Update 3:52 p.m., June 12, 2025: Witness questioning took up the entire day on Thursday. Closing arguments in the trial are now anticipated for Friday. The original story continues below:
A defamation trial more than four years in the making is wrapping up at the federal courthouse in Denver.
Eric Coomer, the former product strategy and security director for Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, is suing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell for defamation, arguing that Lindell used his public platforms to spread the false claim that Coomer was involved in stealing the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
After a final few witnesses, lawyers for each side could present their closing arguments to a federal jury as soon as this afternoon.
Coomer’s name entered the echo-chamber of post-election conspiracy theories in November, 2020. A Colorado-based podcaster, Joe Oltmann, claimed that he’d snuck onto a call by radical leftist protesters before the election and heard someone identified as “Eric, the Dominion guy” reassure the other participants that he’d guaranteed Trump would not win. Oltmann, who has never provided a recording of the call, went on to conclude the speaker was Coomer, a claim he made widely on right-wing media after the election.
One outlet Oltmann used to air his allegations was FrankTV, an online broadcast outlet owned by Lindell. The pillow company CEO himself has attacked Coomer in interviews and speeches numerous times in the years since.
Lindell, who was questioned earlier in the week, returned to the stand Wednesday afternoon. He has denied knowing that any of the remarks he’s made about Coomer over the years are false and portrayed himself as a victim of “lawfare.”
To bolster the argument that he had good reason to believe — and repeat — the accusations against Coomer, Lindell’s lawyers played excerpts from videos Lindell co-produced and starred in, in which he argued that China hacked the 2020 election. The clips shown did not include mentions of Coomer or Dominion Voting Systems. His attorney emphasized a segment in which Gen. Michael Flynn insisted it was reasonable to fear foreign operations against American elections.
“Do you still believe as you sit here today… in the accuracy of what Gen. Flynn said?” asked the attorney.
“One hundred percent,” Lindell answered.
Coomer’s attorney followed that testimony with an expert witness in election security, Prof. J. Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan. Halderman, who has been involved in identifying potential security vulnerabilities in American elections, testified it’s a huge leap to conclude that because the system is vulnerable, those vulnerabilities have been successfully exploited.
“The 2020 election, at this point, I think is the most studied election in American history,” said Halderman. “Nothing has emerged, no credible evidence whatsoever” that hackers changed votes.
Over the course of the two-week trial, Coomer’s attorneys used a string of witnesses from Lindell’s orbit to show that he had ample chances to realize that the claims he was making about Coomer weren’t true, and that he continued to make them anyway.
“I don’t have any evidence that Eric Coomer rigged the election,” acknowledged Brannon Howse, a former FrankTV anchor, in a video deposition. Numerous guests on Howse’s programs claimed Coomer helped rig the election. Howse said he was unaware that lawyers for Coomer repeatedly demanded the company take down those videos.
The claims about Coomer — and the threats and harassment they unleashed — sent him into hiding shortly after the 2020 election. His attorneys have argued that the claims about him have destroyed both his professional future and his daily life.
Doug Bania, an expert hired by Coomer’s attorneys, put the cost of starting to repair his reputation at $2.8 million, a “very conservative” conclusion he reached after reviewing how widely Lindell’s remarks about Coomer had spread on social media and the comments they provoked calling him things like “treasonous” and “disgusting.”
Attorneys for Lindell sought to undermine the process Bania used to reach his conclusion and suggested that coverage of the defamation trial was arguably doing some of the work of repairing Coomer’s reputation. They have also made the case that Coomer himself damaged his standing, through anti-Trump social media posts he made that were found and disseminated by people who believe he was involved in stealing the election.
Lindell said on the stand that he’s currently $10 million in debt, a drop of about $70 million from what he was worth before he got involved in making claims about the 2020 election.
Colleen Slevin of the Associated Press contributed to this report.
