A former employee of Dominion Voting Systems told a federal jury in U.S. District Court what it was like to be unfairly accused of rigging the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

“It upended my life and my career to this day, four and a half years later,” Eric Coomer testified Tuesday morning.

Coomer was the first witness in his defamatory lawsuit against Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, who accused Coomer of treason on his television show in May 2021.

Coomer explained that his work for Dominion developing voting systems, knowing people could cast “a secure, clean vote,” was his life’s calling and that he never infiltrated an election.

Coomer is suing Lindell, his company, My Pillow Inc., and his former television company, FrankSpeech LLC, for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. FrankSpeech is now known as Lindell TV.

A Colorado resident, Coomer had a career as an election systems designer for fifteen years, including ten years with Dominion, one of the largest providers of voting machines and software in the country.

He got in Lindell’s “crosshairs” several years after the former Trump insider started blurring the lines between his multi-million-dollar business and political activism around the time Trump was first elected president, his attorney, Charlie Cain said during opening statements.

“My Pillow, Inc. gave Mike Lindell the megaphone he needed to spread his election fraud claims, including those about Dr. Coomer,” said Cain. During the two-week trial, Cain noted that Lindell will be challenged on 10 defamatory statements he made against Coomer. In one, he called on Coomer to be “jailed for treason” for his role in rigging the elections.

On May 9, 2021, on his network FrankSpeech, Lindell called Coomer “disgusting, treasonous, and a traitor to the United States of America…these are things that I have evidence of, the evidence is there,” Lindell opined, adding that he had plans to take Coomer’s case to the FBI.

Coomer, told the jury that this TV appearance was the one that hit hardest for him because Lindell called him a traitor, “the only crime that’s described in the Constitution.”

But during his opening, Lindell’s attorney, Chris Kachouroff, dismissed these statements as defamatory because at the time he made them, Lindell didn’t know Coomer and was only following the theories introduced by podcaster Joe Oltmann.

Kachouroff argued that at the time he made them, Lindell believed that his statements were factual, and thus should be protected by the First Amendment.

Coomer, Kachouroff said, is a “serial litigator” who embarrassed Lindell into making those statements when he served his lawsuit just as the former Trump insider was addressing an election fraud crowd on the steps of the Colorado state capitol in early April 2022 at an event called the “Election Truth Rally.”

In the days following the rally, Lindell fought back on several television shows, calling Coomer a criminal. “We will not stop until you’re behind bars. We’re going to melt down your machines, and you’re going to be behind bars, crying, ‘Lemme out! Lemme out!’”

To make his point, Cain aired multiple television and audio clips on monitors in the courtroom and at the jurors’ seats.

Coomer’s Facebook posts

Coomer has been forced to acknowledge his own mistakes.

On the stand, Coomer admitted to derogatory social media posts on his private account in 2016, which he now says he regrets and, in hindsight, “shouldn’t have been on Facebook.” In them, he called President Trump “Cheeto-in-Chief,” a fascist, and a carnival barker, which, to him, was “like a group of friends sitting around a campfire.”

In an email to a friend, Kachouroff says Coomer wrote, “Hey it’s time to shake the money tree, including Pillow boy Lindell.”

At one time, he wrote, “Friend family or foe, if you vote for that f-tard, unfriend me now,” and also posted what he referred to as a satirical essay he called an Antifa manifesto.

Those posts were obtained and published by conservative podcaster Joe Oltmann, he told the jury.

Coomer has filed a series of lawsuits against conservative figures alleging the same basic sequence of events. Coomer’s claims originated from a November 2020 podcast recorded by Joe Oltmann, a Colorado podcaster and political activist.

Days after the presidential election, Oltmann alleged he had recently listened in on an “antifa” conference call — a reference to anti-fascist ideology.

On the call, an unnamed participant referenced “Eric … the Dominion guy.” Oltmann alleged “Eric” said, “Don’t worry about the election, (Donald) Trump is not gonna win. I made f-ing sure of that.”

It was revealed in court Tuesday that Oltmann, who is scheduled to testify Wednesday morning, called for Coomer’s hanging and on Dec. 5, 2020, publicly posted a photo of Coomer’s home appealing to his listeners. “It’s up to you,” Oltmann wrote. “Blow this sh— up. No rest for this S-bag.”

Lindell’s attorneys have distanced the MyPillow CEO from Oltmann, but Lindell has not been shy about expressing his opinions during these first days of trial.

He has held his version of court on the front steps of Denver’s federal courthouse, streaming his opinions live on Lindell TV.

Coomer testified that he sued to get his life back, but he doesn’t expect attacks on his character to stop once the trial is over. “Do you want him to stop?” Cain asked. Answered Coomer, “I would like nothing more than for him to stop.”

This story was written with the help of Colorado Politics reporter Michael Karlik.