Federal agents Tuesday night executing a search warrant seized the cell phone of Mike Lindell, a democracy-denying ultra MAGA activist who had Oval Office access to Donald Trump when he was president, promotes wild conspiracy theories, and is now bankrolling a far-right extremist described as a “fascist,” a “white supremacist,” and “one of the internet’s most rabid white Christian nationalists.”
“We are the Christian Taliban and we will not stop until The Handmaid’s Tale is a reality, and even worse than that,” says Vincent James, who Lindell is financially supporting according to Right Wing Watch and Vice News.
Lindell, of course, is known to millions as the “My Pillow guy,” the founder of the massively successful shredded foam manufacturer who is now using his vast wealth to promote his claims of massive election fraud, claims that have led some television stations, he says, to ban him from appearing in his own commercials.
Lindell told supporters about the FBI executing a search warrant while he was at a Hardee’s drive-thru in his Mankato, Minnesota hometown, on his streaming show, the Lindell Report.
“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us, and behind us and I said those are either bad guys or the FBI,” Lindell said, The Guardian reports. “Well, it turns out they were the FBI.”
Also on his streaming internet show Lindell told supporters he does not have a computer, which likely means all his electronic communications are stored on the cell phone now in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“I don’t have a computer, everything I do off that phone,” Lindell said, “everything was on there.”
One of the things that likely would be on there are Lindell’s communications with far-right white Christian nationalist Vincent James, who promotes vicious anti-LGBTQ, anti-women, and racist rhetoric.
“White nationalist Vincent James has become the latest far-right voice to benefit from Lindell’s largesse, announcing during a livestream broadcast last Thursday that Lindell recently offered him just such a personalized code for his Daily Veracity website,” Right Wing Watch reported this week. Vice News on Wednesday also reported Lindell’s support of James.
“James currently serves as the treasurer of the white nationalist organization America First and is an unapologetic racist, antisemite, misogynist, conspiracy theorist, and fascist who declares that when Christian nationalists such as himself seize power, they intend to ‘dominate without mercy,'” Right Wing Watch reported.
Historian and analyst of far-right wing extremism, Dr. Mark Pitcavage, has been called an “authority on extremism in the United States,” and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, according to his bio on the U.S. Congress’ website.
In response to Right Wing Watch’s report, “Mike Lindell Is Bankrolling White Nationalist Christian Fascist Vincent James,” Dr. Pitcavage tweeted, “You don’t have to load descriptive phraseology like an overstuffed sandwich. He’s a white supremacist; that’s all you need to say.”