Arctic Frost: The modern Watergate that targeted Mike Lindell and MyPillow

By Easton Martin | March 25, 2026

It was September 14, 2022. Mankato, Minnesota. Mike Lindell pulls his vehicle into the drive-thru lane of a local Hardee’s on a typical Midwestern afternoon. Out of nowhere, federal agents from the FBI suddenly surround him to execute a targeted seizure of his cellphone. The investigators press him with pointed questions regarding his private airplane and his earliest meetings with Colorado clerk (and now political prisoner) Tina Peters. This bizarre physical intervention served as the public ignition point of a dark and subversive federal operation led by the Biden-era FBI.

​The operation actually began quietly months earlier when the machinery of a federal investigation first activated to scrutinize Lindell and his financial networks. On February 22, 2022, Timothy Thibault served as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office’s Criminal Division. He sent an internal email to Valyncia Joachim confirming his efforts to secure approval from the Department of Justice and FBI Headquarters to open a formal case against the Trump campaign and associated figures. This communication laid the foundational architecture for the enterprise that would soon receive the codename Arctic Frost. Federal authorities officially approved the broad investigative framework on April 13, transitioning Operation Arctic Frost from an internal proposal into an active and legally authorized federal operation.

​Investigators immediately gained the power to issue subpoenas and track digital movements across a wide array of private and public sector organizations. The first major digital communication blockade materialized in May 2022 when Verizon permanently barred all text message marketing campaigns operated by MyPillow. MyPillow lost a primary channel for direct consumer engagement and began to experience a sustained drop in direct retail revenue as a direct consequence. The theoretical goals of Arctic Frost then materialized into specific criminal allegations on September 13 when a search warrant was finalized. The legal document named Lindell as a co-conspirator alongside Tina Peters, Conan James Hayes, and several others in an alleged coordinated plot to commit identity theft and cause deliberate damage to protected computers. This specific warrant is what provided the immediate pretext for the seizure of Lindell’s personal electronics at the Hardee’s the very next day.

​The operation then rapidly escalated from monitoring digital communications to directly examining the lifeblood and cash flow of Lindell’s primary business enterprise. The FBI formally served a subpoena to Center Bank on November 2 to acquire detailed records of MyPillow’s financial accounts and transaction histories. Internal FBI summaries explicitly cataloged this action under the Arctic Frost umbrella and noted the task as fully complete by November 18. Center Bank personnel independently labeled the inquiry a “bogus investigation” in their own internal notations.

​The ongoing federal scrutiny essentially created a toxic environment for secondary financial service providers associated with Lindell and his network over the following year. American Express suddenly reduced MyPillow’s credit line from a million dollars down to a mere hundred thousand dollars on September 27, 2023, without providing any formal explanation or warning. This drastic financial restriction was perfectly according to plan for the investigative team, a deep and widespread pattern of pervasive financial suppression against Mike Lindell and MyPillow.

​The credit collapse severely crippled MyPillow’s day-to-day business operations and initiated a cascade of vendor payment failures. Epic Pay completely canceled its services as the primary merchant server handling transactions for MyPillow in October 2023. Critical business operations were fully interrupted as MyPillow faced the immediate challenge of finding alternative payment processors or swallowing massive financial holds totaling millions of dollars. The situation deteriorated further in December 2023 when Center National Bank officially de-banked MyPillow and terminated their longstanding financial relationship. The same bank that previously complied with the Arctic Frost subpoena fully severed ties with the company just one year later. This loss of primary banking access forced MyPillow into a state of severe operational distress and triggered a series of corporate downsizing measures.

​The full scope of the investigative net drawn tight around Lindell finally began to be laid bare for congressional scrutiny and public record on October 29, 2025. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley publicly released a detailed summary regarding 197 subpoenas issued by former Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team. Grassley’s press release formally confirmed to the public that the expansive election interference case originated at the FBI under the specific codename Arctic Frost.

​The Senate Judiciary Committee convened on March 24, 2026, to discuss the Arctic Frost probe. Senator Ted Cruz opened the hearing by condemning the operation and addressing its impact on the public. He then took aim at the inclusion of MyPillow with a sarcastic quip. “Because God knows we have a national security threat from rogue pillows threatening our country,” he remarked. A national security threat that apparently warranted a massive operation seemingly aimed at taking down MyPillow.

​“The biggest thing was being de-banked right away. Then they got a hold of our vendors to stop them from doing business with us,” says MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.

​Describing the situation, Lindell continued:

​”It became like a run on a bank. Everyone started saying MyPillow is going under because these things keep happening to them. Good vendors did not even reach out. They just got scared and wanted to withdraw from MyPillow because they were being attacked. These attacks included me personally. My phone was taken away by the FBI in relation to the Arctic Frost situation.”

​Perhaps where MyPillow saw the biggest impact was in being de-banked. Lindell describes a particular instance of this in 2022:

​”Later in 2022 I was de-banked by a bank president I grew up with. He recently admitted to me that the government had reached out to him. The debanking was the first thing to happen.”

​Beyond debanking, MyPillow also suffered from their product line being dropped by retailers at what seems like an awfully suspicious time.

​“Walmart dropping us was second,” said Lindell. “Walmart did not initially drop us with the rest of them during the lawfare in early 2021. I thought that was strange at the time. All of a sudden Walmart made their move. We were the number one product in Walmart’s history for a fifty to sixty dollar item.”

​Lindell also describes other various moves which deeply impacted MyPillow’s business operations, such as American Express severely limiting their line of credit, and PayPal placing a $3 million hold on funds, both out of the blue.

​Just how destructive were these actions against MyPillow? “We’re down 90% from what we once were,” said Lindell. “How do you come back from that? All I know is that it is a miracle we are still here.”

​One must wonder, given all of the lawfare, all of the coordinated attacks, is it all worth it?

“I could have just walked away and lived happily ever after,” said Lindell.

​“If I could turn back and do it all again, I would. I wouldn’t change a thing, because if we lose our elections, we lose our country.”

​So, how is MyPillow still here, you may wonder? Mike Lindell did not mince words when he said, “It is by God’s grace we are still here.”

​The facts are the facts. Mike Lindell and his employee-owned company MyPillow have been relentlessly and needlessly attacked by our own government, funded by our own tax dollars. The attacks against Mike Lindell, against MyPillow, and against election integrity on the whole are not minor injustices on any level, yet so far, true justice remains yet unfulfilled. 

What then is the heart behind Mike Lindell’s continued fight for justice for his companies, and for our elections?

​Perhaps Thomas Jefferson put it best when he said, “Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.”