MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has turned to in-house corporate counsel to defend him and his company against Smartmatic's defamation claim in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, according to a court filing Friday.

Doug Wardlow, who ran twice for state attorney general, filed formal notice that he and fellow MyPillow counsel Jeremiah Pilon will represent Lindell in the case. Wardlow didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Lindell recently said he has run out of money to pay his lawyers and has no plans to file for bankruptcy protection. In early October, the Minneapolis-based Parker Daniels Kibort law firm formally filed to withdraw from this and other election-related defamation cases, saying Lindell owed it millions but had stopped making payments.

After the 2020 presidential election, Lindell was a chief peddler of the false claim that widespread fraud caused by voting machines delivered a victory to Joe Biden over President Donald Trump.

Smartmatic USA Corp. sued for defamation in January 2022. Dominion Voting Systems, a voting software company, had filed a similar lawsuit in the previous February. And in 2022, Eric Coomer, a former Dominion employee, said in a lawsuit that he had received death threats after Lindell publicly attacked him.

London-based Smartmatic is an international firm that builds voting machines. Its lawsuit alleges Lindell falsely claimed that Smartmatic manipulated votes across the United States, including in states where the company's technology wasn't used. Smartmatic said its machines were used securely and without controversy solely in Los Angeles County.

The Republican nominee for attorney general in 2018, Wardlowlost to DFLer Keith Ellison. He ran again in 2022, but lost the Republican endorsement to Jim Schultz, who also was defeated by Ellison.

Wardlow also served one term as the state representative from Eagan and as a law student clerked for state Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson. After law school, he worked in eminent domain at the Parker Rosen law firm co-founded by Andrew Parker, the same lawyer who founded the firm that withdrew from Lindell's case.