TLDR: Two attorneys representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster, have been sanctioned by a Colorado federal judge for submitting a legal brief containing nearly 30 fabricated and erroneous citations generated by artificial intelligence. The attorneys were each ordered to pay a $3,000 fine for their conduct in the defamation lawsuit brought by Eric Coomer against Lindell.
Denver, CO – In a significant ruling highlighting the growing challenges of AI integration in legal practice, a federal judge in Colorado has sanctioned two attorneys representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for presenting a court filing riddled with artificial intelligence-generated false citations. U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang ordered Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster to each pay a $3,000 fine on Monday, July 7, 2025, citing their ‘blind reliance on generative artificial intelligence’ and subsequent misleading explanations.
The sanctions stem from a February brief filed by the attorneys in the high-profile defamation lawsuit brought by Eric Coomer, the former head of product security for Dominion Voting Systems, against Mike Lindell. The brief, intended as an opposition motion, contained approximately 30 ‘defective citations,’ including misquoted cases, misrepresentations of legal principles, and references to entirely nonexistent court cases. Judge Wang’s order emphasized that the attorneys violated court rules by certifying and filing the AI-generated work without proper verification.
During a pretrial conference, Kachouroff initially did not admit to using AI until directly questioned by Judge Wang. Both attorneys later claimed the error was due to an ‘inadvertent’ filing of a ‘prior draft.’ However, Judge Wang found their explanations contradictory and lacking corroborating evidence, stating that the filing was not an ‘inadvertent error.’ She also noted a ‘puzzlingly defiant tone and tenor’ in Kachouroff’s response and criticized his attempt to shift responsibility for the failure to properly review the document. An email from DeMaster, expressing concerns about the reliability of AI citations, further contradicted Kachouroff’s assertion that he did not understand what was happening because they had not relied on AI legal research.
The underlying defamation case concluded in mid-June, with a Colorado federal jury finding Lindell and his media platform FrankSpeech LLC liable for over $2 million in damages to Eric Coomer. Coomer had sued Lindell for amplifying false claims that he rigged the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump.
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Judge Wang clarified that Mike Lindell himself was not subject to sanctions, as Kachouroff confirmed that his client was unaware of the ‘myriad AI tools’ he uses in his practice. In her ruling, Judge Wang stated that she derives ‘no joy from sanctioning attorneys’ but deemed the $3,000 fine for each attorney as ‘the least severe sanction adequate to deter and punish defense counsel in this instance.’ The judge also pointed out that after the court demanded answers about the initial AI filing, Kachouroff’s team ‘quietly filed’ two similar notices in other cases where they had made filings with citations to non-existent cases, further undermining their claims of isolated error.
