Election Denier Joe Oltmann Ordered to Pay $90,000 for Refusal to Cooperate With Court

Douglas County-based conservative podcaster Joe Oltmann was ordered by a federal judge last week to pay $37,000 in fines for fleeing a deposition last year, as well as to reimburse the plaintiff in the case, Eric Coomer, $53,757 in attorneys' fees.

Oltmann had been subpoenaed and ordered to answer questions about who enabled him to join the infamous "antifa call" in September 2020, during which he claimed to have heard Coomer tell others that "Trump isn't going to win, I made fucking sure of it." Oltmann's antifa call claim is at the center of a slew of lawsuits that Coomer, a former executive at  Dominion Voting Systems, filed against outlets and individuals who platformed Oltmann's claims.

In early June, Oltmann was the star witness in MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's defamation trial, also brought by Coomer, which ended with both sides declaring victory despite Lindell and his streaming platform FrankSpeech being held responsible for three instances of defamation and ordered to pay $2.3 million in damages. Lindell has said he will appeal the decision, and his attorneys are asking the judge in that case to overturn the jury's verdict as a matter of law.

Lindell was accused of defaming Coomer, the former director of product security and strategy for Denver-based Dominion; Lindell's streaming platform, FrankSpeech, was also accused of defamation for broadcasting Oltmann himself repeating election-denial claims in two instances — neither of which the jury found to be defamation.

The case for which Oltmann was fined is Coomer v. Make Your Life Epic, LLC et al, a similar lawsuit aimed at an Oklahoma podcaster who platformed Oltmann's claims that Coomer was instrumental in rigging the 2020 election. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $1,000-per-day sanction in late June against Oltmann for absconding from a deposition.

At the deposition, Oltmann refused to answer questions about who got him on the Zoom call or to say who had provided him access to Coomer's private Facebook account. The judge told Oltmann's counsel to "cajole" his client into compliance, but Oltmann left the courthouse and returned to his podcast studio, where he proceeded to insult the judge, calling the Hispanic female magistrate judge "a radical left DEI."

Another judge instituted a $1,000 a day fine against Oltmann until he complied with the subpoena, but Oltmann appealed that decision to the 10th Circuit, which upheld the sanctions not long after the Lindell trial concluded. In the order filed last week, the judge upheld thirty days of that fine from the point it was issued until Oltmann appealed, and the seven-day window since the 10th Circuit affirmed the appeals, for a total of $37,000 — in addition to Coomer's attorneys' fees for litigating the case. Oltmann is a co-defendant in a separate lawsuit brought by Coomer against the 2020 Trump campaign; that case is expected to go to trial in April.

Earlier last month, conservative talk radio host and attorney Randy Corporon and Salem Media of Colorado Inc., which owns conservative talk station KNUS, reached a settlement with Coomer in another case, with Salem Media issuing a retraction and apology to Coomer. Each party agreed to pay its own attorneys' fees and expenses, but other terms of the agreement were not made public.

Salem declined to renew Corporon's contract last year.