Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, has launched a three-day “cyber symposium” geared toward offering incontrovertible proof that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump by an evil cabal of cyber fiends and politicos.

Among the quite a few rightwing figures in media, enterprise, and GOP politics which have pushed the conspiratorial election fraud claims, Lindell stands out as one of many motion’s most distinguished nutcases. Having apparently made it a mission to preach the gospel of Trump wherever he goes, Lindell has been selling his bizarre occasion for weeks—even occurring CNN, the place he got into a heated argument with Drew Griffith in regards to the validity of his doubtful claims.

The cyber symposium, held in Sioux Falls, S.D. Aug. 10-12, is now being repeatedly live-streamed by way of the businessman’s buggy farce of an internet site, Frank, and is meant to function arduous knowledge that proves (as soon as and for all!) that votes had been manipulated in favor of Joe Biden final November.

The occasion has attracted a bizarre mixture of attendees, together with a who’s who of Trump’s most influential supporters. Steve Bannon, the alleged architect of the former president’s profitable 2016 marketing campaign, has been photographed around the event. Similarly, rightwing conspiracy theorist Ron Watkins (who has been pinpointed because the likeliest “Q” of QAnon), additionally video-streamed into the symposium so as to add his two cents. Even Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (an alleged Trump pal), for some reason showed up.

While Lindell has promised to current “world-changing” info that can pressure the Supreme Court to reinstate Trump as president, that info has not proven up but and he largely appears to be simply making stuff up as he goes. Case in level: He kicked issues off properly on Tuesday by claiming that the occasion itself had been hacked. “The whole technology was attacked,” he babbled to the audience, later rambling, “We need to get the word out because they blocked the thing. But this is part of what I’m going to talk about today. This is the cover-up. This is the absolute cover-up of the worst in history.”

At one level, Lindell additionally confirmed all people a video, which appears to put out the grand narrative for his conspiratorial imaginative and prescient. It alleges that the 2020 election was stolen by a cabal of deep-state goons, the Chinese authorities, George Soros (?), and corrupt electioneering distributors like Dominion Voting Systems.

While, admittedly, America’s actual deep state goons aren’t above stealing the occasional election (or simply, like, killing a nation’s political leaders and changing them with fascist friends), the claims which have emanated from the Trump crowd signify only one unsubstantiated over-the-top declare after one other, the likes of which sound like aborted storylines from a foul comedian guide.

More relevantly, ongoing audits and critiques by knowledgable safety professionals have repeatedly debunked most of the claims made by Trump acolytes—not that it issues a lot to them.

Perhaps essentially the most absurd a part of Lindell’s entire “symposium” stunt is that he has provided $5 million to any cybersecurity skilled who can take a look at his “data packets” and show that claims of voter fraud are incorrect. Sounds like simple cash, proper?

Well, quite a few infosec professionals are literally attending the occasion, although none of them appear to be underneath the delusion that they’re going to stroll away with money. Rather, many got here within the hopes of seeing what Lindell is speaking about and as an alternative have weathered an never-ending tidal wave of bullshit. Instead of offering the safety professionals with knowledge to investigate, the pillow vendor has largely simply been messing with them.

Harri Hursti, an election safety skilled who attended the convention, told the Washington Post that the occasion was “a big fat nothing and a distraction,” additionally commenting “they have fed us with garbage just to control the narrative.”

Robert Graham, one other well-known safety skilled who attended the occasion, has been live-tweeting most of the previous two days, commenting that Lindell has frequently promised to disclose to them “bombshell” knowledge that proves malfeasance, solely to feed them “random garbage that wastes our time.”

On Wednesday, Graham tweeted: “All day Mike Lindell has been on stage saying the cyber experts are happily working on packet captures. We are not. We haven’t been given the packet captures we were promised. I mentioned this because some of his PR guys came by looking to take video of cyber experts working on packet captures. They seem confused by the fact that there’s no cyber experts who have seen the promised packet captures.”

Footage of the convention is like one thing out of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, besides not as attention-grabbing or enjoyable to look at. Overall, this tweet appears to have summed up the expertise of attending—or simply viewing—the occasion:

Sounds about proper.