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Saturday, October 07, 2023

Isn't he the guy who years ago pro bono represented Karen Monahan in her strikingly negative crusade against Attorney General Ellison? The man should mark October 28 on his calendar.

Andrew Parker.

It is online. He did represent Karen Monahan. Terms and conditions of that earlier 2018 representation, per HuffPo reporting, were not publicly disclosed:

Monahan has her own potential conflict of interest. She has hired Andrew Parker, a right-wing pundit and partner at the Minneapolis firm Parker Rosen, as her attorney and spokesman in matters related to the allegation against Ellison.

Parker previously employed Ellison’s opponent Doug Wardlow at his firm and defended Wardlow’s ability to separate his personal views from his legal practice in a Saturday article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Parker admitted to HuffPost that he supports Wardlow’s candidacy in a personal capacity but denied that Monahan had any contact with Wardlow’s campaign either directly or working through him.

“I never spoke to Doug Wardlow about my representation until he learned of it in the press,” Parker said.

In an interview with The Intercept in which he made similar denials, Parker declined to say whether he was charging Monahan for his services. Parker also provided two different reasons why he had not yet seen Monahan’s video in a radio interview Tuesday night. First he said he had not yet met her in person; then he said she did not bring it to their first meeting and has since been out of town.

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Now, PiPress -- Oct. 6, 2023.:

MINNEAPOLIS — Attorneys who’ve been defending MyPillow chief executive and election denier Mike Lindell against defamation lawsuits by voting machine companies are seeking court permission to quit, saying he owes them unspecified millions of dollars and can’t pay the millions more that he’ll owe in legal expenses going forward.

Lindell confirmed in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday that he’s out of money and said he understands his lawyers are people who need to make a living.

WashTimes reported back in Feb. 2021, that Dominion Voting Systems had filed suit, that being roughly the time Lindell's litigation expenses began to accrue. And early 2021 is a guess at when the Parker firm may have begun an ongoing representation which is being severed now. 

CNBC reported, millions owed - millions more anticipated -

In a court filing Thursday, the law firm of Parker Daniels Kibort LLC said Lindell and MyPillow are months behind on their legal bills in three defamation cases, and they can no longer afford to represent him.

At this time, Defendants are in arrears by millions of dollars to PDK," the filing said. "PDK is a small litigation and trial firm in Minneapolis, MN and cannot afford to finance Defendants' defense in the Litigations."The firm said that if it was forced to continue providing legal services to Lindell, the "future fees and costs will amount to millions of dollars in addition to the millions of dollars already owed.

Forbes, in Oct. 5, 2023, reporting identified Lewin and Lewin as the second firm representing the defendants in Washington, DC, also seeking to abandon representation at this time, Forbes "top lined" its report -

After racking up millions of dollars in legal fees, the lawyers representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell are trying to drop him as a client, as Lindell and his company face defamation lawsuits over conspiracy theories about voting machine makers Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.

Forbes noted, "It’s unclear exactly how much money Lindell owes his lawyers. Lindell told Forbes it’s somewhere around $3 million to $4 million."

In its reporting, PiPress continues -

Attorney Andrew Parker wrote in documents filed in federal court on Thursday that his firm and a second firm [Lewin andLewin, DC] representing MyPillow in lawsuits by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems can’t afford what it would cost to represent Lindell and MyPillow through the rest of the litigation. Continuing to defend him would put the firms “in serious financial risk,” he wrote.

It’s the latest in a string of legal and financial setbacks for Lindell, who propagates former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, in part by rigged voting machine systems. Several big-box retailers, including Walmart, have discontinued his products.

“MyPillow’s been decimated. … We’ve lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” Lindell said, adding that the other main assets he has left are his home and pickup truck. He blamed Dominion, Smartmatic and the news media, including the conservative outlets Fox News and Newsmax.

“You’re all doing it because you want me to shut up about security of our elections,” a defiant Lindell said. “You’re all the same.”

But he vowed to keep fighting and to keep MyPillow going. He said he doesn’t have any other debts and has no plans to file for bankruptcy for himself or MyPillow.

[...] Parker filed the requests to quit in federal court in Minnesota, where Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit seeking over $1 billion, and in Washington, D.C., where Lindell is a defendant in a similar $1.3 billion lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems that also targets Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Dominion won a nearly $800 million settlement from Fox News in April. Giuliani is being sued by a former lawyer over allegedly unpaid legal bills.

Parker’s firm also moved for permission to stop defending Lindell, MyPillow and FrankSpeech from a defamation lawsuit filed in federal court in Colorado by Eric Coomer, former director of product strategy and security for Denver-based Dominion.

As to when Lindell's arrearage in servicing invoicing began, PiPress, again:

Parker wrote in his filings that Lindell and MyPillow had regularly paid his firm in full and on time through the end of 2022. But he said the payments slowed this year while the litigation fees and costs “dramatically increased.” By May, the payments slowed to more than 60 days and didn’t cover the full bills. Lindell and MyPillow made no payments for the firm’s July and August bills, he wrote, though they did make some relatively small payments that were only a fraction of the total owed.

The attorney said his firm, Parker Daniels Kibort, or PDK, warned Lindell and MyPillow in August and September that it would have to withdraw if the bills weren’t paid.

He said Lindell and MyPillow understand his firm’s position, don’t object, and are in the process of finding new lawyers. No trial date is scheduled in either the Smartmatic or Dominion cases.

 With trial dates not even set, pretrial invoices 2021-to-present seem surprisingly substantial. There is no indication whether Trump, facing his own litigation future, has offered Lindell any help whatsoever out of Trump wealth, but that appears unlikely.

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So - Wow!  Doug Wardlow - Karen Monahan, then; and My Pillow - Mike Lindell, now.

And Oct. 28, why headline that? The day is relevant to those two Parker representations, for it is Feast Day for St. Jude, patron Saint "of Desperate causes, desperate situations, lost causes" - this video.