This week in crazy finds Mike “MyPillow” Lindell crying on his favorite product after being soundly rejected in his latest attempt to save his business fortune after spreading lies about the 2020 presidential election.

It should surprise no one that Lindell’s personal monsoon of tears passes through Nevada. His brand of cross-eyed skullduggery and big lie marketing have become political currency around these parts.

Although you’d be forgiven for thinking that fluffing former President Donald Trump’s pillow was Lindell’s full-time job, the MyPillow executive keeps busy these days defending himself against multiple defamation suits. 

Top of the list is a $1.3 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems in the District of Columbia that alleges he falsely and repeatedly accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. Dominion earlier this year won nearly $800 million in a settlement in a defamation case against notorious Fox News. Lindell is also defending a separate defamation action filed in Minnesota by the Smartmatic voting machine company.

Lindell is so obsessed with Trump’s election fraud deception that he’s spent a reported $3 million on “white hat hackers” of dubious portfolio to chase conspiracy theories dressed up as fact-based investigations.

While we’re keeping score, earlier this year an arbitration panel ordered Lindell to cough up the $5 million he’d promised to pay anyone who could debunk his claim that China cheated for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. After Nevada computer scientist and software engineer Robert Zeidman did just that in a contest aptly called the “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” he was rebuffed when he attempted to collect. That fight continues as Lindell also searches for a defense in his potentially calamitous battle with Dominion.

Which brings us back to Nevada.

Lindell’s continued search for a legal lifeline in the Dominion defamation case led him to seek access to information he believes is sealed under a protective order in a long-settled lawsuit involving his pal, debunked spyware guru Dennis Montgomery. It turns out Lindell relied on Montgomery’s, ahem, expertise in crafting some of his election fraud claims. He swears he needs whatever secret sauce is hidden inside the protective order to save himself from Dominion’s evildoers. The two have since been linked by reports that Lindell might have bought Montgomery a home worth $1.5 million.

Earlier this month Chief U.S. District Judge Miranda Du of Nevada upheld a previous judge’s determination that Lindell lacked standing in the case that pitted Montgomery against Reno-based eTreppid Technologies co-owner Warren Trepp. 

Followers of Nevada politics will remember Montgomery as the controversial software designer who scored millions in federal defense contracts with specious claims that he had developed systems capable of decoding secret Al-Qaeda messages embedded in Al Jazeera broadcasts and identifying terrorists from drone videos. In 2004, eTreppid won a $30 million government contract and thanks to Montgomery produced what was essentially a sleight-of-hand exhibition.

A protracted lawsuit between Montgomery and eTreppid was marked by wicked accusations and dragged on for several years. At one point, Montgomery claimed the company had showered Nevada Rep. Jim Gibbons with cash, casino chips and a Caribbean cruise on its way to winning government contracts.

The accusations against Gibbons were stinging, but failed to cost him the 2006 governor’s race and didn’t produce a single charge despite an 18-month FBI investigation. Gibbons was officially cleared and celebrated by making a mess of his single term as governor. The nasty eTreppid litigation was settled and dismissed in 2009.

Perhaps to remind us that he was a man worthy of the public trust, Montgomery later became a paid confidential informant for Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff and anti-immigrant rabble-rouser Joe Arpaio. “Sheriff Joe,” once known as “Nickel Bag Joe” when he worked as a borderland drug agent, was another of Trump’s endless lineup of election fraud experts. As an aside, did I mention that Arpaio once worked as a Las Vegas cop?

All of this makes for a colorful background, but none of it is going to help Lindell avoid facing the music in his defamation cases. His blind acceptance of Trump’s political Ponzi has reduced him to trying to pry open the stone-cold eTreppid case.

His most recent legal defeat in Nevada sends a message that needs no secret decoder ring to understand: It’s getting easier by the day to prove Mike wrong.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.