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Former Overstock CEO says he has assembled an ‘army of various strange people’ to save Trump
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne left a cloud of confusion when he resigned in 2019 from the internet retailer he founded after panicking investors with his bizarre claims he had romanticized an agent Russian at the request of “Men in Black” working. Now he’s back, with what he has described as his own personal “army”, touting what he claims is proof Democrats stole the election from Donald Trump. “I’ve funded a team of hackers and cybersleuths, other people with weird skills,” Byrne said in an interview Tuesday with One America News, where OAN personality Chanel Rion praised Byrne in as the leader of an “elite shadow cybersecurity team”. As Trump’s chances of securing a second term dwindle, Byrne has launched a media tour to promote his mysterious team of hackers, appearing from an “undisclosed location” on OAN, Newsmax and a series of YouTube shows. very marginal associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. On Friday, a guest host of the popular radio show Rush Limbaugh praised Byrne’s allegations of voter fraud and offered to invite Byrne to the show, along with Trump’s allies on his legal team and in the conservative media, looking for evidence Trump did not legitimately lose. The presidential race, Byrne became a hero to the MAGA crowd, despite his history of making wacky allegations. Byrne claims he is funding teams of “hackers and crackers” who realized in August that the Dominion’s voting machines could be used to steal the election from Trump. Since the election, these voting machines have featured prominently in Trump supporters’ fraud allegations, despite repeated denials by the company and any real evidence that the number of votes has been changed. The actual details of the supposed Byrne’s super-team of hackers, however, are equally thin. I’m a free agent, and I’m self-funded, and I fund this army of various strange people, ”Byrne said during a Nov. 23 appearance on a podcast with a promoter of QAnon who used the name InTheMatrixxx. “It’ll really make a good movie one day.” When asked for more details on his hacker team, Byrne referred The Daily Beast to his blog, “DeepCapture.” But the 40,000-word explanation on Byrne’s website focuses on his long-standing feud with Wall Street short sellers and Byrne’s conversations with a mysterious financial whistleblower called the “Easter Bunny.” rather than on an election investigation team. Emails from the Daily Beast when asked if members of his hacker team would be available for interviews.Despite his vague claims, Byrne says he forwarded allegations about the election to the White House and the attorney Sidney Powell for weeks. Byrne’s claims are similar to those Powell has made publicly, including an allegation that late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez somehow meddled in the election seven years after his death. “Sidney was the first to really understand, and understand what we’re saying, it’s so big, you need some kind of very open-minded person to get it,” Byrne said in the InTheMatrixxx podcast. In the aftermath of the election, Byrne became the last with extensive ‘tech’ experience to reinvent himself as an expert in voting machines. Byrne is joined in this niche by former 8kun administrator Ron Watkins, who stepped down from his post of managing the site for his QAnon posts on Election Day and has since appeared on OAN as a so-called Election Investigator. made a series of other bizarre claims, including that he could be the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese monk. “I love Chinese, I speak Chinese, I think I’m the reincarnation of a Shaolin monk, maybe,” Byrne said on the “InTheMatrixxx” podcast. Here’s how Hugo Chavez, dead since 2013, came to be responsible for Trump’s electoral lossByrne also encountered other bizarre allegations during his media tour. During an appearance on a QAnon YouTube show hosted by a woman named “Cirsten W,” Byrne listened as her host claimed Bill Clinton and the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had been cloned. still CEO of Overstock. Using the company’s letterhead, Byrne released a statement claiming that federal government figures “Men in Black” urged him to have sex with Russian agent Maria Butina, who was attempting to lick him. era of infiltrating conservative circles as a gun rights activist. Overstock’s share price fell and Byrne eventually resigned after Overstock’s insurer refused to insure the company with Byrne at the helm. A Senate Intelligence Committee report released in August presents a different take on Byrne’s interactions with Butina. In the report, Butina sees Byrne as a potential avenue to join Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), then a presidential candidate. In a July 2016 email published in the committee’s report, Butina’s boyfriend Paul Erickson wrote that Byrne was “stalking” Butina after meeting her at a libertarian conference and claimed that Byrne had given her a bitch. million dollar offer tied to the birth of her child. is single by choice and by the consequences of his gifts and intellectual limitations, but he is now concerned with his mortality and family heritage, ”Erickson wrote. “Since meeting Maria, he’s found ever more creative ways to give her a standing offer of $ 1 million to ‘have a baby with him’. He is deeply in love with his imaginary genetic stock and believes that a baby would cement not only his family line, but also the relationship between our two nations. Byrne did not respond to the Daily Beast about the allegations made in Erickson’s email. not always paid either. In 2018, he lost a landmark defamation lawsuit brought against him by a Canadian businessman who had been described on Byrne’s blog as a terrorist financier and drug and arms dealer, with the plaintiff awarding 1, $ 2 million in damages. our best stories in your inbox every day. Register now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside delves deeper into the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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