The Las Vegas man who debunked one of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's claims about fraud in the 2020 election has explained how he did it.
Computer scientist and entrepreneur Robert Zeidman wrote a column for Politico published Friday, a week after he filed a petition in federal court to claim his $5 million prize.
Zeidman had entered the three-day "Prove Mike Wrong" challenge that promised $5 million to anyone who could determine that purported data concerning the 2020 presidential election was false. Lindell had claimed the data showed that China hacked voting machines to favor Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
In his column, Zeidman says he attended Lindell's symposium in South Dakota back in 2021, noting that he voted twice for Trump and was curious about the three-day challenge.
He said he was given seven files of data, including alleged PCAPs, or packet capture data. Lindell claimed the data showed the packet captures of votes going outside of the U.S. and to China, where they were modified to switch votes.
Zeidman says the file didn't contain any standard PCAP formats, however, and he converted other files to find a list of IP addresses with no other information. More of his work found that the data didn't relate to anything in the 2020 election.
On the third day, Zeidman says, the competitors received another batch of more than 500 files, which he believed was a delay tactic meant to keep anyone from winning. He says he decided to scan the files for their modification dates and found most were in 2021, just before the symposium.
"In other words, the data were obviously modified right before we examined them," Zeidman wrote. "They could not possibly accurately represent data from the November 2020 election."
Zeidman filed his report debunking Lindell's claim but never got a response, prompting him to hire a law firm and go to an arbitration panel, which ruled in his favor.
Lindell has filed to vacate the arbitration panel's decision, while Zeidman wants a federal judge to affirm his contest win and add interest to the $5 million prize until it's paid out.
Zeidman says that if he gets paid, he will donate the money to a nonprofit that supports voter integrity laws and processes.