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- Trump has been repeating a false claim that he'll be "reinstated" to the presidency by August.
- Mike Lindell appeared to take credit for seeding the idea, The Daily Beast reported.
- Trump is fixated on current efforts to overturn the election, such as the Arizona ballot recount.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell said he's likely the source of claims from former President Donald Trump that he'll be "reinstated" to the White House by August, The Daily Beast reported.
The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported on Tuesday that Trump "has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August."
The idea that the former president can simply be reinstated is a conspiracy theory based on the false premise that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, as Insider's Grace Panetta and Jake Lahut reported.
But Trump has been avidly following efforts to disprove that, such as the GOP-led audit in Arizona's Maricopa County, where Biden won.
On Wednesday, Lindell - a close confidant of the former president - told The Daily Beast that Trump's source for predicting an August return was likely himself.
"If Trump is saying August, that is probably because he heard me say it publicly," Lindell told the outlet.
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In late March, Lindell had named August for a return to the White House on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast. "Donald Trump will be back in office in August," Lindell said at the time, going on to say that "the election of 2020 is going bye-bye."
Two people close to the president recently told The Daily Beast that Trump has become increasingly interested in the matter and considered his information to have come from "highly respected" people.
On Wednesday, Lindell told the outlet that he had named that month on a "subjective" basis, adding that he doesn't "know for sure" if Trump got that timing from him.
"It is my hope that Donald Trump is reinstated, after all the proof comes out, by the end of August, but I don't know if it'll be that month, specifically," he told The Daily Beast.
"I started saying August … about four weeks ago," he said, adding that his lawyers had promised to be able to bring "something" before the Supreme Court by July.
"So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August," he said.
The idea that Trump can be "reinstated" has gained traction among some of his top allies, with the conspiracy-theorist lawyer Sidney Powell saying "he can simply be reinstated" at QAnon conference last Saturday.
Lindell has been a leading voice in the conspiracy theories about a stolen election.
He is currently being sued by the voting-technology company Dominion for repeatedly advancing claims the company had rigged the election. In April, Lindell hit back with a lawsuit against Dominion, saying it was crushing free speech.
All of the 40 legal efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results have failed.
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