Patrick Byrne, who has funded efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, said in an online forum Thursday that law enforcement would face \u201ca piano wire and a blowtorch\u201d if they did not drop a case against an ally.<\/p>\n
Byrne, a former CEO of online retailer Overstock, used the phrase half a dozen times Thursday as he participated in a nearly three-hour-long event on X Spaces. His remarks came amid heightened worries about political violence, and he acknowledged during the event that his references to strangling or blowtorching officials were threatening and could be considered felonies. On Friday, he downplayed his comments, saying he had been speaking metaphorically and is committed to peace.<\/p>\n
The \u201cCyber Crisis: Saving Tina Peters\u201d event was aimed at rallying support for the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., who faces charges accusing her of tampering with election equipment three years ago. Peters has pleaded not guilty, and her case goes to trial next week.<\/p>\n
Byrne called out law enforcement and prosecutors during the forum, saying they would face violence if they did not drop the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have any brains at all, which I\u2019m not sure they do, they should be throwing in the towel and just surrendering and dropping this case against Tina because those who don\u2019t are going to end up facing a piano wire and a blowtorch before this is over if I have anything to do with it,\u201d Byrne said. \u201cSo I know that\u2019s probably another felony, but f\u2014 it \u2014 threatening them like that \u2014 but there we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Byrne, who said he was participating in the event from Azerbaijan, accused law enforcement of committing treason and claimed he had been hacking Venezuela\u2019s government for two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t care how many felonies I\u2019ve committed, and I don\u2019t care that I\u2019m committing felonies by threatening you,\u201d he said of law enforcement. \u201cYou folks do your job or when this is over, the folks who are part of this are going to be facing, you know, piano wire and blowtorches before this is over. So you start doing your job and stop worrying about me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Byrne said Friday that his comments were \u201cobviously a metaphor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease be aware that my turns of phrase like that are metaphoric expressions,\u201d he said by text message. \u201cThere\u2019s been no one more committed to peaceful resolution of this than I.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said his views on peace do not extend to people like former ambassador Manuel Rocha, who pleaded guilty this year to serving as a secret agent for Cuba for decades. \u201cThe only exception to peaceful resolution will be for any who turn out of Cuba and Venezuela, such as ambassador Rocha,\u201d Byrne said by text message.<\/p>\n
Byrne noted it was 4 a.m. in Azerbaijan when he participated in the event on X, and he may not have spoken as carefully as he otherwise would.<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for the Colorado attorney general\u2019s office and Mesa County district attorney\u2019s office did not immediately comment Friday.<\/p>\n
Byrne\u2019s comments come three-and-a-half months ahead of the presidential election, as scholars, law enforcement agencies and election administrators raise alarms about the risk of political violence. Election officials have faced an onslaught of threats and harassment since the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob chanting about Donald Trump\u2019s false election claims.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, Trump was injured during an assassination attempt that left one of his supporters dead at a rally in Butler, Pa. The violence fueled new warnings of the risk to public officials and ordinary Americans, regardless of their political views.<\/p>\n
Before today\u2019s combustible political environment, the phrases Byrne used might have prompted outreach by authorities to advise against using such language, said Paul Charlton, a former U.S. attorney under President George W. Bush. These days, state and federal officials tend to take such talk more seriously. Byrne\u2019s language, he said, \u201csounds not only like a threat but a confession and an acknowledgment that it could be a felony to make such a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Words alone can be sufficient to prosecute threats against public officials if authorities can show proof of intent to do harm, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is an instance in which, in my mind, it is very much worth law enforcement\u2019s attention,\u201d Charlton said.<\/p>\n
Byrne\u2019s repeated references to the Peters trial \u2014 and the prosecutors involved in it \u2014 are important aspects of his overall comments, said Carol Lam, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California who was also appointed by Bush.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he references a specific trial and he\u2019s talking about the people who are bringing the case, that should be very troubling to law enforcement,\u201d she said. Even if he said he was speaking metaphorically, she added, \u201cWhat does that matter if someone went out and bought piano wire at his suggestion?\u201d<\/p>\n
Two hours after The Washington Post contacted Byrne, he posted a statement on X that reiterated what he told a reporter about meaning his comments metaphorically. He said he wanted people to remain peaceful, but added information would come out that would \u201ctest our ability to remain peaceful and my ability to contribute to that cause.\u201d<\/p>\n
Byrne used this week\u2019s online forum to argue for dropping the charges against Peters, who is accused of participating in a scheme to allow a purported data expert to secretly copy files from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in 2021. She faces seven felonies and three misdemeanors in a case that is scheduled to go to trial on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He has long championed Peters and others who have questioned the results of the 2020 election. Four days after members of the electoral college voted to give Biden a victory in December 2020, Byrne joined other Trump allies in the Oval Office to argue Trump could use the National Guard to seize voting machines. Also in the meeting were Trump-aligned attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.<\/p>\n
In the years since, Byrne has used his fortune and his nonprofit America Project to bankroll efforts meant to uncover problems with how elections are run, including a partisan review of the 2020 election in Arizona. Byrne and the America Project have helped fund groups like We the People Ariz. Alliance, an Arizona-based political action committee whose co-founder in March said she would \u201clynch\u201d a Republican official who helps oversee elections in the state\u2019s largest county. She later said her comment was a joke.<\/p>\n
Courts and independent agencies have found no evidence of widespread election fraud.<\/p>\n
Byrne led Overstock for two decades. He resigned in 2019 after it came to light that he had been romantically involved with Maria Butina, a Russian gun activist who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring with a Russian official to infiltrate conservative politics in the United States. She was deported after serving a 15-month prison sentence. Byrne published a memoir this year that included a preface by Butina.<\/p>\n
Dominion, the voting machine company, filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Byrne in 2021. The case is ongoing. Dominion won settlements of $787.5 million with Fox News and $243 million with Newsmax and is seeking $1 billion or more from Giuliani, Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.<\/p>\n
Spencer S. Hsu and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Patrick Byrne, who has funded efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, said in an online forum Thursday that law enforcement would face \u201ca piano wire and a blowtorch\u201d if they did not drop a case against an ally. Byrne, a former CEO of online retailer Overstock, used the phrase half a dozen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}