Patrick Byrne, former Overstock CEO and self-described libertarian, who has never considered voting for President Donald Trump, held a solo press conference on February 7 to share “the facts” about several meetings he attended with the president and others between November 4, 2020 and January 8, 2021.
Byrne writes in his book, The Deep Rig: How Election Fraud Cost Donald J. Trump the White House, By a Man Who Did Not Vote for Him, that his duty to the country is “to give an honest account of what I saw over those nine weeks, and to do so with dispatch.”
Byrne discussed many of the points presented in his book, self-published in February 2021, during what was at times a bewildering press conference. Those unfamiliar with Byrne and his work would have been lost trying to unpack the dizzying array of information he offered.
“I was in the room for all this stuff,” he began at the start of the nearly two-hour livestream, adding “I didn’t work for the president, there was no executive privilege. I’m not a lawyer. I can say anything I want,” referencing his seemingly unique role in advising President Trump in the wake of the chaos surrounding the November 3, 2020 presidential election.
The millionaire businessman then said that he was not going to talk about what happened on November 3 (though, as evidenced by his book title, he firmly believes the election was stolen via a “deep rig”). For the purposes of the press conference, he hoped he could help people connect the pieces of important events in the days following the election.
In Pursuit of Truth
Byrne explained that after November 3, he flew to Washington, D.C., with a team of cyber-forensic experts. There, he reserved a block of rooms at the grandiose Trump Hotel, where the group stayed for the duration of their mission (though that mission was never quite clarified during the livestream).
“I was actually involved in some things before the election, and then after the election it morphed into this…. I had a pretty good idea of how things were going to unfold,” stated Byrne. “Some on the team had federal backgrounds; some were military and civilian cyber guys,” he added. “This isn’t about President Trump, to us.”
He went on to say, “There were at least three camps scattered on the Virginia side of the Potomac, and then [there was] what I was doing with these dolphin speakers [cyber-forensic experts] at the Trump hotel.”
Byrne quickly made connections to those in the president’s inner and outer circles, including a New York businessman whose identity could not be confirmed by The New American, but who was allegedly enlisted by Rudy Giuliani to comb through the content of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
Eventually, Byrne was introduced to lawyers Sidney Powell, Giuliani, and General Michael Flynn, with whom he would discuss over the next two months pathways available to the president for investigating voter fraud.
Post-election, the calls were streaming into the government from state and county election workers alleging misconduct in the electoral process. Byrne believed his team would be asked to conduct legal investigations into these claims, including forensic evaluations of ballots as well as state voting machines.
Consulting with election experts such as Peter Navarro (The Navarro Report), Byrne admits the “political process” had to play out and that investigations into any criminal wrongdoing would need to be dealt with by the state legislatures, a process for which the U.S. Constitution provides ample guidance.
Byrne referred to the “Green Bay Strategy,” in which enough evidence of potential fraud has surfaced to force the state legislatures to act, examine all the facts, then make a decision on what to do. Hence, the public hearings in Arizona and Pennsylvania, where residents and election workers testified to massive anomalies and vulnerabilities in the system.
Said Byrne, “if an election is so compromised in one state, which is what I knew by November 10 … what you’re going to find out someday, when all the misdirection is done, is that these elections were so hopelessly compromised there is no way to know who won.”
Byrne went on to say that “spooky language” alluding to “black-ops” stunts or secret operations were immediately shut down by the likes of Giuliani and never presented to Trump.
December 18
On December 18, 2020, Byrne took up an offer from White House staffers to take a tour of the residence. With Byrne were Powell, Flynn, and lawyer Emily Newman. Somehow the group managed not only to get inside the White House but also to meet with President Trump and held a discussion that reportedly lasted for more than four hours.
The meeting expanded to include Giuliani, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and several of Trump’s lawyers, according to Byrne. During this meeting, two executive orders related to foreign interference in U.S. elections were discussed, as new reports of Iranian involvement had emerged. The first was Executive Order 13694, signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, and the second, Executive Order 13848, was signed by President Trump in 2018.
Both orders call for sanctions to be imposed on countries found to be interfering in U.S. elections and authorize the president with an extraordinary range of powers, from ordering an investigation to seizing equipment to canceling and redoing an election.
Notably, on November 18, 2021, two Iranian nationals were indicted on charges of cyber-crimes designed to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The Justice Department filed criminal charges against Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian for participating “in a coordinated and multi-faceted, cyber-enabled campaign to intimidate and influence American voters, and otherwise undermine voter confidence and sow discord, in connection with the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.”
Byrne recalled how 45 minutes into the meeting, President Trump asked, “okay, what are trying to tell me?”
“Put us in coach, we’ll win this,” said Byrne, who went on to tell the president that the election had been “jiu-jitsued” by cheaters focusing on six major counties in six swing states.
“I was the one who laid out the options, not Sidney Powell, not Rudy,” Byrne told his viewers.
“There were three main questions to ask the president: 1) Where would we investigate 2) What would be done to investigate 3) Who would do it?”
The point, he continued, was to find out “how much election fraud is there?” Byrne presented options for a recount of the ballots as well as a forensic evaluation of the voting machines, all to be completed on livestream TV for the American public to see.
“What we have to do,” said Byrne, “is something that the public will trust. The most trusted institutions of the public are the courts and guys in uniform.”
According to Byrne, General Flynn rejected the idea of involving the Department of Defense, while Giuliani vehemently opposed Byrne’s idea of creating joint teams of U.S. Marshals and cyber experts within the National Guard to go county by county to conduct investigations.
Trump agreed; there would be no uniformed men marching into election centers.
Byrne said he again attempted to persuade the president, arguing that the public would not trust the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI to conduct the investigations.
“I said on three occasions, Sir, we can get this done. It was December 18, a Friday night, by New Year’s Eve [we can get this done],” declared Byrne. “In fact, I think we could get it done in a week. We could have an answer for the nation by Christmas Eve.”
Byrne also told Trump that if they didn’t come up with answers for the public quickly, the president would have to concede immediately.”
Reportedly, Trump said, “Pat, you have no idea how easy that will be for me.”
“It’s total nonsense to paint Trump as this Dr. Strangelove character ready to seize power,” said Byrne. “It’s total nonsense. If the election was rigged it happened on November 3. And there’s only one way to find out. Open the ballot boxes.”
January 4
Byrne went on to relate the details of a meeting on January 4 that occurred at Trump Tower. Reportedly in attendance were scientists and NSA officials who could interpret what Byrne’s team of cyber experts were finding — though, again, it is not clear what exactly the teams were investigating in the first place.
According to Byrne, members of Congress were also present, though none of these individuals were named. Byrne told a reporter attending the livestream who inquired about this fact that he did not wish to go into the details.
The strategy at the center of this meeting, according to Byrne, was to gather lawmakers and present findings of fraud collected thus far, as well as to discuss the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
The goal was to gather enough objections from senators who would challenge the electoral votes during the joint session of Congress on January 6 in order to buy another eight or 10 days for the states to go back and have their own “quick hearings,” where the state legislatures could decide whether they wanted to do a new vote.
For those who want to know what happened on January 6, according to Byrne, “there was mischief.”
“It was absolutely not Trump,” he continued. “That’s crazy. What happened on January 6 destroyed the only chance he had.”
Byrne suggested there was “a plan” that was a real possibility. “There were as many as a dozen senators who were going to stand up and challenge the recognition of electoral votes from certain states,” informed Byrne. But there was also a sleight of hand, and that sleeve may lead to Republicans … and it may lead to the White House, and if it does, it leads to people around [Vice President] Mike Pence.”
Questions from journalists concluded the livestream. Reporter Michelle Smith from the Associated Press asked in reference to the January 4 meeting, who among the congressional staff were briefed, and what were they briefed on? Byrne would not give details about the meeting or who was in attendance except to say, “they were briefed on what had happened in the various states, and the strategy was that certain senators would raise objections, along with House members, invoking the 1887 electoral law, and that would allow [Vice President] Pence to say we’re going to take a week to investigate.”
Another independent journalist named Emerald Robinson asked, “Who was ultimately responsible for the cheating? Did you think it was a foreign government?”
“We now have a much clearer picture, much clearer than a year ago of how it was done,” said Byrne. “I really don’t want to go into the theories of what happened on November 3. I think there is foreign involvement. The FBI and CISA said there was foreign involvement.… I could explain so much. What we had in November were a lot of hypotheses.”
Ultimately, Byrne did not want to answer that question of “who is behind it all?” “I do think that China is,” he admitted. “And I’m a China lover. I gotta tell ya! It’s kinda sad…. I speak Chinese…. It was my undergraduate major … but China’s involved in this.”
As he closed the press conference, Byrne stated, “I’d welcome an honest inquiry into what happened on January 6. How many of those who went into the Capitol were under federal orders? I’d bet it was about 100.”
