Brendan Joel Kelley
Audio By Carbonatix
Two of the MAGAverse’s most recognizable election-fraud activists are heading back to court, and this time they’ll face off against one another. Meanwhile, another 2020 election denier is suing the federal government and the FBI for searching her Silt, Colorado, home in 2021.
In one corner of the first lawsuit is plaintiff Joe Oltmann, the Denver podcaster who helped launch the Dominion Voting Systems conspiracy that became gospel among the MAGA right. In the other corner is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, once Oltmann’s ally in amplifying the same claims. Now Oltmann and Arizona influencer Miki Klann are suing Lindell for allegedly defaulting on a multimillion-dollar loan.
Meanwhile, far-right activist Sharronna Bishop, a former campaign manager for Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, and her husband, Neil, have filed their own lawsuit against the FBI and the United States Department of Justice, claiming a federal raid on their home four years ago related to the Tina Peters election security breach was an unconstitutional act of political persecution. Peters is currently serving a nine-year sentence in Colorado.
Find the juicy details on both below.
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Oltmann vs. Lindell
According to a complaint filed on November 3 in Douglas County District Court, Oltmann’s company, Villa Pine Drive, LLC, and Klann loaned Lindell and MyPillow $3 million in August 2023.
The deal was short-term: Lindell agreed to repay $3.5 million within 90 days, secured by five parcels of land in Texas and Minnesota owned through his companies, Prior Lake 40 Acres and Lindell Properties.
But when the payment deadline hit that November, Oltmann and Bishop say no money came. In August 2024, after months of back-and-forth, the parties signed a settlement agreement requiring Lindell to pay $10,300 per day for 489 consecutive banking days, more than $5 million in total. The lawsuit alleges Lindell never made a single payment.
The plaintiffs accuse Lindell of “failing to fulfill contractual obligations in good faith” and claim he allowed other lenders place liens on the same collateral properties without informing them. That, they say, destroyed the security they were supposed to have if the loan went bad. “Defendants have permitted numerous additional security interests to be levied against the collateral,” the complaint says, “and risked the well-being of the collateral by failing to obtain prior written consent.”
Oltmann and Bishop are asking the court to order Lindell and MyPillow to pay the full $5 million plus interest, attorneys’ fees and damages to cover the cost of clearing any outstanding liens.
The suit doesn’t say why Lindell needed the money, but his finances have been in a tailspin. This summer, a federal judge ordered him to pay $2.3 million after he was found liable for defamation against a former Dominion Voting Systems executive for Lindell’s unfounded claims about the service’s interference in the 2020 presidential election. MyPillow’s financial condition has deteriorated to the point where some of its assets have been auctioned off in 2023.
Oltmann recently paid Eric Coomer, the plaintiff in Lindell’s defamation suit, more than $53,000 in attorneys’ fees. What seemed to be a united front — two men who spread the same misinformation about the 2020 election — has turned into a financial knife fight between former comrades. In a text message to Westword, Oltmann calls the situation “unfortunate.”
Klann, the other plaintiff, is an Arizona activist with roots in the QAnon world. She cofounded a group called the People’s Operation Restoration, which invites followers to “join the army of the light” on a website that features AI-generated images of Donald Trump dressed like a Revolutionary War hero.
Bishops Target the FBI in New Lawsuit
While more MyPillow-related legal drama unfolds in state court, another of Colorado’s election-conspiracy figures is taking on the federal government. On October 27, Sharronna Bishop and her husband, Neil, filed a pro se complaint in U.S. District Court in Denver, accusing the federal government of violating their civil rights during a November 2021 “raid” on their home in Silt.
The couple claims that federal agents, working with local law enforcement, used a battering ram to break down their door while Bishop was homeschooling their children. The lawsuit alleges that agents “entered the home with weapons drawn,” handcuffed the couple at gunpoint, and refused to show a warrant for hours. When they finally did, the warrant listed “conspiracy to commit wire fraud” as the alleged offense. The Bishops say they were never charged…with anything.
In the filing, the couple claims the raid was “unlawful, excessive, violent, and unconstitutional,” and that it left them traumatized and financially damaged. They’re seeking $10 million in damages, and accuse the government of acting out of “political or ideological bias” against Bishop’s activism. Reached via email, Bishop told Westword that “we have no comment at this time.”
During the raid, the lawsuit alleges, a Mesa County investigator told Bishop, “You connect people,” a phrase she took as confirmation that her networking in Colorado’s election-denial movement made her a target.
Bishop was an ally of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, the now-convicted former elections official who allowed outsiders to access confidential voting-machine data after the 2020 election. That breach launched both women into the far-right limelight, with Bishop appearing on podcasts and at conferences to claim that the FBI raid was proof that the Biden administration was persecuting Trump supporters. In 2021, Sherronna Bishop collaborated with Peters for an online event called “Searching for the Truth,” where the integrity of the 2020 election was questioned.
The lawsuit repeats that narrative, describing the incident at her home as politically motivated “retribution.” The property seized in the search — Bishop’s computers and cell phone — was returned this fall, four years after the raid.
Bishop and her husband are representing themselves and asking not only for money but also for a declaratory judgment that the FBI’s conduct was unconstitutional and for the DOJ to implement “training and procedural safeguards” to prevent similar raids. Whether the court takes that request seriously remains to be seen.
