The pillow salesman, Trump supporter and election denier Mike Lindell has offered to personally fund a recount and audit of every paper ballot cast in Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary, which he lost last week.

Lindell’s announcement on Wednesday escalates his bid to challenge the results of last week’s vote, after finishing a distant second to the Minnesota house speaker, Lisa Demuth.

The businessman and MyPillow founder pointed to a Minnesota law which he said gives candidates the ability to seek a complete hand count – even when the results fall well outside the margin required for a state-funded recount.

“One of the few good election laws Minnesota does have is that as a candidate, I have the right to completely audit and hand-count every ballot in the state,” Lindell said in a press release, adding that he intends to use that right “to the full extent of the law”.

Despite a glowing endorsement from Trump, Lindell was defeated by Demuth by roughly 11 percentage points in the Republican primary for governor on 11 August, a margin far beyond the 0.25% threshold that would trigger an automatic state-funded recount.

Because the gap is wider than the threshold, Lindell would need to formally request the recount and cover its cost himself.

The announcement comes after Lindell refused last week to concede the Republican gubernatorial primary, despite trailing by a double-digit margin. The Associated Press called the race for Demuth, the Minnesota House speaker, late on election night.

Lindell’s campaign alleged “irregularities identified in election-night electronic reporting data” in the news release.

Minnesota secretary of state general counsel Lauren Bethke estimated in a Tuesday letter to Lindell that a full recount of the governor and lieutenant governor races would cost roughly $825,000, according to CBS News. The letter reportedly gives him until Monday, 24 August, to get both the request and payment to the secretary of state’s office.

The latest challenge follows years of election-related claims by Lindell. He built his political career around the lie that Trump’s 2020 defeat resulted from a rigged and stolen election, and has said he spent tens of millions of dollars pursuing that conspiracy theory through lawsuits, documentaries and conferences. Courts repeatedly rejected those claims.

Last month, Lindell settled a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit filed by voting technology company Liberty Vote, formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems, over the stolen-election claims.