County Supervisor Kevin Crye’s Connection To MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Back In the Spotlight

Shasta County Supervisor Kevin Crye speaks with County CEO David Rickert and Acting County Counsel Matt McCumber at a Board meeting on August 4. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

Shasta County Supervisor Kevin Crye is one of a number of speakers listed on a flyer for an August 16 and 17 election summit being held by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Lindell is a nationally known election-fraud proponent whose claims that the 2020 election was stolen have been debunked and who is facing legal action from Dominion Voting Systems, Inc for defamation.

He plans to use the two-day virtual event  to “reveal to the world” a “unique plan to save elections.”

“ . . . God gave me a plan,” Lindell writes on the site. “It is brilliant and divinely inspired, and will immediately secure our election platforms. This plan is unique, has never been done before in world history, and has not even previously been talked about by anyone. It does not rely on legislation, judges, or legal actions, etc.never been done before in world history.”

Crye spoke to Shasta Scout by phone this morning, August 14, denying that he will appear at Lindell’s event, and saying he has asked that his picture be taken off event flyers.

He explained that he had planned to attend the meeting “a long time ago” but has since changed his mind because he is concerned that gaining additional publicity for his Shasta County decisions, including his choice to hand-count local votes, could be used to exploit his local leadership decisions for others’ political gain.

Crye became known for his connection to Lindell after a March trip to visit him in-person in Minnesota to discuss elections systems. The trip came only weeks after the Board of Supervisors voted to cancel Shasta County’s contract for Dominion voting machines. The Board also eventually voted to pursue hand-counting election ballots instead of continuing to use machine-counting systems. 

Those dual decisions triggered significant community concern and eventually became one of the reasons for an attempt to recall Crye that is still in progress. Proponents have until September 13 to gain the signatures needed to hold a recall election in the fall. 

Those decisions were also met with a significant response from California’s public officials, who began work on a state-wide policy to legislate the process for safely and securely hand-counting ballots shortly after Shasta County’s vote.

California officials have also launched AB 969, a bill that could make hand-counting votes in a county with more than 1,000 voters, such as Shasta County, illegal. That bill is still working its way through the legislative process.

When Crye visited Lindell, in early March of 2023, he had only recently become one of Shasta County’s two newest supervisors, after winning his Board seat by a mere fifty votes in the fall election. He campaigned on accessibility and transparency. Once in office, he became intent on changing elections systems, an issue that didn’t come up as a priority during his campaign.

Crye told Shasta Scout today that during his campaign the elections process wasn’t really on his radar except for some limited conversations he had with community members while canvassing door to door. He estimates that only about 5-8% of the people he spoke with during his campaign were concerned about the elections issue and says it wasn’t until he got into office that he realized that voting systems were a significant issue that he should be taking action on.

Crye’s trip to see Lindell in March drew outrage from some community members in part because the expenses for it were reimbursed by the county, at taxpayer expense. The trip cost the county $1393.80, after administrators deducted the financial benefit he received from airline miles earned (about $109), credit card rewards (estimated at $11.77) and the extra $16 he spent on better parking at the airport than County policy allows.

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A portion of an email between County staff regarding Crye’s reimbursement.

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Crye says the trip was reimbursed because it was official county business, explaining that before booking the trip he met with then-Acting Shasta County CEO Mary Williams, and then-County Counsel Rubin Cruse Jr. to ensure it would qualify as a legitimate county business expense. 

In an emailed comment to Shasta Scout in May, Williams confirmed Crye’s statements saying he had met with staff regarding whether his trip would be eligible for reimbursement by the County and been told that it was..

“Supervisor Crye indicated that the purpose of the travel,” Williams wrote, “included discussing financial contributions to the County, as well as discussion and research regarding elections matters being considered by the Board of Supervisors.”

Williams also emphasized that while she had approved Crye’s trip to meet with Lindell, her decision did not indicate that she had considered whether the public supported his approach to conducting county business, or whether she herself did. 

Instead, she said, she approved the trip because it met County policy requirements for reimbursable expenses and her responsibility is to apply County policy accurately and objectively regardless of public or personal opinion.

As Williams noted in her email, county policy does allow members of the Board of Supervisors to have their expenses reimbursed for travel outside the County if it occurs as part of official business. The types of official business activities that qualify a member of the Board of Supervisors to receive reimbursement according to County policy, include “meeting to discuss bona fide County business with private sector, non-profit, or business persons, or officials representing other counties, city, state, or federal agencies.”

Importantly, the County’s reimbursement policy also states that Board members “shall provide brief reports on meetings attended at the expense of the County at the next regular Board meeting,” something Crye never did. 

At the next Supervisor meeting, held on March 14, Crye confirmed that he had taken a county-sponsored trip to visit Lindell that was paid for, in-part, by taxpayers, after being questioned about it by a member of the public. He did not use his official Supervisor reporting time to share information about his trip to meet with Lindell or discuss in any detail what he had learned that could benefit the County. 

In comments to Shasta Scout by phone today, August 14, Crye said he could not remember whether he ever officially reported the trip to the public. 

“I can’t remember honestly because I was asked about it so much (afterwards) . . . but I will say I look at my Board reports way differently now then I did back then .  . Now my board reports are more thorough to what I’m actually working on.”

Crye did include a reference to the business purposes of the trip in an email submitted to the County along with his request for reimbursement. That email stated that he had discussed legislative policy, hand and mechanical voting systems, and various state policies and laws.

Asked what he learned from meeting with Lindell, Crye said that what the personal contact really gave him was “an enormous network of both people that hate me and people that love me. . . . I can pick up the phone and talk to anyone now,” he said.

Due to public concerns about county spending on the trip, Crye told Shasta Scout, he donated the reimbursement funds he received from the County for the Lindell trip (as well as the cost of another controversial reimbursement item – PacMan machine he bought for his County office) to the Youth Violence Prevention Council (YVPC), a local nonprofit that is also known as Youth Options.

YVPC’s Executive Director, Susan Wilson, confirmed that donation, in the amount of more than $2,000, to Shasta Scout by email in May, noting that Crye was also appointed to serve on the agency’s Board as part of his official Board duties.

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