‘Godfather IV’? FBI surrounds Mike Lindell’s car, seizes his phone at a Hardee’s drive-thru

by WorldTribune Staff, September 14, 2022

In another surreal scene from the ongoing national drama likened by a NY Post columnist to the baptism murders in “The Godfather,” My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell said FBI agents surrounded his car at a Hardee’s drive-thru in Minnesota Tuesday.

An FBI agent approached Lindell and said he had a warrant for the phone and wanted it. Lindell, a major Trump supporter, said he had just returned from a hunting trip.

‘The contrast between the president’s call for unity and the FBI’s partisan putsch is a bloodless version of the baptism murders scene in “The Godfather,” where Michael Corleone participates in his nephew’s christening while his goons assassinate the heads of the rival families.’ / Video Image

The New York Times reported that the search warrant Lindell was served with on Tuesday appeared to be in connection to Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters being under indictment on charges related to data downloaded from 2020 election equipment.

Lindell said he conferred with his lawyer who told him to surrender the phone.

“I run five companies off that,” Lindell said, according to the Daily Wire. “I don’t have a computer. My hearing aids run off this. Everything runs off my phone.”

In a Sept. 14 op-ed for the New York Post with the headline “Merrick Garland stars in Joe Biden’s ‘The Godfather Part IV’,” columnist Michael Goodwin noted:

With “The Godfather” serving as a leadership manual for many politicians, Joe Biden might have been thinking of a particular scene during his 9/11 speech at the Pentagon. The president solemnly declared that “national unity” is “the greatest lesson” of that awful day even as his Department of Justice issues subpoenas to scores of Donald Trump supporters.

The contrast between the president’s call for unity and the FBI’s partisan putsch is a bloodless version of the baptism murders scene in “The Godfather,” where Michael Corleone participates in his nephew’s christening while his goons assassinate the heads of the rival families.

FBI agents gave Lindell a letter asking him not to disclose the existence of the investigation but he decided to reveal it during his show’s livestream, The Daily Wire reported.

“I have my own breaking news tonight,” Lindell said on the livestream. “This afternoon I was, I went down hunting in Iowa for the early teal season with my friend this morning at 4 a.m. We got up headed down to Iowa. We were coming back and we stopped to get — go through a Hardee’s in Mankato, where I was born, in Mankato, Minnesota. And 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.’ It turns out they were the FBI.”

Lindell said the FBI agents asked him questions about Colorado and Dominion voting machines.

Other items that were to be seized were, according to Lindell: “All records and information relating to damage to any Dominion computerized voting system, including any impairment to, or attempt to impair, the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information… All records and information relating to BIOS on any Dominion computerized voting system, including any modification to, or attempt to modify, a BIOS setting… All records and information relating to the attachment of any peripheral to any Dominion computerized voting system, including any USB flash storage drive or other external storage media… All records and information relating to the operation of any Optical Disc Drive on any Dominion computerized voting system, including the use or attempted use of CDs or DVDs to run software,” along with eight other sections of items that were to be seized.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported on Monday that 40 subpoenas have been issued to people close to former President Donald Trump.

Goodwin’s column concluded:

So far, the FBI hasn’t fired a shot at Trump World, but the broad, aggressive subpoena action, which also involved seizing the cellphones of two associates, led even The New York Times to call it a “substantial escalation” of the government’s war against the former president.

As a result, the raid on Mar-a-Lago is beginning to look more like the start of something far more comprehensive and dangerous than a narrow one-off limited to official documents.


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