mike lindell

Mike Lindell lost defamation case, and his lawyers were fined for AI hallucinations

Lawyers representing MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell were fined $6,000 after using artificial intelligence in a brief that was riddled with misquotes and citations to fictional cases.

Attorney Christopher Kachouroff and the law firm of McSweeney Cynkar & Kachouroff were fined $3,000, jointly and severally. Attorney Jennifer DeMaster was separately ordered to pay $3,000. This “is the least severe sanction adequate to deter and punish defense counsel in this instance,” US District Judge Nina Wang wrote in an order issued yesterday in the District of Colorado.

Kachouroff and DeMaster were defending Lindell against a defamation lawsuit filed by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer, whose complaint said Lindell and his companies “have been among the most prolific vectors of baseless conspiracy theories claiming election fraud in the 2020 election.”

The sanctioning of the lawyers came several weeks after a jury trial in which Coomer was awarded over $2.3 million in damages. A jury found that Lindell defamed Coomer and ordered him to pay $440,500. The jury also found that Lindell’s media company, Frankspeech, defamed Coomer and ordered it to pay damages of $1,865,500. The jury did not find that MyPillow defamed Coomer.

The February 25 brief that got Lindell’s lawyers in trouble was an opposition to Coomer’s motion asking the court to exclude certain evidence. Coomer’s motion was partially granted before the trial began.

“Correct” version still had wrong citations

As we wrote in an April article, Kachouroff and DeMaster said they accidentally filed a “prior draft” instead of the correct version. But Wang’s order yesterday said that even the so-called “correct” version “still has substantive errors,” such as inaccurate descriptions of previous cases. The original version has nearly 30 defective citations.

Mike Lindell’s lawyers used AI to write brief—judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

Artificial Intelligence, mike lindell, mypillow, Policy / Kelly Newman / April 26, 2025

A lawyer representing MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell in a defamation case admitted using artificial intelligence in a brief that has nearly 30 defective citations, including misquotes and citations to fictional cases, a federal judge said.

“[T]he Court identified nearly thirty defective citations in the Opposition. These defects include but are not limited to misquotes of cited cases; misrepresentations of principles of law associated with cited cases, including discussions of legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions; misstatements regarding whether case law originated from a binding authority such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; misattributions of case law to this District; and most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist,” US District Judge Nina Wang wrote in an order to show cause Wednesday.

Wang ordered attorneys Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster to show cause as to why the court should not sanction the defendants, law firm, and individual attorneys. Kachouroff and DeMaster also have to explain why they should not be referred to disciplinary proceedings for violations of the rules of professional conduct.

Kachouroff and DeMaster, who are defending Lindell against a lawsuit filed by former Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer, both signed the February 25 brief with the defective citations. Kachouroff, representing defendants as lead counsel, admitted using AI to write the brief at an April 21 hearing, the judge wrote. The case is in the US District Court for the District of Colorado.

“Time and time again, when Mr. Kachouroff was asked for an explanation of why citations to legal authorities were inaccurate, he declined to offer any explanation, or suggested that it was a ‘draft pleading,'” Wang wrote. “Not until this Court asked Mr. Kachouroff directly whether the Opposition was the product of generative artificial intelligence did Mr. Kachouroff admit that he did, in fact, use generative artificial intelligence.”

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