Former Overstock CEO Reportedly Claimed in Trump Meeting He Bribed Hillary Clinton $18 Million in FBI Sting
Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne reportedly took the chaos of the outgoing Trump administration to a new level when he participated in the former president’s meeting with Sidney Powell back in December.
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu reported Tuesday on a wild Oval Office meeting in December in which Powell, accompanied by Byrne and Michael Flynn, pushed a series of conspiracy theories about the election in an attempt to convince President Donald Trump to take drastic action to undo it. That group of outsiders clashed with White House lawyers and advisers, including Eric Herschmann, Derek Lyons and Patrick Cipollone, who got into shouting matches over the unsubstantiated claims and alarming proposals.
According to Axios, Byrne attended the meeting as a member of Powell’s entourage, which comes after he joined her in pushing the evidence-free claim that mass voter fraud stole the election from Trump. Byrne reportedly ended up quarreling with Herschmann and others during the meeting, accusing them of disloyalty and cowardice for not doing more to fight for Trump.
After a blow-up where Herschmann called Byrne an “idiot” for mistaking him for White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Axios reported another shocking moment in which Byrne apparently claimed that he was part of a massive FBI sting operation against Hillary Clinton.
From the article:
Byrne, wearing jeans, a hoodie and a neck gaiter, piped up with his own conspiracy: “I know how this works. I bribed Hillary Clinton $18 million on behalf of the FBI for a sting operation.”
Herschmann stared at the eccentric millionaire. “What the hell are you talking about? Why would you say something like that?” Byrne brought up the bizarre Clinton bribery claim several more times during the meeting to the astonishment of White House lawyers.
In the past, Byrne claimed without evidence that he was an FBI informant tasked with assisting a set-up designed to get Clinton to accept a bribe from a foreign official. This was accompanied by claims that former President Barack Obama and former FBI Director James Comey wanted to get dirt on Clinton while she was running for the White House in 2016.
Byrne also claims that he had a romance with Russian spy Maria Butina as part of a broad “deep state” espionage operation. His claims were disputed by multiple FBI officials, and Byrne resigned from Overstock shortly after making them.
