In Part 1 of this series, we took a high-level look at the evidence for and against allegations that Dominion voting machines were one of the methods used to steal the 2020 election on behalf of Joe Biden.
Conservative-populist media is split on the issue simply due to the amount of circumstantial evidence out there while others have done analysis and claim there is nothing to the story.
In Part 2 we looked at the suspicious “vote flip” incident that occurred in Antrim County, Michigan and hypothesized if it might have been a staged event meant as a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from the problems with mass mailout absentee ballots.
We also looked at the role Russell Ramsland Jr. and Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG) might have played in the incident and as part of a larger disinformation campaign.
While looking at all the different aspects of the voting machine controversies, one name keeps reappearing either at the center of the story or in the periphery, but seemingly always there; Patrick Byrne.
Since this TWP series is modeled after Robert Barnes’ Hush Hush series on Locals.com, we need to consider if some of the telltale signs he recommends you should look for are present that could indicate a likely conspiracy. One such sign is the presence of certain “Ellroy-like characters” referring to characters in the novels of James Ellroy as in his Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. Mysterious characters who keep reappearing throughout the story in the most unexpected places, and Patrick Byrne certainly fits the bill when it comes to voting machine controversies.
Who is Patrick Byrne?
First we need to look Patrick Byrne’s background to see why he seems so suspicious. Patrick Byrne was always a eccentric figure in the business world as the CEO of Overstock.com for his very public criticisms of Wall Street investment banks and being seen as a pioneer and early adopter of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.
He really gained notoriety in the summer of 2019 when he suddenly resigned his longtime position at Overstock.com and disclosed he had engaged in a romantic relationship with Maria Butina, an alleged Russian spy.
His connections to Maria Butina was only part of the story however. He was also giving interviews at the same time claiming he had been part of an FBI sting operation against Hillary Clinton as part of a bribery scandal. Here is an early interview Patrick Byrne gave around the same time where he talks about the alleged Clinton operation. He makes three claims just in these short segments that seem to have no logical basis.
1. He claims the government of Turkey paid Hillary Clinton a $20 million bribe in late 2015.
Those familiar with Turkish politics know President Erdoğan’s top political rival is a Turkish Islamic imam named Fethullah Gülen who heads a radical Islamist cult known as the Gülenist Movement who happen to be major Clinton donors. Gülen and is currently living in exile in a guarded compound in the Pennsylvania Poconos Mountains under protection from extradition by the U.S. State Dept. formerly headed by Secretary Hillary Clinton herself.
In July 2016, the same group attempted a massive coup in Turkey which could not have happened without at least tacit approval by Obama’s CIA.
Well that’s a helluva return on investment. Pay Killary $20M and 7 months later, her buddies are sending F-16’s and tanks to kill you, your family, and anyone who supports you. You think the Clintons or Clinton Foundation would ever receive another dime in payoff money once word of that got out?!? No chance.
2. The FBI Field Office in New York was running a sting operation to nail Hillary on bribery charges. The only thing holding them back was Director James Comey and the “7th Floor” of the FBI.
Does anyone actually believe that? The same FBI Field Office that rushed in to cover up the Anthony Weiner laptop and is now raiding Rudy Giuliani’s apartment?
Anyone who understands the innerworkings of the FBI New York Field Office knows any agent who would move to open a serious investigation into the Clintons or Clinton Foundation wouldn’t last 24 hours. Assuming they didn’t wind up meeting with a mysterious end, they would be transferred to the Albuquerque Field Office by the end of the next day.
3. Hillary is personally meeting bagmen alone at secret locations to pick up suitcases full of cash.
That’s just stupid. The former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and presumed next President of the United States who is under Secret Service protection is meeting shadowy bagmen at secret locations as if she’s Scarface doing cocaine deals?
Anyone who’s ever listened to Peter Schweizer knows that’s not how the Clintons operate. Bribes get sent via wire transfer after being laundered through about 57 different NGOs. Aside from the personal danger she would potentially be in, she wouldn’t open herself to that type of personal risk exposure just because she is not dumb enough to walk into that situation precisely because it might be a setup.
The Case Against Maria Butina
With the benefit of hindsight and Byrne’s highly questionable assertions about the Clinton investigation in mind, allow us to go back and reexamine the accusations made against Maria Butina and Byrne’s role in her prosecution. Byrne made it clear in his Fox News interview, he believed Maria Butina was acting on behalf on the Russian government attempting to infiltrate into conservative organizations and get close to Republican politicians including Donald Trump Jr. and other members of the Trump organization; a claim that Butina herself has repeatedly denied.
Maria Butina was a pro-gun rights activist both in the United States and Russia who would often use her sex appeal to gain notoriety and help bring attention to her cause. This made her something of a minor social media celebrity in the gun rights world and a frequent face at gun shows and National Rifle Association (NRA) events.
As has been mentioned by Dan Bongino on his podcast and others, part of the Democrats strategy to ‘fortify’ the 2020 election was to target and cripple the NRA that had traditionally been the main election day “Get Out The Vote” grassroots organizers for Republican presidential candidates.
Butina also drew attention when video emerged right at the height of the Trump-Russia collusion hysteria of her asking then candidate Donald Trump a question about US-Russian relations at an event in 2015.
By looking at the fact pattern around Butina’s story and comparing it to those of others around the same time, the case against her seems dubious at best. The first red flag is the fact she was only charged with a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), not espionage. FARA is a transparency regulation for foreign lobbyists, but has been shown time after time to be the weapon of choice used by the DOJ to selectively persecute individuals with any type of association to President Trump.
As Maria pointed out herself in the previously linked RT interview, she was a Russian accused of criminal conduct on behalf of the government of Vladimir Putin right at the time Russia hysteria was gripping Washington D.C. If her case is anything like that of Sergei Millian or Natalia Veselnitskaya, then she is just another individual seemingly targeted when anyone with a Russian name and even tangential connection to Trump was being placed under investigation to bolster the myth of collusion.
Maria Butina presented an ideal target for a one-two punch whereby the DOJ could target and smear both the Trump administration and loop the NRA into the fog of the Trump-Russia Collusion scandal with just a single criminal charge. Maria’s bio certainly gives her all hallmarks of a Russian operative and her attractiveness makes for a salacious spy-sex tale.
However, if her version of events is true as noted CIA whistleblower John Kirkakou seems to confirm, and she really was just a graduate student and political activist, then it would call into question exactly on whose behalf Patrick Byrne was actually working on.
In the case of Maria Butina, though, the paperwork was the hook to arrest her and to use her failure to register under FARA as leverage to get her to testify about her “work.” The problem, at least for the FBI, was that she wasn’t a spy. As things turned out, she really was just an overly-aggressive Russian grad student at American University who really, really loved guns and was trying to ingratiate herself with the NRA. But the Justice Department came down on her like a ton of bricks, forced her into taking a plea, and sentenced HER to 18 months in a federal prison: for conspiring to fail to fill out a form.
From Consortium News op-ed ‘JOHN KIRIAKOU: In Search of a Russiagate Scalp: The Entrapment of Maria Butina’
When you dig a little further into Byrne’s history, you begin to find even more concerning red flags. Take this segment from March 2018 of a HBO Vice News Tonight story about Patrick Byrne when he was still CEO of Overstock. When the HBO crew visited Byrne at his home in Utah, it appears to decorated with symbols of Marxist icons such as a portrait of the founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chairman Mao Zedong adorning the wall of his stairs. He also chose to name his cat after the Communist icon of the Cuban Revolution and mass murderer, Che Guevara.
Yet another red flag that jumps out is Patrick Byrne’s early background. Byrne seems almost obsessed with Chinese culture having lived and studied in China for a number of years. What’s more concerning is Byrne’s connection to Berkshire Hathaway and his mentor Warren Buffett who Byrne calls his “Rabbi”.
Patrick Byrne’s father, John Byrne, was the longtime CEO of Berkshire Hathaway insurance subsidiary GEICO and a prominent figure in Buffett’s investment empire as a whole. Before the pandemic lockdowns and 2020 election chaos, it was probably more fashionable to be associated with Bill Gate’s best friend. But as time passes and more information comes out about Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway’s business practices, globalist connections, and admiration for the CCP financial model, that association continues to look worse and worse.
One topic Byrne is never shy to bring up in his interviews is how much danger he puts himself in. Over and over again he mentions all the warnings he has received from friends and enemies alike about how he would be “destroyed” and “crushed” if he ever went public with his story. He also hypes up his own importance by saying this FBI official or that politician would “s___ themselves” if his name were ever brought up in front of them.
Yet nothing really ever seemed to happen to the guy. It has been almost two years to the day when he first went public claiming he was about to get hammered by the political elite. But to date there hasn’t been any criminal charges brought against him for all the criminal legal exposure he claimed was out there. As far as we can tell, he has never even been the subject of any serious investigation by the DOJ or any other governmental agency. He was only very recently named in lawsuits brought by Dominion Voting Systems for all his public the claims including his highly produced and promoted documentary film. Compared to others he is closely associated throughout the election contests on behalf of President Trump, he remained relatively unscathed despite his claims of potential exposure and how much he stands to lose by coming forward.
That is not to say we think Byrne is just “spinning a yarn“. It must be noted in Byrne’s original August 2019 interview, Martha MacCallum remarks that Fox News “asked around” with their own sources within the U.S. government and deemed Byrne’s story to be “credible” before putting him on air. So Byrne clearly has some connection to the FBI and U.S. counterintelligence and has been used in some capacity as an operative or source. The only question is who those connections are with and for what purpose.
We can only speculate as to Byrne’s true motives by looking at his actions since August 2019, those associated to him, and other circumstantial evidence. But you can begin to piece together some interesting connections and patterns if you know where to look.
Jovan Hutton Pulitzer
One thing you would pick up on is the cast of characters Byrne seems to bring into the story himself. One such figure is Javon Hutton Pulitzer who seemed to burst onto the scene from out of nowhere during the election contests.
Pulitzer is another Ellroy type character who keeps popping up again and again in the voting machine stories. Somehow he went from being an inventor and treasure hunter to an election integrity expert and has done a very good job of now integrating himself into the periphery of the election audit movement. But his true role may not truly be what it appears.
For example, in late in Dec 2020, a pro-Trump PAC along with the Cobb County GOP was making headlines with a major ruling in Georgia state court related to signature match. Almost immediately, Pulitzer created shockwaves throughout social media with his most famous and viral moment. Pulitzer went to the podium during a live broadcast at a hearing of the Georgia state legislature with a bombshell announcement that one of his colleagues had in live time been able to remotely access the Dominion voting machine network outside of a Georgia voting precinct currently conducting early voting for the Jan 5th Senate runoff election. The viral video dominated social media and wiped any coverage of the signature match court decision right out of the news cycle; conveniently for the Democrats once again diverting any focus away from signature match and back onto Dominion voting machines at a critical moment.
Now if you have heard Javon Pulitzer interviewed, the theory he might be working against the interests of election integrity and full forensic audits might not sound quite right. Frankly, it could sound ridiculous because he constantly talks about paper ballots and champions audit completeness.
What he might be doing however is very subtle. He talks mostly about genuine election integrity and forensic audit issues, but that’s how a disinformation campaign works. 90% of everything said is usually true and factual. Otherwise how would they ever be viewed as reliable, gain trust, and influence their intended target(s)? But the problem is you never know what the 10% is that is meant to misdirect and get the target(s) to work against their own interests. Javon always seems to manage to steer the agenda back to voting machines, or at least make sure it remains on par with other issues.
Here are some segments of a recent interview as an example. Notice how he briefly mentions voting machines in the beginning and cleverly works his way back from completeness and paper ballots to being fully immersed in Dominion voting machines. There is also an interesting tidbit at the end when he talks about his colleague who accessed the network in the Georgia voting precinct. I wonder who that “global massive bigwig in technology” could have been?
Javon Pulitzer has carved out a niche for himself as sort of a strategic advisor for forensic election audits underway or anticipated, although it is unclear how much direct involvement with the audits he actually has or what would qualify him as an expert in election integrity and audits in the first place.
His role could likely be to infiltrate and/or influence the planning and execution of the state by state forensic audits and get as much attention as possible focused on the audit of Dominion voting machines. As with the Kracken cases, the splashy but dubious information about voting machines will then get mixed in and drown out all the more consequential findings about signature matching and voter canvassing. It will then be used to discredit and dismiss the findings of the election audits as a whole with voting machines allegations being viewed more and more as fringe conspiracy theories by the general public or so-called “normies“.
Maggie Haberman
One of the absolute worst characters in corporate media is New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. Haberman, who disgracefully accepted a Pulitzer Prize for her “deeply sourced” reporting on the Trump-Russia Collusion Pee-Pee Hoax, has gone on to make a career out of peddling stupider and more moronic Trump related conspiracy theories.
Haberman has no obvious ties to Patrick Byrne indirectly or otherwise. But if you pay attention however, you will often pick up on parallels between Haberman’s conspiracy mongering and the messaging coming from Byrne. It is often the same stories, but repackaged and tailored for a different audience; meant to play of each other. Two sides of the same coin if you will.
So what does that mean? Allow us to give a couple of examples.
The weekend before Christmas, Maggie Haberman and the New York Times reported a story Trump had met with Sidney Powell along with Gen. Michael Flynn and others to discuss appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate fraud in the 2020 election. A meeting may have taken place, but no serious consideration was actually ever given to the proposal.
Haberman was able to give a detailed account of what was allegedly discussed in the meeting despite having shown herself to be a hostile actor towards President Trump and almost assuredly having no good sourcing inside Trump’s inner circle this late into his presidency.
At nearly the same time as Haberman’s reporting, Patrick Byrne was putting out selfies of himself from the White House on the same evening and giving his own account of the inside details of the meeting. Byrne contradicted the details in the NY Times story, but it served to add color for Haberman’s reporting and two accounts taken together served a dual purpose.
Anti-Trump readers of the NY Times story would see this as evidence that all accusations made by Haberman were confirmed. Trump must be spiraling out of control and buying into dangerous conspiracy theories. It might justify extraordinary measures should they be needed to assure his removal from office.
It would also gaslight elements of Trump’s base to be convinced Trump was considering drastic actions like declaring martial law (that he was forced to quickly come out and dispel). This also may have been an attempt to radicalize Trump’s base in the lead up to Jan 6th.
In another recent episode, Maggie Haberman made a series of Twitter posts and media appearances claiming now former President Donald Trump was telling people he expected to be reinstated as President in August 2021. This was soon “confirmed” by National Review reporter and “Never Trumper” Charles Cooke. This latest conspiracy theory again appears to have no basis in reality and was simply made up out of whole cloth as neither Haberman or Cooke would likely have any reliable sources within President Trump’s inner circle.
The conspiracy theory Haberman and Cooke were pushing though did not originate with them however. It was a claim MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell had been making months all the way back to March 2021.
The claim might have been chalked up as simply one man’s wild speculation and dismissed even by Trump’s most hopeful supporters. Byrne however gave his own interviews as starting in March 2021 where he seemed to confirm Lindell’s speculation was possible. Byrne had built up a great deal of credibility with the elements of Trump’s base by this point, so his endorsement is what helped the theory really take root. Again allowing a dual purpose story to gaslight Trump supporters while simultaneously smearing Trump as a unhinged madman to his detractors on the Left.
When asked if the comments by Mike Lindell were valid, that President Trump will be back in office by August, Byrne said, “Well, that’s Lindell being Lindell. However, this information is so earth-shattering, that yes, it is possible Trump could be back in The White House by the Fall.
Quote from Mar 2020 CD Media article ‘Byrne: America Will Know The Truth Within Two Months…It’s Possible Trump Could Be Back In Office’
Mike Lindell
Mike Lindell has spent the better part of 2021 claiming he has irrefutable proof the 2020 election was stolen by way of a cyberattack from China that used Dominion and Smartmatic technology to change vote totals and steal the election on behalf of Joe Biden. He claims the data has been checked and confirmed by top of the line cybersecurity experts, some of who still working inside the U.S. government, and all confirm the data is genuine.
Lindell is not exactly a dumb individual, so the evidence he is being shown and and the “experts” he is being presented with must be convincing to some degree. Assuming this is part of a disinformation campaign, where is it all coming from?
The key piece of evidence Lindell claims to possess is raw possession authentic network data packet capture or “PCAPs” from election night Nov 3rd, 2020. Patrick Byrne has used his own reputation as the founder and former CEO of a major online retailer as well an early promoter of cryptocurrency to lend credence to Mike Lindell’s claims about the alleged raw internet data as technically sound.
Byrne however was always careful to keep some distance between himself and Mike Lindell. He made it a point to say he was never coordinating directly Lindell. Rather Byrne claimed to be working on a parallel track examining the same PCAP data, and there was a great deal of crossover between Lindell’s team and Byrne’s own “Bad News Bears“. So they were effectively running in the same circles and seeing the same results. Byrne would also speak in his trademark cryptic language, hinting about secrets he was privy to, but just not yet able to disclose publicly; often deferring to Lindell to reveal “all in good time”.
On the final day of Mike Lindell’s much hyped Cyber Symposium, the promise of “irrefutable evidence” of election hacking using Dominion voting machine failed to materialize to the disappointment of many. The cyber security experts Lindell had hired seemed to undercut his claims in an article published the day before in The Washington Times. This included quotes from Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG) associates Joshua Merritt and Col. Phil Waldren (Ret.) who TWP detailed in Part 2 of this series had proved to be so problematic and unreliable when they were used by Sidney Powell and Lin Wood as part of the Kracken cases. Once again they appear to have injected disinformation that seems to have been blown apart right at a critical juncture. It is hard to believe it wasn’t intentional and deliberate.
But cyber expert Josh Merritt, who is on the team hired by Mr. Lindell to interrogate the data for the symposium, told The Washington Times that packet captures are unrecoverable in the data and that the data, as provided, cannot prove a cyber incursion by China.
“So our team said, we’re not going to say that this is legitimate if we don’t have confidence in the information,” Mr. Merritt said on Wednesday, the second day of the symposium.
From The Washington Times Aug 11th article ‘EXCLUSIVE: Cyber expert says his team can’t prove Mike Lindell’s claims that China hacked election’
Byrne has been quoted as saying he worked closely with ASOG and reportedly was introduced to Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani in the first place by ASOG’s founder Russell Ramsland Jr. Immediately after Lindell’s Cyber Symposium concluded, Byrne put out his own video where he seemed to distance himself from Lindell’s PCAP data. In interviews leading up to the event, he had been all but saying his own cyber security team had independently confirmed the authenticity of the data. He was just holding back to allow Mike Lindell the opportunity to present the findings to the world.
Now compare what he said in the immediate aftermath to anything he had been saying beforehand. Byrne seems to act like he had never seen the PCAP data results and was focused on other forms of election fraud. He even took up Steve Bannon’s mantra of Lindell having the “air game” and Byrne having the “ground game“. He seems to be completely pulling the rug out from underneath Lindell right at the crucial moment.
So what could explain this? Could it be Byrne just suddenly changed his tune because he was added to Dominion’s lawsuits the day before the Lindell’s symposium was set to begin? Certainly possible. Threats of legal action from Dominion is what led news organizations like Fox News and Newsmax to quickly change course and retract their prior reporting about Dominion Voting Systems. You will notice however near the end of Byrne’s video above, he is still making accusations about Dominion; accusing them of committing criminal acts and attempting to destroy evidence.
Is there theory from a more conspiratorial perspective that better explains these events? Let us speculate based on everything we know. Byrne seems to have a connection to the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and might have very well helped setup Maria Butina as part of the Russia Collusion hoax to target Donald Trump. He has close connections to major Globalist icons and has been a major political donor in the past (granted both to Republicans and Democrats). He also has an apparent fascination with Marxist figures and Chinese culture, having lived and studied in China for a number of years.
Lindell has repeatedly said in interviews he was approached in Jan 2021 with “37 terabytes of election data” made up of PCAPs that is “irrefutable evidence” the 2020 election was hacked by China. Since then, he has poured millions of dollars into so-called “cyber security experts” and “white hat hackers” to decrypt and validate its authenticity.
Lindell claims his data has been reviewed and authenticated by at least four separate independent sources. It is again interesting to note, Lindell repeatedly mentions some of his “white hat hackers” are still working inside the U.S. government. We can assume that one group is made up of people associated with ASOG like Joshua Merritt and Col. Phil Waldren and another group is most likely Patrick Byrne’s so-called “Bad News Bears”.
“For some months I proudly have been funding a Bad News Bears collection of just the right spooks, lawyers and ethical hackers, patriots all, to reverse engineer, infiltrate, and disrupt this coup.”
From an email statement from Patrick Byrne in Nov 2020
What if those government officials are themselves members of the IC conducting a disinformation operation and were connected with Lindell either directly or indirectly through Patrick Byrne? That would mean at least three supposedly independent sources were in fact all in some way associated to Byrne and able to infiltrate into Lindell’s circle through him. What if those 37 terabytes of sophisticated electronic PCAP data is in fact a creation of the IC? An intelligence agency would be one of the few organizations with the capability to produce that kind of dataset and make it appear authentic enough to convince a man like Mike Lindell it was genuine. What if Lindell has this data, believes it is really being validated by independent sources, but it’s ultimately all coming from the same place … and it’s all fake.
So from Mike Lindell, to Sidney Powell, to Lin Wood, to Russell Ramsland Jr. and everyone associated with Allied Security Operations Group like Col. Phil Waldren and Joshua Merritt, to Javon Pulitzer, all the way up to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and President Trump. One mysterious figure appears to be connected to all of them and keeps popping up over and over again throughout the voting machine story like an Ellroy character … Patrick Byrne.
Is he who he claims to be, or could he be a Deep State actor and key player in a disinformation campaign? Whose side is he really working on behalf of? We can only speculate.
Stay tuned for fourth and final part of this series where we look at the Democrat’s own history with voting machine conspiracies, Dominion’s very questionable yet unexpected possible role in the ruse, and other fallout from the scheme.
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