Viewers were left wondering: Did the former CEO of one of the Internet’s best-known retail brands just have a meltdown on live TV?
Or could his wild story of sex, spies and conspiracy actually be true?
Patrick Byrne, the founder of popular discount retailer Overstock, stepped down as CEO earlier this month after the explosive revelation that he had been in an intimate relationship with infamous Russian agent Maria Butina.
And the story only got wilder from there.
He’s claims he has proof of a Deep State conspiracy against both President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – among others – in a story complete with covert operations, the FBI and even “Men in Black,” likely a reference to secret agents who allegedly recruited him in the “Deep State.”
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And he said his own unwitting participation in this plot is the real reason he had to step down from the company he launched in the early days of online commerce.
“This is me ejecting,” Byrne said on Fox Business Network. “I have to because I’ve been warned that if I come forward to America, that the apparatus of Washington is going to grind me into dust.”
You can watch his confessional below:
This all began in the strangest way possible: a corporate communications letter from the company to investors and the public.
“I am the notorious ‘missing Chapter 1’ of the Russian investigation,” he declared in the letter earlier this month.
He said that starting in 2015, he helped the “Men in Black” in political espionage against Clinton, Trump, and Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. and Ted Cruz, R-T.X.
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Ten days after he wrote the letter, he resigned as CEO – or “ejected” – as stock prices plunged. That was followed by a series of wild and rambling interviews on national television in which he detailed his relationship with Butina, who he met at a libertarian convention in 2015.
Butina, of course, was ultimately accused of infiltrating conservative groups including the National Rifle Association, and pled guilty last year to conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia.
She is currently serving an 18-month sentence, but denies being a spy.
Byrne said his own involvement in the Deep State plot was centered around his romance with Butina.
“I was given some fishy orders and I carried them out in 2015-2016, thinking I was conducting law enforcement,” he said on Fox News.
Those orders, he said elsewhere, involved breaking up with, rekindling, and breaking up again with Butina in order to learn information about Russia’s involvement in U.S. politics to pass along to the “Men in Black.”
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He claimed to have figured out later that some of those orders came from Peter Strzok, the then-FBI agent who was fired by the FBI last summer after it was revealed that he sent anti-Trump text messages while taking part in the Russia investigation during the 2016 election.
In a separate interview with Fox Business, Byrne said he thought he was performing “legitimate law enforcement” as he claims he had helped the “Men In Black” twice before.
“It turns out I was a tool in a game of political espionage,” he said. “I didn’t know that. I only figured it out last summer.”
He claimed it was all part of a Deep State plot against every major candidate.
“There was political espionage conducted against Hillary and her supporters, Cruz, Rubio, and Trump,” he wrote in a blog post on his website. “That’s not ‘a theory’. I was there. I saw it.”
He said Democrats are correct that “there was a basis to begin the Russian investigation.” But he added: “The Republicans are also correct: law enforcement was used as a weapon of politics. Yet what Republicans have not understood is that it was was turned against Hillary Clinton, too.”
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As crazy as the story is, it’s not exactly out of character for Byrne.
As Overstock CEO, he was known for his wild and elaborate conspiracy theories, not to mention unusual nicknames – such as an unnamed business rival he referred to as the “Sith Lord,” after the villains in the “Star Wars” movies.
Now, Americans have to figure out if his latest tale is as dramatic as a “Star Wars” film – or if this a real-life thriller unfolding before our eyes.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”