Two lawyers representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in a defamation case have been hit with hefty fines after handing the court a legal brief riddled with errors—many of them caused by artificial intelligence.
Federal Judge Nina Wang found that attorneys Paul Kachouroff and Michael DeMaster submitted a brief in February filled with at least 30 bogus or incorrect legal citations. Some of the cases they referenced didn’t even exist. Others lacked basic court details.
Wang made it clear the lawyers didn’t just make a few mistakes—they submitted a document that was fundamentally flawed and misleading.
During a court hearing, the judge pressed Kachouroff about the origin of the filing. “Was this motion generated by generative artificial intelligence?” she asked.
“Not initially. Initially, I did an outline for myself, and I drafted a motion, and then we ran it through AI,” Kachouroff admitted.
When asked if he had double-checked the fake or incorrect legal references, Kachouroff told the court:
“Your Honor, I personally did not check it. I am responsible for it not being checked.”
Because the lawyers never told their client—Mike Lindell—that they were using AI tools, the judge ruled that the sanctions would only apply to the attorneys, not to Lindell himself.
The sanctions come shortly after a jury ruled that Lindell had defamed Eric Coomer, a former executive at Dominion Voting Systems, in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
On May 9, 2021, Lindell claimed Coomer was a traitor and accused him of being part of a plot involving voting machines. A year later, on April 6, 2022, Lindell publicly stated Coomer was involved in “the biggest crime this world has ever seen.”
Though the jury found eight other statements were not defamatory, those two alone were enough to cost Lindell.
Now, with his lawyers penalized for turning in an AI-written brief full of fiction, the legal mess surrounding Lindell is only growing.
