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Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne left behind a cloud of confusion when he resigned in 2019 from the internet retailer hed founded after panicking investors with his bizarre claims that he had romanced a Russian agent at the behest of Men in Black working for the United States government.Now hes back, with what he has described as his own personal army, touting what he claims is proof that Democrats stole the election from Donald Trump.Ive funded a team of hackers and cybersleuths, other people with odd skills, Byrne said in a Tuesday interview at One America News, where OAN personality Chanel Rion praised Byrne as the head of an elite shadow cyber security team.Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Claims Maria Butina Offered to Arrange One-on-One for Him With PutinAs Trumps chances of securing a second term dwindle down to nothing, Byrne has launched a media tour to promote his mysterious hacker team, appearing from an undisclosed location on OAN, Newsmax, and a series of far-fringe YouTube shows associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. On Friday, a guest host on the popular Rush Limbaugh talk radio show praised Byrnes allegations about voter fraud and proposed inviting Byrne on the show.With Trump allies on his legal team and in conservative media scrambling for any evidence that Trump didnt legitimately lose the presidential race, Byrne has become a hero to the MAGA crowd, despite his history of making off-the-wall allegations.Byrne claims hes funding teams of hackers and crackers who realized all the way back in August that Dominion voting machines could be used to steal the election from Trump. Since the election, those voting machines have figured prominently in Trump supporters allegations of fraud, despite the companys repeated denials and any actual proof the voting tallies were changed.The actual details of Byrnes supposed hacker super-team, however, similarly thin.Im a free agent, and Im self-funded, and Im funding this army of various odd people, Byrne said in a Nov. 23 appearance on a podcast with a QAnon promoter who used the name InTheMatrixxx. Its really going to make a great movie someday.Asked for more details on his hacker team, Byrne referred The Daily Beast to his blog, DeepCapture. But the 40,000-word explanation on Byrnes website focuses on his long-running feud with Wall Street short-sellers, and Byrnes conversations with a mysterious financial whistleblower called the Easter Bunny, rather than on any election investigations team.Byrne stopped responding to emails from The Daily Beast when asked whether any members of his hacker team would be available for interviews.Despite his vague claims, Byrne says hes been funneling allegations about the election to the White House and one-time Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for weeks. Byrnes claims are similar to those Powell has made publicly, including an allegation that deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez somehow meddled in the election seven years after his death.Sidney was the first to really get it, and to get what were saying is so vast, that you need kind of a very open-minded person to get it, Byrne said in the InTheMatrixxx podcast.In the aftermath of the election, Byrne has become the latest with a broad tech background to reinvent himself as an expert on voting machines. Byrne is joined in that niche by former 8kun administrator Ron Watkins, who left his position managing the site for its QAnon posts on Election Day and has since appeared on OAN as a so-called elections investigator.During his post-election media tour, Byrne has made a series of other strange claims, including that he could be the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese monk.I love the Chinese, I speak Chinese, I think Im the reincarnation of a Shaolin monk, maybe, Byrne said on the InTheMatrixxx podcast.Heres How Hugo Chavez, Dead Since 2013, Became Responsible for Trumps Election LossByrne has also encountered some other strange allegations on his media tour. In an appearance on a QAnon YouTube show hosted by a woman named Cirsten W, Byrne listened as his host claimed that Bill Clinton and late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been cloned.Byrnes habit of making oddball claims made headlines in 2019, when he was still the CEO of Overstock. Using company letterhead, Byrne issued a statement claiming that Men in Black figures in the federal government had urged him to romance Russian agent Maria Butina, who was at the time allegedly trying to infiltrate conservative circles as a gun rights activist. Overstocks share price plunged, and Byrne eventually resigned after Overstocks insurer refused to insure the company with Byrne at the helm.A Senate Intelligence Committee report issued in August lays out a different view of Byrnes interactions with Butina. In the report, Butina sees Byrne as a potential avenue to reach Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), then a presidential candidate. In a July 2016 email published in the committee report, Butinas boyfriend, Paul Erickson, wrote that Byrne was stalking Butina after meeting her at a libertarian conference and claimed that Byrne made her a $1 million offer related to having his child.Byrne is a bachelor by choice and consequences of his intellectual gifts and limitations, but is now concerned with his mortality and family legacy, Erickson wrote. Since meeting Maria, he has found ever more creative ways to pitch a standing $1 million offer to her to have a baby with him. He is utterly enamored of her imagined gene stock and believes that a baby would cement not only his familial line but also relations between our two nations.Byrne didnt respond to The Daily Beast about the allegations made in Ericksons email.Byrnes other allegations havent always paid off, either. In 2018, he lost a landmark defamation trial filed against him by a Canadian businessman who had been described on Byrnes blog as a terrorist financier and drug and arms trafficker, with the plaintiff awarded $1.2 million in damages.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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