MyPillow founder Mike Lindell has hired Lin Wood, the famed litigator, to demand CNN anchor Anderson Cooper retract and apologize for calling the pro-Trump businessman a "snake oil salesman" and "liar" during an interview about a potential COVID-19 cure, Newsmax has learned.
"I have been involved in defamation cases for over two decades of my 43-year legal career. Cooper's interview of my client is the most outrageously unprofessional 'hit piece' interview I have ever viewed," top litigator Lin Wood says in a letter to David Vigilante, CNN's Executive President and General Counsel. Newsmax obtained a copy of Wood's letter.
Wood wrote:
"While I am fully aware that Cooper's sarcastic, mocking, derisive, and demeaning tone, attitude, and facial expressions toward Mr. Lindell are not legally actionable, I have complete confidence that Cooper's false and defamatory accusations are actionable and intend to seek legal redress against Cooper and CNN for its blatant wrongdoing."
During a July meeting in the Oval Office, Trump discussed the possibility of the FDA permitting the marketing of the botanical extract oleandrin as a possible cure for COVID-19.
Trump's interest in oleandrin was stoked by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Lindell, who has a financial stake in the drug firm involved in its development.
On Aug. 18, Lindell — who also chairs President Trump's reelection campaign in Minnesota — appeared on CNN's primetime show "Anderson Cooper 360" to discuss the possible COVID-19 miracle drug.
According to Wood, Cooper "stooped so low" as to refer to Lindell as a "snake oil salesman'" and "liar" multiple times.
The anchor trashed Lindell's claim safety tests had been conducted on oleandrin as "just a bald-faced lie."
Wood says in his letter, oleandrin has undergone FDA-compliant clinical trials.
According to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, oleandrin is an extract from the plant, Nerium oleander, a shrub native to northern Africa, the eastern Mediterranean basin and Southeast Asia
Wood quotes Cooper as saying Lindell is "willing to promote anything . . . even if it doesn't work," a statement he says exposed the newsman's "anti-Trump bias."
Lindell is demanding Cooper and CNN issue a retraction of the anchor's statements, along with a public apology — or face legal action.
A CNN spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lindell, who found his Minnesota-based pillow manufacturing company in 2009, has been a longtime supporter of Trump, who believes CNN is out to destroy his chances for a second term as president.
Wood has been involved in numerous high-profile defamation cases. He successfully represented Nick Sandmann against The Washington Post for its coverage of the Kentucky teen's encounter with an American Indian activist. He also represented Richard Jewell, who was wrongly accused by the FBI of bombing the Atlanta Olympics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.