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The short version: Lawyers representing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell acknowledged using several generative-AI tools while preparing a federal court brief. The filing contained nearly 30 defective citations, including misquotations, incorrect descriptions of legal authority and references to nonexistent cases. The lawyers were sanctioned $6,000 in 2025. In May 2026, one of them was sanctioned again after the court found another material citation-verification failure.
What happened to Mike Lindell’s lawyers?
The case was Coomer v. Lindell et al., a defamation lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. The defendants included Mike Lindell, MyPillow, Inc. and FrankSpeech LLC. Judge Nina Y. Wang sanctioned attorney Christopher Kachouroff and his firm, McSweeney Cynkar & Kachouroff PLLC, $3,000 jointly and severally in July 2025. Co-counsel Jennifer DeMaster was separately sanctioned $3,000.
The court’s concern was not simply that lawyers had used AI. It was that inaccurate legal material reached a filed court document without the reasonable verification expected of attorneys under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsThe story then continued. In a May 7, 2026 order, Judge Wang found that Kachouroff had again filed a materially incorrect citation after the original sanctions and show-cause proceedings. Kachouroff and his firm received an additional $5,000 sanction, bringing Kachouroff’s cumulative sanctions in the case to $8,000.
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Who is “the MyPillow Guy”?
Mike Lindell is the founder and chief executive associated with MyPillow. The lawsuit arose from public claims connected to the 2020 U.S. presidential election and allegations about Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems executive.
Coomer sued Lindell, MyPillow and Lindell’s media company, FrankSpeech, for defamation. The AI-related episode involved the defendants’ lawyers, not an AI system speaking for Lindell in a courtroom hearing.
Which filing contained the errors?
The problematic document was the defendants’ opposition to Coomer’s motion in limine, filed on February 25, 2025. A motion in limine is a pretrial request asking a judge to admit or exclude particular evidence.
The filing addressed evidentiary disputes involving topics such as Coomer’s personal life, alleged substance use, religious beliefs, political views and a motor-vehicle accident. The court later identified nearly 30 defective citations and related legal inaccuracies.
According to the court’s April 23, 2025 order to show cause, the problems were broader than a few typographical mistakes. They included:
- Misquoted judicial opinions.
- Legal principles attributed to opinions that did not contain them.
- Incorrect descriptions of whether authority came from the binding U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
- Decisions misattributed to the District of Colorado.
- Citations to cases that did not exist.
- Authorities that did not support the legal propositions for which they were cited.
That is why describing the entire episode as “30 fake cases” is inaccurate. Some authorities were nonexistent, but many other errors involved real cases that were quoted, characterized or applied incorrectly.
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Which AI tools did the lawyers say they used?
Kachouroff told the court that he used multiple AI-assisted tools in his legal practice, including:
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- Westlaw AI
- Google Gemini
- X’s Grok
- Claude
- ChatGPT
- Perplexity
The court record establishes that these tools were among those Kachouroff said he used. It does not establish that every tool generated every erroneous citation, or that a particular named system produced a particular nonexistent case.
Using several AI systems also did not amount to independent verification. AI tools can repeat the same error, rely on incomplete context or produce confident-looking citations that require checking against the original authority.
Why did the “wrong draft” explanation fail?
When the defective brief came to the court’s attention, the defense initially characterized it as an earlier draft that had been submitted by mistake. The lawyers described the situation as a human filing error.
Judge Wang found that explanation insufficient. Even if the document was an unintended draft, counsel still had a duty to ensure that the filing submitted to the court was accurate. The draft itself contained pervasive citation problems, and an accidental filing did not remove the lawyers’ responsibility for reviewing it before submission.
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The central question was therefore not simply, “Did AI write this?” It was, “Did the attorneys make the reasonable inquiry required before certifying and filing it?”
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What did the court order in 2025?
On July 7, 2025, Judge Wang made the original show-cause order absolute and imposed sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11:
| Party | 2025 sanction |
|---|---|
| Christopher Kachouroff and McSweeney Cynkar & Kachouroff PLLC | $3,000 jointly and severally |
| Jennifer DeMaster | $3,000 separately |
| Mike Lindell, MyPillow and FrankSpeech | No monetary sanction in this proceeding |
“Jointly and severally” means the court treated Kachouroff and his firm as responsible for the same $3,000 obligation; it was not necessarily a separate $3,000 payment from each.
Why wasn’t Lindell sanctioned?
The court did not sanction Lindell, MyPillow or FrankSpeech in the cited 2025 proceeding because Kachouroff represented that he had not told the clients he was using the various AI tools. On that record, the judge placed the documented responsibility with counsel rather than the clients.
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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →That finding has a limited meaning. It does not endorse Lindell’s underlying election-related claims, establish that the clients could never face consequences in another proceeding or mean that MyPillow was fined. It means only that these particular Rule 11 sanctions were not extended to them.
How did the underlying defamation case end?
The sanctions were separate from the merits of the defamation lawsuit. Reporting by Ars Technica said a jury found Lindell and FrankSpeech liable and awarded Coomer approximately $1.8655 million against FrankSpeech.
The verdict and the attorney sanctions should not be conflated:
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- The jury’s verdict addressed liability and damages in the defamation case.
- The 2025 Rule 11 order addressed inaccurate and inadequately reviewed court filings.
- The 2026 order addressed a later citation-verification failure.
The sanctions did not automatically decide the defamation claims, and the verdict itself did not impose the attorney penalties.
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What happened in 2026?
The court’s March 25, 2026 post-trial order denied Lindell and FrankSpeech’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law. It also issued a second show-cause order concerning continued citation-checking failures.
In its May 7 order, the court concluded that Kachouroff had again filed a materially incorrect citation after the earlier sanctions proceeding. The court:
- Made the second show-cause order absolute as to Kachouroff.
- Discharged it as to DeMaster and FrankSpeech.
- Imposed an additional $5,000 sanction on Kachouroff and his firm, jointly and severally.
- Recorded Kachouroff’s cumulative sanctions in the case as $8,000.
- Declined to refer Kachouroff to the Virginia State Bar, relying in part on his representation that he had stepped back from active trial-level litigation.
The 2026 episode is important because it turns the story from a single AI-assisted filing failure into a broader professional-verification problem. The record does not establish that the later citation was generated by AI or that it came from a second AI-generated brief. The documented point is that the court found another citation failure after the first sanctions proceedings.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does this mean for lawyers using AI?
AI assistance is not the same as forbidden conduct
The court did not announce a blanket ban on generative AI, and it did not hold that every use of AI by a lawyer is sanctionable. Drafting assistance, summarization and research tools may have legitimate uses.
The risk arises when lawyers treat generated text as finished legal work. A filing signed by an attorney remains the attorney’s responsibility, regardless of whether software helped produce it.
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Verification must reach the primary source
For every legal citation, a responsible review should include:
- Confirming that the cited case or authority exists.
- Opening the actual opinion rather than relying on a search-result summary or AI response.
- Checking that the quoted language appears in the opinion and is reproduced accurately.
- Confirming that the court, date and precedential status are correct.
- Reading enough of the decision to ensure that it supports the proposition being asserted.
- Checking whether the authority is binding, persuasive, superseded or distinguishable.
- Reviewing the final version that will actually be filed, not merely an earlier working draft.
Using Copilot, Westlaw AI, Gemini, Grok, Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity does not replace those steps. Seven tools can still produce seven layers of confidence around an error.
“The software did it” is not a complete defense
Generative AI does not understand legal authority in the way a court does. It predicts and assembles language, which can make an incorrect citation appear polished and plausible. But Rule 11 focuses on the filing and the reasonable inquiry behind it, not on whether a lawyer typed every sentence manually.
The same applies to an accidental filing. A mistaken upload may explain how an incorrect document reached the docket, but it does not necessarily excuse the failure to inspect the document before filing.
The bottom line
Mike Lindell’s lawyers did not get sanctioned merely because they used AI. They were sanctioned because an AI-assisted court filing contained extensive inaccurate legal material and counsel failed to verify it adequately. The court imposed $6,000 in sanctions in 2025, then added another $5,000 against Kachouroff and his firm in 2026 after finding a renewed citation-verification failure.
The practical lesson is straightforward: AI can help draft legal work, but it cannot take responsibility for the filing. That responsibility remains with the lawyer who signs and submits it.
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