud claims, the business executive has continued to advance conspiracy theories, “whined that he was being ‘censored’ and ‘attacked’ and produced a ‘docu-movie’ featuring shady characters and fake documents sourced from dark corners of the internet.”
The voting machine company in January sued longtime Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, alleging he knowingly spread numerous false claims about the company, while pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell also faces a separate defamation lawsuit from Dominion.
Lindell filed a countersuit against the company, asserting that it interfered in the 2020 election.
The MyPillow CEO told Business Insider last week that he planned on launching a social media site called Vocl due to “all the election-machine fraud,” adding it was “all about being able to be vocal again and not to be walking on eggshells.”
Updated at 9:30 p.m.