Mike Lindell says his bank wants to cut ties with him to avoid damaging their reputation as the MyPillow CEO faces mounting legal troubles for spreading conspiracy theories about the November presidential election.
Lindell told Steve Bannon on his podcast on Friday that Heartland Financial and Minnesota Bank and Trust are attempting to “de-bank” him over concerns that they could face fallout related to having him as a client.
“The Lindell Foundation, Lindell Outreach, my store for all the entrepreneurs, and they want us to leave their bank,” Lindell said. “They’re bringing back a year ago and all these terrible outlets like The Washington Post, and I just had a call from The Guardian today, and then you have The Daily Beast, all of these outlets now are attacking, re-attacking me again.”
Bannon and Lindell then played an audio recording of a phone call they claim was from a bank official.
“Just because of our organization saying, ‘Well, why are we connected with somebody that could be in the news.’ And, not that the FBI is even sniffing and looking, but what if somebody came in and said, ‘You know what, we are gonna subpoena all his account records…and then also we make the news. So it’s more of a reputation risk,” the person in the recording said, according to Newsweek.
Lindell says the banks gave him 30 days to close his accounts, but he will not comply.
“I said, ‘I am not being part of this. I’m not leaving. So you’re going to have to throw me out of your bank,'” he said, adding “where does it end everybody? Where does it end?.”
Earlier this month, the select House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack issued a subpoena for Lindell’s phone records. He later sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Verizon in an attempt to block the company from turning over his records.
He told Bannon on Friday that this move from the banks is directly related to his decision to not comply with the Jan. 6 investigation.
“As you know, I went after Pelosi and that fake committee they’ve got going to scare everybody, and by doing this, now these banks want to get part of the cancel culture. They want to cancel out all of these entities. The biggest one they worry about—Frank Speech, everybody. They want to silence Frank Speech. They want to silence my voice,” Lindell said.
