Last Updated on May 27, 2021
Radio host Stew Peters interviewed former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, now the founder of The American Project, about Byrne’s bombshell claims regarding potential foreign involvement in what he describes as the theft of the 2020 presidential election from President Donald Trump, and asks what Byrne believes President Trump could have done differently to remain in office for a second term.
Since November 3, Byrne has become a central figure in the Stop The Steal movement, and has made claims about election theft in six cities residing in battleground states that conspicuously flipped from President Trump to Joe Biden during late night hours, in some cases after observers were sent home due to spurious reasons or blocked from viewing the vote counting.
Peters specifically asked if Byrne is working with the FBI or federal government in his attempt to expose what he believes happened in 2020, Byrne replied, “I am not only not working with the FBI or the federal government, I suspect I’ve angered a lot of people there.” He then suggested, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they make it a crime… I’m investigating this as a journalist, maybe they’re going to come out and say the First Amendment doesn’t apply. I’m not working with the FBI and if anything I can tell you that the Washington authorities would love to block all this and make it go away.”
Byrne then responded allegations made by him and a litany of others which suggest Italy, either members of its government and intelligence agencies or the large businesses throughout the private sector, interfered in the 2020 election. Such allegations sometimes insist the interference was done at the behest of voting machine companies. Byrne said he could neither confirm or deny the authenticity of the claims, but said he is no longer pursuing the matter.
“I knew about, let’s call it the Italian Job, probably by November 10,” said Byrne. “I’ve been aware and played some background role and other than that I don’t want to comment on the Italian Job. I don’t know myself for sure what to believe, the whole case can be made without the Italian Job.” He added, “I can’t say anything definitive one way or another. I’ve left that matter.”
Peters then asked a viewer’s question about why he is publicly supporting President Trump and why he aided his efforts to expose credible claims of widespread voter fraud and election interference despite not voting for him. “If we let a rigged election stand, that’s our last freedom. We will never be a free nation again. This is the end, I really think the American Republic may be coming to an end if we don’t get this straightened out,” Byrne told Peters.
“I was never a Never Trumper, I don’t detest Donald Trump, I think the left has gone out of their mind in recent years,” he explained. “It’s like they’ve been conditioned now.” He added, “they can’t even have an intelligent conversation.” Byrne then addressed his public four hour meeting with President Trump last December, at the end of which President Trump reportedly agreed work with Gen. Mike Flynn and to make Sidney Powell a special prosecutor and allow her to take charge of the election integrity effort. However, Byrne reveals that President Trump’s advisors ultimately convinced him not to pursue this over the next 48 hours.
“It’s public that I spent four hours with him in December, and I actually grew quite fond of him in four hours. I felt terribly for the man, I felt terrible for him because he had a few of us there trying to help him, and could have won it for him, and he had all these mediocrities around him that he was listening to instead of listening to Mike Flynn,” said Byrne. “What Trump should have done is had Mike Flynn, you run this issue for me. It was easy to defeat.” He added, “But President Trump, poor guy, and my heart really started going out for him, he was a really gentleman. The first thing he said is that he knew I hadn’t voted for him and I said some unkind things about him.”
Byrne concluded, “I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do. If this had happened to Biden, and it never would have, because Republicans don’t do this,” he explained, “I would have been knocking on the door to the Democrats.”
When asked about his regrets over the meeting with President Trump during the waning days of the Trump administration, Byrne said he regretted that he could not persuade President Trump to trust his team and reduce Rudy Giuliani’s role in the election integrity effort. “I’ve relived that a thousand times. Could I have said something different that would make President Trump do the right thing? I mean he did the right thing in the meeting but over the next 48 hours his people talked him out of it,” said Byrne. “I could tell he didn’t understand, he was getting such bad information from the people around him.”
“I think that with Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer and the people around Rudy and everything underneath that, Rudy is America’s Mayor, I love the man, we all love Rudy Giuliani, he should not have been the commander, he should not have been the captain of this effort,” Byrne told Peters. “It could have easily been won, if Donald Trump had done on December 18, done what we said” Byrne explained that his advice to President Trump was to have an audit like the one currently underway in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the six largest cities of the six battleground states that flipped to Biden during late night vote counting.
“Just go in, set up live cameras, and recount on live stream TV. And if we’re wrong, you concede Mr. President, and if we’re right, and there’s hundreds of thousands of irregularities in each of these six places, then you’ve got a whole range of options,” said Byrne.
