by Sharon Rondeau
(Jul. 24, 2023) — In court action stemming from a defamation lawsuit lodged against MyPillow and its CEO, Michael J. Lindell, in Minnesota in January of last year, on June 27, 2023 voting-machine company Smartmatic and its parent, SGO Corporation, Inc., sued former government subcontractor Dennis L. Montgomery for the purpose of obtaining his compliance with a subpoena in the Minnesota case.
Docketed June 29, the most recent filing in the matter concerning Montgomery is dated July 20, 2023, and grants plaintiffs’ “Motion to Compel Compliance with Third Party Subpoena.”
“Dennis Montgomery has not responded and the deadline to do so expired,” wrote Magistrate Judge Kyle C. Dudek of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida at Ft. Myers in his order. “Thus, this matter is ripe. For the reasons below, the motion is granted.”
As Dudek related, in order to mount a defense to Smartmatic’s case, Lindell is relying on information he says Montgomery, a self-described “computer scientist” and former government subcontractor, provided in early 2021 regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The information is allegedly in the form of “PCAPS,” or “packet captures” recorded in real time as the election unfolded.
As The Post & Email has reported, Lindell and Montgomery were first introduced by one “Mary Fanning” through an associate, Brannon Howse, now a close Lindell colleague. Writing at The American Report, Fanning and co-author Alan Jones, citing Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (Ret), contend Montgomery is a “whistleblower” hearkening back to the investigation into alleged “collusion” between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian government which proved unsubstantiated.
Years before, Montgomery alleged he possessed millions of pages of documentation demonstrating illegal government surveillance of thousands of private citizens dating back to at least 2003.
In 2013, Montgomery claimed to have evidence of government intrusions into more than 150,000 Maricopa County, AZ citizens’ bank accounts, resulting in then-Sheriff Joseph Arpaio opening an investigation. Nearly a year later, two former high-ranking NSA officials determined there was no value in the data Montgomery provided Arpaio on 47 hard drives, Mike Zullo, a former police detective who supervised the project, related.
At approximately the same time, then-Fox News journalist Carl Cameron declined to run a story about illegal surveillance based on Montgomery’s assertions resulting from Montgomery’s failure to produce the promised evidence.
The PCAPS Lindell, his supporters and attorneys claim Montgomery gleaned from the 2020 election in real time showing a sufficient number of votes altered by a “cyberwarfare attack” allegedly show China to be the culprit. Along with other claims of Montgomery’s, Fanning and Jones have promoted that theory widely.
A computer Montgomery says he constructed, “The Hammer,” and software he claims to have designed while in service to the government, “Scorecard,” were also allegedly used to change vote tabulations from Trump to Biden, according to Fanning and Jones.
Though not defendants, the two are closely scrutinized in a lawsuit filed against Lindell by Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. and its affiliates in February 2021. Using publicly-available information, Dominion found that neither Fanning nor Jones, though marketing themselves as “national security” journalists, have redentials in the related fields of “cybersecurity” and “intelligence” about which they often write.
In August 2021, Lindell promised to release Montgomery’s alleged information at his “Cyber Symposium” in Sioux Falls, SD but at the last minute claimed a “poison pill” was inserted into the packet captures (PCAPS), thereby compromising them.
To the surprise of some, Montgomery did not attend the conference, reportedly suffering a stroke just prior, as reported by The Washington Times.
It appears Montgomery has benefited financially from his association with Lindell in the form of a location for his business, Blxware LLC, named after the company in which he was made a partner in 2008 by founder Edra Blixseth after leaving eTreppid, a company he co-founded, under mysterious circumstances.
It was his 2006 departure from eTreppid which prompted Montgomery to file suit against eTreppid and co-founder Warren Trepp. Trepp counter-sued Montgomery, and the two finally came to terms in 2008 without going to trial. It was during that litigation that the U.S. government requested and was granted a protective order and State Secrets Privilege over certain information associated with eTreppid’s work for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Just over a year following the Cyber Symposium at “The Moment of Truth Summit,” Lindell announced his filing of a motion requesting a court order lifting the State Secrets Privilege to permit Montgomery, and Lindell himself, to publicly disclose the information Montgomery claimed to have regarding the 2020 election. Since reopening Montgomery, et al v. eTreppid, et al, the matter has seen virtually no movement since January under U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du.
The government responded to Lindell’s motion, and Montgomery’s responses, by denying that any information Montgomery might possess covered by the protective order is related to the 2020 election.
In Smartmatic’s case against Lindell, the company claimed “a relatively small, non-controversial role in the 2020 U.S. election” (p. 2) and that “Mr. Lindell falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic was engaged in a widespread criminal conspiracy to steal the 2020 U.S. election” (p. 3), among other allegedly false claims.
As noted in the Florida filing, Montgomery is not a party to Smartmatic’s suit against Lindell.
“As part of his defense,” Dudek wrote on page 2, “Lindell claims he relied on information he
‘received about and from Mr. Montgomery.’ (Doc. 1-18 at 3.) According to Lindell, he ‘spoke out publicly about the 2020 presidential election, and filmed and distributed [several] movies . . . presenting evidence that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. A significant basis, in part, for the statements made in the movies was the information [he] received about and from Mr. Montgomery.’ (Id.) Plaintiffs subpoenaed the relevant evidence from Montgomery, directing him to appear for a deposition and to produce any responsive documents in this District (Doc. 1 at 2.).”
“First, as mentioned,” Dudek continued on page 4, “Montgomery objected in writing to the subpoena duces tecum. Thus, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45(d)(2)(B), he is exempt from complying with the document requests until the court issues an order compelling otherwise. And such an order must protect him from ‘significant expense resulting from compliance.’ Fed. R. Civ. 45(d)(2)(B)(ii). But the option to object in writing is available only for commands to produce documents—not to appear for a deposition. In re Zantac (Ranitidine) Prod. Liab. Litig., No. 20-MD-2924-RLR, 2022 WL 19919934, at *5 (S.D. Fla. May 23, 2022). Thus, while Montgomery was within his right to withhold documents after objecting, the same cannot be said for his failure to appear for a deposition. He offers no argument on why he should not be deposed, so the motion to compel is granted as to Montgomery’s deposition.”
“Because Montgomery failed to respond to the motion, it is considered unopposed…,” Dudek added, “But, out of an abundance of caution, the Court will consider the objections he made to Plaintiffs’ document requests.”
Contrary to Montgomery’s claim that the State Secrets Privilege prohibits him from producing relevant documents to Smartmatic, Dudek wrote [citations omitted], “the Government…has not intervened or filed anything in response. Moreover, it appears the government has declined to get involved. The government apparently responded to Montgomery’s notice by referring to a filing it recently made in similar case. There, the government declined to release Montgomery from a prior protective order largely because it was not relevant to any information Montgomery may have provided to Lindell about the 2020 election. In other words, the government had an opportunity to review the Subpoena and evaluate whether it implicated any ‘state secrets,’ but it declined to assert the state secret privilege…Thus, Montgomery lacks standing to refuse compliance with the subpoena on this basis.”
Moreover, Dudek wrote, “To the extent Montgomery claims he is blocked by ‘a non-disclosure obligation with the federal government, he provides nothing else in support. Such a blanket assertion is insufficient to provide relief.”
Conversely, Dudek related that “Montgomery responded to several requests by asserting that he has no responsive materials. Plaintiffs cry foul, pointing to other evidence they’ve gathered referencing materials likely in Montgomery’s possession. Without the benefit of a response to these claims, they are persuasive. Thus, Montgomery is reminded of his duty to respond in full to each request. This includes the obligation to supplement or correct his disclosures as appropriate… That said, ‘[a] court cannot compel a party to produce what does not exist’ [Citation omitted]. So if, after a thorough search, Montgomery maintains that no responsive documents exist, he must confirm as much for Plaintiffs.”
A fundraising solicitation from the Lindell Legal Defense Fund dated the same day as the order is captioned, “BREAKING: DENNIS MONTGOMERY- compelled to testify!!” and reads, in part:
Hello from Mike Lindell,
The truth always prevails.
We know that time is only giving us more gifts to expose the election crimes that have spun our country into a culture war with serious consequences. We are unveiling the truth to you here. We need you to share this email and spread the truth.
More than 2 years ago, I began to share critical information about a former government contractor, Dennis Montgomery, who would expose the abuse of a system he built for the federal government called the Hammer and Scorecard. He claimed this tool was used to rig our elections. Dennis Montgomery has spent 45 years in his field. He developed and licensed various technologies to the U.S. government intelligence agencies including Department of Defense (DOD), SOCOM, Homeland Security (HS), Department of Advanced Naval Research (NAVY), and Air Force (AF). He was always regarded highly in his field, until he spoke up.
We wanted to bring this to the public, but Montgomery has been under a gag order that prevented the truth from being told! The seriousness of Montgomery’s information is clearly a problem for the Gold Standard Elections touted by the MSM during the 2020 election.
THE TABLES ARE TURNING… Montgomery prepares to testify!
The solicitation is also available on Lindell’s Frankspeech website.
Montgomery’s further “objections about burden and expense are insufficient,” Dudek wrote in the order, concluding he must “attend a deposition consistent with the subpoena…” and that the plaintiffs must serve Montgomery with the foregoing order no later than Monday.
