October 9, 2019 • 43 mins
Like Amazon, eBay or multitudes of others, overstock.com is a company that allows consumers to buy goods online, often at a deep discount. The CEO, Patrick M. Byrne, resigned in August of 2019 -- and not for the usual reasons executives resign. The company wasn't closing down, and Byrne wasn't retiring to spend time with his family. So what happened? Join Ben and Matt as they explore the strange story of Patrick Byrne, the FBI, spies, honeypots and (allegedly) the Deep State.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt Noel is on
an adventure today. They call me Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer Paul mission Controlled dec
into his just return from an adventure himself. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. How's it going, Matt?
(00:46):
It's going well. Yeah, yeah, overwhelmed, but going well. Overwhelmed
yea too many wells? Yeah yeah, you know to a
I'm gonna do a thing that used to be seen
as very boring back when the climate was more reliable,
(01:07):
And I'm gonna complain about the weather. You can see
the way I'm dressed today. It's the first day of fall.
As we're recording this, i ignored the weather reports that
do confirm it's going to be ninety plus degrees, fair
knit here in our city, and I've decided I'm just
gonna a dress like it's the temperature it's supposed to
be until it is. I believe Oprah called that the secret.
(01:29):
Yeah that you're right, intention, that's all that matters. UH.
Put out in the world and maybe it'll cool down
for you. And we have a number to put out
in the world today, too, don't we. Sure? Yeah, I
call in with any comments or question do you have
about today's episode or past episodes. Give us a call.
We are one H three three st d w y
(01:51):
t K. We will we will be listening. Um And
if you don't want to do that, go ahead and
send an email to conspiracy at I heart radio dot com.
But that's just that's for whatever stirs in your mind
because you don't even know what's going on today yet.
And it's a doozy, it is, It is a doozy. Indeed,
this is one of those things that um, you know,
(02:14):
picked behind the stage offen air. This is one of
those things that surprised you. And now my friend, you
and I are fairly it's fairly rare for us to
be absolutely surprised by news when we hear something. Nowadays,
we've been doing this for years and years. Let's get
into it this way. This is this is a strange tale.
(02:35):
UH have you listening today, have you ever ordered something online?
Literally anything? According to a twenty nineteen poll by Marist
College and NPR National Public Radio, around seventy six percent
of all US adults in the country have shopped or
(02:55):
are shopping online. Of the population of the United States,
one out of four people shop online at least once
a month, and sixteen percent shop online at least once
a week. Yeah, and that could be anything from the
groceries for the week to a small thing for a
child that's ordered, or just a reoccurring purchase of something
(03:20):
like shampoo or cat litter, or something right like a
a laundry detergent, a basic staple. It could also be
something as simple as I don't feel like cooking tonight,
let me order something from you know, Postmates or one
of the many other services Uber eats, whatever. But it
could also be furniture. It could also being large things,
(03:43):
which is kind of one of the things we're talking
about today. I think one of the strange things that
we explored. It was either our funeral industry episode or
maybe our Yeah, it was our funeral industry episode where
we found you can order coffins online. There is very
little between the mainstream web and the dark web. There's
very little that you actually can't order online. It's just
(04:06):
some of it's legal to order either way you look
at it, on either side of the law. Online ordering
is a huge industry, and when most of us here
in the United States think of online shopping, we think
of a particular digital Leviathan, an outfit known as Amazon
with a smile from here to there? Did I tell
(04:28):
you I remember when you told me that eight Z
thing about the smile? I was seeing you when I
saw the title for Amazon video, Because the smile goes
from like I too D and I was up late
and I was thinking, I D, Matt's onto something. But yeah,
we think of Amazon and this. You know, results may
vary according to your neck of the global woods. You
(04:50):
may live in a place where Ali Baba is the
big guy, right, But there are many other names in
this space as well, and we can launch your list
a few, right sure. The oldest one in my book,
at least that I remember being used frequently, was eBay,
but it was less of an online retailer and more
of an online social platform to get people to purchase
(05:15):
the other person's stuff, but in a bidding war. It
was very odd. It was an online swap me kind
of online flea market, and it still is. It. Also,
it also hacked one of the most hilarious malfunctions of
human psychology, which is uh, true happiness for most human
(05:37):
beings is not absolute. True happiness is comparative and relative.
For many people, it's not just the fact that they
are able to buy a thing they want on eBay.
It's also the fact that they know other people will
not have this thing because they have it. It's sort
of it plays into you know, there's plays into this
(05:59):
factor of don't know whether you call it narcissism or something,
but there are people in the world who aren't happy,
aren't as happy as they could be having a thing
as they are having a thing and knowing that it
means other people cannot have it. Oh no, sure, it's
it's hard for me to relate to that, but I
certainly see it at work a lot. But the biggest
(06:22):
thing with this is that it's kind of a game
that you're playing right when you're When you buy something
from a service like eBay, you get to play this
game where you get to be the winner. But if
you're not the winner, Oh, I gotta win next time, right,
so I will pay this inflated price, and it's almost
tapping into gambling to you know what I mean for sure.
(06:43):
So there are other retailers like Walmart, Walmart Giant in
the brick and mortar physical scene, but also pretty big digitally.
I Kea will also deliver things. The subject of today's story,
sort of somewhat is one of these also ran online retailers.
(07:05):
It is called Overstock dot Com. This is not an
advertisement for Overstock dot Com in any sense, and it
is it is also not the story you might be expecting.
So but just just for a reference, if you do
head on over to overstock dot com right now, there
is a fall home blowout, at least as we're recording this,
(07:27):
and it's almost all furniture. Yes, yeah, why is that
strap the again? We'll tell you. Here are the facts.
Over Stock describes itself as a quote this from their website,
a tech driven online retailer located near Salt Lake City
in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. Their story begins
(07:50):
way back in guy named Robert Brizel founds a company
calls D two Discounts Direct Brazil sells this business to
a guy named Patrick m Byrne, who gives it its
current name. Overstock originally sold just that overstock. Overstock is
(08:10):
a term for surplus inventory surplus amounts of products. So
let's say, Matt, you own a chair emporium, Yes, and
it's nine nine. Let's say it's you own a chair emporium.
Business has been great, and you've invested a lot in
(08:31):
buying some chairs that you thought were going to be
super hot. What kind of chairs were those? Again? A
lot of it was modern. Um, I mean that we
were really banking that people were going to go with
a whole new millennium motif. You know, yeah, yeah, it
didn't really pan out. It turns out people were still
into wicker and kind of the old school would Um.
The biggest problem though, was that my website started to fail,
(08:54):
right because you had gotten into the dot com aspect
and you thought we wouldn't have you know, maybe I'll
just sell all my uh artists formerly known as Prince
branded Party like it's had a lot of that actually
dining sets. So so now we're in trouble because it
didn't work out for the chair emporium businesses looking dire
(09:17):
along comes over stock, and Overstock says we will buy
not just some of your inventory that you're trying to sell,
we'll buy all of it if you give us a
huge price break. Yeah, I'm really trying to get out
of this business. So you know what overstock deal. All right,
So now we're over stock. We have all of these
(09:38):
artists formerly known as Prince dining sets and modern chairs,
and now we go to our website over stock dot
com and we sell it to the public at prices
that are even below wholesale. Oh yeah, um again this
was this was pretty great, and that's how it went
(09:59):
for quite a while there at over Stock. But then
they started to branch out, especially since Patrick Byrne, this gentleman,
came through and started to run things. Yeah, they started
selling not just close out stuff. Oh we should mentioned
they also sold returned merchandise, right, yeah, dinged up or
returned knit, maybe a scrape or two on it. So
(10:21):
nowadays Overstock has branched out, thanks definitely thanks to Patrick Byrne,
into selling new merchandise. So if you go to the
website that you just described matt on their fall furniture blowout,
there's probably a lot of stuff that was surplus inventory,
but there's probably some new stuff in there too. It
(10:42):
looks fantastic on the site. I got to say again,
this is not a commercial over Stock, because we probably
we're going somewhere with this, and it may not be
where you think. So over Stock experienced its first billion
dollar revenue year in two thousand and ten. Not bad
at all, right, uhine to two thousand ten, So what
(11:05):
is that eleven years something around there? It's pretty great,
and that's very much the work of Patrick m Burne
and his team. Well yeah, exactly the whole team. But
there's there's something interesting here that I just want to
inject because we're gonna hit on a little bit later
while all that's occurring. Remember the downturn in the economy
(11:25):
happens right there around two thousand and eight, two thousand nine,
and they recovered out of that to you know, get
their first billion dollar year just a couple of years later.
That's Ah, that's just a little marker to leave there
for you when you're thinking about over stock. Okay, and
then we'll get back to it later. So later on me, Matt,
(11:48):
this Patrick Burne guy, who is he no relation to Connell?
I would assume, but checked. Well, I know, I I
didn't ask in particular. It might be a sore subject. Well.
He was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana the good Old
Year in nineteen sixty two. His father's name is John J. Byrne,
and this uh John. His father was the former CEO
(12:09):
of Geico right at the subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Yes,
the the insurance company. UM interesting line there. So he
has all kinds of degrees from all kinds of places,
all of them prestigious of course, including Dartmouth, Cambridge, Stanford
and even Beijing Normal University he studied Chinese. He also
(12:33):
studied philosophy. The philosophy I believe was at Stanford. He
also is a three time cancer survivor. He has a
black belt in taekwondo, and he was an aspiring professional
boxer at one time. Yes, he was, and again a
PhD in philosophy I believe, if I'm not mistaken, and
a boxer. So he really thought about why he was
(12:54):
beating you up, you know what I mean, or he
at least had a firm ground to stand on in
in explaining it to somebody else or some existential dilemmas
I love that idea. Uh So he did as we said,
shepherd overstock into financial success. But the entire time he
(13:14):
did so, he remained a controversial figure, polemical, provocative, in
no small way problematic to some people. Oh absolutely, and
we're gonna name you or list off a couple of
things here that are they feel out there or at
least they feel against the grain to to a large extent.
(13:35):
But just to put this out there, in two thousand five,
this guy started talking about how there was going to
be this massive downturn in the economy because the entire
thing was a house of cards waiting to fall down.
And he talked about it up until two thousand eight,
right when we had this massive crash because of the
mortgage backed securities thing. He was literally, there's a there's
(13:59):
a super up of him you can find online where
he's going on all of these business channels and just saying, guys,
the sky is falling and it's our fault. Just get ready,
it's gonna be bad. Uh And he kind of became
a bit of a pariah for that, or at least,
you know, within the networks that push markets are great,
(14:19):
everything's great by pay people thought of him as an
alarmist or a chicken little. Yes, the sky is falling, right,
but that wasn't all he did. No No. In numerous
online postings and interviews, Burn railed against what he saw
as the fat cats of Wall Street, including one unidentified
person he apparently described as sith Lord or the sith
(14:43):
Lord and uh. In twenties sixteen, he and his site
deep capture dot com were found liable for defamation for
allegations they made against the Canadian national named Alta nazar Ali,
and they were ordered to pay a little bit south
of one million dollars. You can check out his blog
(15:05):
right now, Deep Capture and Deep Capture is interesting because
it exists concurrently, It exists in step with his Overstock career,
and you can read, uh, you know what what appears
to be. I don't know. Some people have described as
a checkl and hide kind of thing, but you can
(15:25):
read what appears to be two very different facets of
the same individual. In August of twenty nineteen, remember over
Stock is doing pretty well, Burn went off the rails
to as far as a lot of people in his sphere.
We're concerned because you see, he abruptly resigned from Overstock aid,
(15:49):
and he would go on shortly thereafter to sell his
entire stake in the company and throw it all into gold,
silver and wait for it, cryptocurrency, two of them, two
of them to flavors, as he calls it. So what
exactly happened, we'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
(16:17):
On August twelve, Overstocked presents to the public a strange
press release from Patrick Byrne. You have very strange. Um,
it's hard to even describe it, says overstock dot com
CEO comments on deep State, withholds further comment, and it
goes down to describe the Sarah Carter, someone who was
(16:40):
writing with the New York Post, I believe um, it says,
Sarah Carter has published two articles relating the following claims
of mine. And then it gets into some really crazy
stuff that you don't expect to see from a company
sending out a press release. Let's just talk about that
really fast. When somebody like I don't know, Fox News
(17:02):
puts out a press release, it's generally to let people
know of something an upcoming event, something that's big in
the news that's about to happen, or them announcing that
something is big happening with them, or if you're dealing
with a public company, it may have to do with shareholders,
something good that's coming around the corner. In this case,
it was very, very different. Let's read an excerpt. Starting
(17:25):
in operating under the belief that I was helping legitimate
law enforcement efforts, I assisted in what are now known
as the Clinton investigation and the Russian investigation. In fact,
I am the notorious missing Chapter one of the Russian investigation.
It was the third time in my life I helped
the men in black. Yes, it says that third time
(17:46):
I helped the men in black. And remember these are
Patrick Byrne's words, capital M, capital B. Yes. The first
was when my friend Brian Williams was murdered, and the
second is when I helped the M I B shake
up Wall Street a decade ago on. Fortunately, this time
turned out to be less about law enforcement and more
about political espionage conducted against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,
(18:07):
and to a lesser degree, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
In July eighteen, I put the pieces together. I immediately
last July came forward to a congressman and senior military
officer to the Department of Justice this April, and upon
my Omaha Rabbi reminding me of my duty as a
citizen late this June. To a small set of journalists
(18:28):
this summer, Mrs Carter was among them. Her two stories
are accurate, and he's he's talking about the reporting that
Sarah Carter, journalist Sarah Carter did on his above allegations
that Matt and I just quoted. Let's bracket that let's
go back to what was happening in the public eye.
According to coin desk dot Com, overstock itself, under Burns direction,
(18:53):
was already deep into the bitcoin game. It was one
of the first companies to accept payments and cryptocurrent see
it launched its own security token trading platform, and it
acquired companies behind some other cryptocurrencies, like raven Coin. This
led analysts to believe burn was ahead of the curve,
but maybe a little too far ahead of the curve.
(19:15):
And he also was accused of doing some sketchy things
to shareholders and the kind of fake out move by
paying some dividends not in cash but in cryptocurrency, which
you know, more traditional investors were not particularly receptive to.
On September, after the market closed. Burn filed his statement
(19:39):
with the Security and Exchange Commission as he see saying
that he had sold four point seven million over Stock
shares and that these shares would total over ninety million dollars.
These transactions were over the again coin desk reports. These
transactions were over the previous three trading sessions as the
stock price fell from a high of twenty nine dollars
(20:00):
and thirty eight cents to fifteen dollars and sixty five cents.
He had this blog post on his site, Deep Capture,
following a statement issued by Overstock where they said they
were going to halt this crypto dividend policy I just
described after New York Post report detailed behind the scenes
(20:21):
maneuvering this to Burn was seen as a leak, and
a perfidious one at that he said. In fact, he
said it was a leak from quote, a leak from
the deep State's pets at the SEC. Hold up, deep State?
What the hell happened to Patrick M. Burn? Here's where
(20:43):
it gets crazy. This was not some one time mentioned
of a deep state on Burns part. Uh. We we
remember that he criticized the FBI talking about deep state
men in black political espionage, interestingly enough, against both Clinton
and Trump. He also said that he was sure of
(21:07):
this after consulting with Warren Buffett, you know, famous of
Berkshire Hathaway fame for whom John J. Burne used to work. Yeah.
I don't want to be too much like Charlie Day
in the mail room connecting the Pepe Sylvia conspiracies here.
But as you and I found, Matt, he Burns resignation
(21:31):
from Overstock is just kind of the beginning of of
his story here. Oh yeah, it seems well, I don't wanna,
I don't want to talk too much about how I
feel about it, but it appears to be someone in
distress because then he goes on to CNN he holds
this thirty minute an interview, and it's the same day
that he officially leaves over Stock, right, and you can
(21:53):
see clips of this online. If you seek it out.
I put Patrick BYRNE CNN, you'll probably find it. Um.
He was claiming that the Federal Bureau of Investigation told him,
or somehow compelled him to begin some kind of romantic relationship,
or at least the beginnings of a romantic relationship with
(22:16):
someone named Maria Boutina, And you may recognize that name
because she's been in the news quite frequently there in
the past several years for being a Russian spy, or
at least being accused of acting as a Russian spy.
And you may think, well, why would the FBI, of
all the alphabet agencies send Patrick Byrne in to do
(22:39):
some reconnaissance and or shaping of you know, a Russian
spies work? Well, because I guess there's not a really
great answer, at least that's given in any of these interviews, right.
He also claimed that former members of the FBI and
officials specifically on the in the Obama administration had co
(23:04):
signed us had green lit it. For lack of a
better word, Former FBI Director James Comey responded to Burn's
comments by calling them ridiculous, and he said, the FBI
doesn't work that way. It was pretty succinct about it. Yeah,
But again, the it's so interesting to me because when
you're talking about jurisdiction and the alphabet agencies, the FBI
(23:26):
would be handling anything inside the United States if if
there there's espionage going on, the FBI would be attempting
to handle it. If it's interior to the United States, right,
But it definitely feels like more of the work that
you would think the CIA or the n s A
would be handling. But anyway, that's just that's just my
feel of the whole thing. There's another person who was
(23:49):
also a former FBI director, uh Andrew McCabe. He had
a comment and he said, well, you know, it's certainly
possible that this guy Burn maybe vall interered to give
information to one of these agencies about Boutina. But he
also was pretty aggressive in rejecting the notion that the
FBI would actually engage with Burn to get him to
(24:12):
go do this kind of thing, like send him on
a mission even though he's not an agent of any sorts.
Just the idea that they would send him to quote
engage in a romantic relationship with a suspected Russian intelligence
agent um. And he, oh, yeah, he said, quote this
that is simply not the sort of thing the FBI does.
So the former FBI officials at least have a united
(24:34):
front in this regard. And now we get into this
glass half full, glass half empty? Is the dress blue
or green or whatever? That old what was that Remember
that Facebook beam that went around where people were guessing
what color address was and arguing about it. Yes, I do.
(24:55):
I honestly can't even remember what colors it was supposed
to be. You know, the scary part is I can
remember what real news it was supposed to distract people from. Uh,
I'm certain it was. You know, you know how easy
it is to make something go viral. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
let's see what kind of actual war crimes were occurring
(25:16):
during the dress fiasco. But but regardless, I'm bringing up
that comparison because now for a lot of us, a
lot of our fellow listeners, there's a a sort of
dividing point we have to ask ourselves. Does this mean
that Burn is just spinning wild tales or maybe becoming
(25:41):
mentally unstable, or does it mean that the FBI is
unified in lying about what they're doing. Well, why would
you be upfront with it if that was something like
some kind of counter espionage thing you were trying to
pull with. You know, the FB and the c i
A are are own to bring in actors essentially who
(26:03):
were not fully agents, who have some kind of reach
or some kind of pull within a certain sphere of
influence right. I always thinking about Julia Childs and how
she was utilized as a fact finder, as an agent
of sorts where she would actually gather intelligence. Um, but anyway,
let's jump, let's jump really fast to that CNN article again,
(26:25):
because he he discusses in TWI meeting with Maria Boutina. Right, Yes,
he says he first met Boutina in Las Vegas. It
was at a libertarian conference. I believe Boutina was a
well known firearms enthusiast, and they spoke with one another
about guns in the US. And she later, according to
(26:47):
burn invited him to Russia. She said, I have some
high power connection. I have some people I want you
to meet, Right, And that's when Burne says he reached
out to the FBI and said, Hey, this this boutan
at characters trying to give me to go to Russia
and meet some sketchy people. I'm sure we can use
this somehow. And you know, you and I, according to
(27:08):
burn have already built a relationship because I helped you
out on those two previous cases. And again, according to
burn the agents told him that he had a non
standard relationship with the government. Well yeah, and and again
that wasn't it. We talked about this a little bit,
(27:29):
but just the fact that Burne himself went to the
Justice Department and shared with officials they're very similar story
about how he had this romantic relationship with Boutina and
how the FBI were the ones who said, hey, man, yeah,
keep going down that path. This is gonna be good
for us. We could use this. And again, this u
S official who's telling all of this, uh, or who's
(27:52):
like at least acknowledging that this occurred. Uh. This person
says that Justice Justice Department officials that burned up meeting
with they found a lot of his story to be
believable in some way, right, like saying, again, there are
parts of this I understand because he did share operational
details that were not widely known outside of those spheres. Right.
(28:15):
If you're if you don't know what maybe the ways
in which information is relayed within the FBI from one
informant to a larger body or from one to another,
you probably wouldn't know that stuff. And it seemed like
Burne just understood it at least. Yeah, Right, So that
adds a little more credibility to the claim here. The
(28:39):
The interesting thing is that other FBI officials, former as
well as current, will note that telling someone to rekindle
there a romantic relationship is really dicey territory legally speaking,
because it leads to a lot of you know, he said,
she said, situations they see some legal liability being involved,
(29:05):
and if you are the FBI, what you want is
something at the very least that appears to be an
ironclad case, so long as the judge looking at it
makes the decision you want the judge to make. I mean,
that's how that's how this sort of stuff works. That
is not a conspiracy. So, as Burne said, despite what
(29:26):
the FBI is claiming now, the FBI greenlit and encouraged
him to build this relationship with Boutina, and he would
meet with her every six weeks or so and they would,
according to talk about philosophy and politics. And then he
grew apprehensive when she said, you know, I'm friends with
Alexander Torsien, who was a banker linked closely to the
(29:50):
Kremlin and the Putin administration. And she said that this
banker was telling her to make friends, make networks, connect
employed nepotism in the upper echelons of American politics. It
is true that she was attempting to do this, and
(30:10):
it is true that she communicated with Torsion, according to
court filings in the case brought by prosecutors in d
C against her earlier right and Burns said that the
the FBI had originally told him to break off the
relationship and then told him to date her again. So
that's a very that's a very strange way to end
(30:32):
a relationship and try to get back with your X.
I'm sorry, honey, it's not you, it's not me, it's
the FBI. Get a break up, So especially saying that
it's coinciding with the Russian investigation, this whole rekindling thing
that the FBI was encouraging him to do. Yeah, but
I just want to hear somebody use that as a
(30:52):
breakup reason. I know. But let's say you are Maria
Boutina or you are an asset of a state of
some you know, powerful government, and your boyfriend from the
other side comes to you and it's like, hey, I
know the whole Russian investigation things going on, but girl,
I was wrong. We put on a little shot a
(31:16):
boys the band, let's work this out. I don't know
what they would put on and I don't know what
they You know, every relationship is its own foreign country, right.
I do want to hear from everybody this. This is
so pointless, but I'm so interested. Man, how would you
react if you were a significant other, um, married, dating, etcetera.
(31:41):
Came to you and said, we have to end this.
It's not you, it's not FBI. I feel like if
if someone said that to be with a straight face.
I'm the worst example of this, but I feel like
if someone said that to me with a straight face,
I'm not married or anything, I would probably I would
(32:02):
believe that they believed that, you know what I mean.
Either way, it feels like a good reason to break up. Yeah,
that's rough. With social media nowadays, you could just turn
right around and tweet out hey my signific and O
they're just broke up broke up with me because of
the FBI and tag them thanks er. Yeah, somebody's covers
(32:25):
a good way to do that. So there is, uh,
there is where we end with a with a high
level look at the story. But we want to give you,
because this is an ongoing event, we want to give
you some of the latest updates. Will do that after
a word from our sponsors. We have returned. In a
(32:54):
stunning surprise, the FBI has refused to officially comment on
Burns claims. That's why the people you hear us talking
about are either officials who have not given their names,
or they are former officials of the FBI who are
saying things like based on my experience, this doesn't make sense.
It's not what the FBI does. Yeah, please don't use
(33:15):
my name. I am an official from the FBI. This
is weird. That's enough. No, no further comment. What about Boutina,
Oh well, Boutina was I mean, she was a spy.
She was in quote, unregistered foreign agent of the Russian state.
She pleaded guilty December to acting in that way. She
was thirty years old that year. Uh yeah, pretty pretty weird. Yeah. So,
(33:41):
prosecutors alleged that she attempted to meet members of presidential
campaigns in the run up to the election, that she
worked with the n r A to support Second Amendment causes,
and she is currently serving uh part of her eighteen
month prison term. However, I can understand how for a
(34:03):
lot of people that might seem out there or harsh,
you say, okay, well, supporting Second Amendment causes? Isn't that
what any American can do? Should they so choose? If
I am a US resident and I want to meet
members of a presidential campaign, can't I also do that?
That seems like stuff I should be able to do,
(34:26):
And that is correct, that that assumption is correct. If
you are a US citizen, just don't collect too much
detailed information and put it anywhere. However, if you are
a foreign agent acting on behalf of a state, and
this is in the geopolitical sense, so a state in
(34:46):
this case is not Alabama. State is like Croatia or
Russia or the DPRK or the U S. If you
are acting under the direction of that state, then you
are legally required to read the same way that a
diplomat or a consular agent would have to register. People
in the U S State Department have to register when
(35:07):
they're abroad because they're not doing that. This makes it
spycraft unregistered foreign agent, that means spy basically, uh in
a rough way. So her attorney and fell it NA
Robert Driscoll said, when informed of burns resignation, he said,
you know, I wish him well. I think he raised
(35:29):
issues worthy of investigation at risk to his career as
has become a parent. So the the attorney here for
Boutina is clearly implying that he believes there's some sand
to this idea that the FBI was using Burn as
a as himself as an unregistered agent. Yeah, and it's odd.
(35:53):
It feels as though Burn was outing himself on purpose
for some reason, right, like he wanted to get out
from under something. To me, it feels like leverage of
some sort that was being placed on him. Again, that
is just my feeling about the situation. But he's the
(36:13):
one who talked to those reporters. He's the one who
opened his mouth and and disclosed that information while that
New York Post reporter was there, Sarah True, I don't know.
And then and then you start to lead down the
path of like, well, what is he actually doing and
what is what is he saying his intentions are for
doing all of these things. Uh, that's where in my
(36:35):
mind where it gets even crazier. Yes, let's let's go
to Burn's own words. How about that. Here's what he
had to say on September, just a few days ago.
As we record this, the other thing accomplished by the
Bitcoin metal investment moves I described above, is that my
ammunition gets moved outside acts of retaliation from the deep State.
(36:59):
This is important because in fact, I am now going
to shellack them. Actually, shellack is too weak a word
for what I intend to do to the deep State.
Sit back and enjoy the show. That's intense. So he's moved,
you know, a small uh big in most you know
(37:23):
of humanity, he's moved a huge amount of money. Yeah.
For for me, it's like way more than I will
ever understand in my entire life. But for a lot
of the players that are within his sphere, ninety million
dollars plus whatever else he had set aside um, he's
moved that much around somewhere. It's like an escape craft
kind of yeah, because he is moving physically to right. Yeah,
(37:44):
he was going to Australia, said he's gonna be traveling
the whole world. He's got uh. He said he gave
the keys to his cryptocurrency accounts to some priest he
met while traveling the world in some other country that
is not English speaking. It's a really interesting piece of
that blog post, where again, this is a blog post
that he he put out on deep capture dot com.
(38:07):
I think it's the one that's called a message to
my former colleagues at overstock. I believe it's a part
of that UM. And here for me, here's where it
gets the craziest. Ben he in twent two five, all
the way to two thousand eight, he was signaling to
everybody that he could that the sky was falling and
the economy is a house of cards. It's gonna fall.
(38:28):
He kept he kept calling it um an old man
on a breathing machine. And our economy is only alive
because it keeps getting money, like as in an oxygen
from a breathing machine. It keeps getting it funneled into itself. Right,
So this machine, which is essentially the Fed and the banks,
(38:49):
keeps printing money and keeps giving out money. And that's
the only reason our economy is still alive. And he said,
we're basically setting ourselves up to fail because we are.
We have seen banks selling the same securities to numerous people,
to you know, packaging them in different ways. But it's
all the same crap. And it was when he kept
saying basically, and then it came true. I mean, it's true.
(39:11):
He saw the writing on the wall, and again right
now he's moved to get into cryptocurrency, away from the
way banks work, the way uh economies function, the way
securities and exchanges are happening. He is signaling and saying,
we need to move away from this stuff because the
entire thing is a house of cards. It's not just
(39:33):
mortgage backed securities, it's everything. And he's saying that we're
going to see a major collapse and we won't be
able to get out from under it. It'll be much
worse this time. And he's basically going underground and taking
all of his money with him in the form of
precious metals and you know, cryptocurrencies, which cryptocurrencies, we've done
(39:56):
episodes on it before, but discussing what that really means
and how you would use it, especially in some kind
of post apocalyptic or post economic world, it's confusing to me,
but he understands it. But you can't eat gold. You
can't eat gold, but you can melt it down and
make some really pretty jewelry. Yeah, what do you think, folks?
(40:19):
Do you think that Patrick Byrne, Patrick and Burne lost it?
Do you think that he is off his rocker? As
people used to say, or do you believe that he
is onto something? And perhaps most importantly, what will happen
to him next? Also shout out to nothing but a
(40:40):
messenger on Instagram who wanted, Uh, Matt wanted you and
I to uh chug a leader of gravy for some reason. Yeah,
it's a it's a thing people are doing now, It's
a thing the kids are into. Is this a where?
Where is this in? What happens this? This is an Instagram? Oh?
He d M you yes, yes, nothing but a messenger
(41:04):
d M to me. I'm learning how this works. And
I wanted to wanted to uh what wanted to convince
us to drink leaders of gravy? And I'm just not
I'm not going to do it. I'm not gonna do
it all at once. But you know, I hope the
challenge goes to something, uh some worthwhile cause thanks thanks
(41:25):
Nothing but a messenger for letting us know that people
drink that much gravy at once. Yeah, um, your face
right now, Matt, Well, is it brown gravy? Is it
saw mill gravy? What are we talking about here? If
we're talking like Campbell's brown can, Yeah, that's the one. Nope,
if we're gonna head on over to Cracker Barrel and
(41:47):
have some of their delicious white saw mill gravy, that's
mostly it's mostly flour and water. Um, I'm okay with
that available now on overstock dot com. Uh, they're only
excepting cryptocurrency maybe matt money or bend Bucks. So thanks
so much for writing to us. This ends our conversation.
This ends our episode, but not our show. You can
(42:10):
continue exploring this strange story of Patrick Byrne and Overstock
on our Instagram, on our Twitter, on our Facebook page.
We especially like to recommend here's where it gets crazy,
our Facebook community page with our fantastic mods. Uh. But
it's a place where you can meet our favorite part
of the show, your fellow listeners. That's right, And as
(42:32):
we said at the top, if you want to give
us a call, we are one eight three three st
d w y t K. Leave us your comments, your
ideas for episodes, whatever you're feeling. If you want to
sing a song that's cool, please do not record three
minutes of yourself drinking gravy noises. Uh. You know what,
(42:54):
if you do that, I'll be the one that listens
to it. We'll be okay. We'll find a to mix
it into some new theme song. Maybe I'm not sure.
I'm not sure anyway, and enjoy the rest of your day. Everyone,
uh please please please. If you don't feel like writing
to us, are doing anything else, send us a good
old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com.
(43:36):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt Noel is on
an adventure today. They call me Ben. We are joined
as always with our super producer Paul mission Controlled dec
into his just return from an adventure himself. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. How's it going, Matt?
(00:46):
It's going well. Yeah, yeah, overwhelmed, but going well. Overwhelmed
yea too many wells? Yeah yeah, you know to a
I'm gonna do a thing that used to be seen
as very boring back when the climate was more reliable,
(01:07):
And I'm gonna complain about the weather. You can see
the way I'm dressed today. It's the first day of fall.
As we're recording this, i ignored the weather reports that
do confirm it's going to be ninety plus degrees, fair
knit here in our city, and I've decided I'm just
gonna a dress like it's the temperature it's supposed to
be until it is. I believe Oprah called that the secret.
(01:29):
Yeah that you're right, intention, that's all that matters. UH.
Put out in the world and maybe it'll cool down
for you. And we have a number to put out
in the world today, too, don't we. Sure? Yeah, I
call in with any comments or question do you have
about today's episode or past episodes. Give us a call.
We are one H three three st d w y
(01:51):
t K. We will we will be listening. Um And
if you don't want to do that, go ahead and
send an email to conspiracy at I heart radio dot com.
But that's just that's for whatever stirs in your mind
because you don't even know what's going on today yet.
And it's a doozy, it is, It is a doozy. Indeed,
this is one of those things that um, you know,
(02:14):
picked behind the stage offen air. This is one of
those things that surprised you. And now my friend, you
and I are fairly it's fairly rare for us to
be absolutely surprised by news when we hear something. Nowadays,
we've been doing this for years and years. Let's get
into it this way. This is this is a strange tale.
(02:35):
UH have you listening today, have you ever ordered something online?
Literally anything? According to a twenty nineteen poll by Marist
College and NPR National Public Radio, around seventy six percent
of all US adults in the country have shopped or
(02:55):
are shopping online. Of the population of the United States,
one out of four people shop online at least once
a month, and sixteen percent shop online at least once
a week. Yeah, and that could be anything from the
groceries for the week to a small thing for a
child that's ordered, or just a reoccurring purchase of something
(03:20):
like shampoo or cat litter, or something right like a
a laundry detergent, a basic staple. It could also be
something as simple as I don't feel like cooking tonight,
let me order something from you know, Postmates or one
of the many other services Uber eats, whatever. But it
could also be furniture. It could also being large things,
(03:43):
which is kind of one of the things we're talking
about today. I think one of the strange things that
we explored. It was either our funeral industry episode or
maybe our Yeah, it was our funeral industry episode where
we found you can order coffins online. There is very
little between the mainstream web and the dark web. There's
very little that you actually can't order online. It's just
(04:06):
some of it's legal to order either way you look
at it, on either side of the law. Online ordering
is a huge industry, and when most of us here
in the United States think of online shopping, we think
of a particular digital Leviathan, an outfit known as Amazon
with a smile from here to there? Did I tell
(04:28):
you I remember when you told me that eight Z
thing about the smile? I was seeing you when I
saw the title for Amazon video, Because the smile goes
from like I too D and I was up late
and I was thinking, I D, Matt's onto something. But yeah,
we think of Amazon and this. You know, results may
vary according to your neck of the global woods. You
(04:50):
may live in a place where Ali Baba is the
big guy, right, But there are many other names in
this space as well, and we can launch your list
a few, right sure. The oldest one in my book,
at least that I remember being used frequently, was eBay,
but it was less of an online retailer and more
of an online social platform to get people to purchase
(05:15):
the other person's stuff, but in a bidding war. It
was very odd. It was an online swap me kind
of online flea market, and it still is. It. Also,
it also hacked one of the most hilarious malfunctions of
human psychology, which is uh, true happiness for most human
(05:37):
beings is not absolute. True happiness is comparative and relative.
For many people, it's not just the fact that they
are able to buy a thing they want on eBay.
It's also the fact that they know other people will
not have this thing because they have it. It's sort
of it plays into you know, there's plays into this
(05:59):
factor of don't know whether you call it narcissism or something,
but there are people in the world who aren't happy,
aren't as happy as they could be having a thing
as they are having a thing and knowing that it
means other people cannot have it. Oh no, sure, it's
it's hard for me to relate to that, but I
certainly see it at work a lot. But the biggest
(06:22):
thing with this is that it's kind of a game
that you're playing right when you're When you buy something
from a service like eBay, you get to play this
game where you get to be the winner. But if
you're not the winner, Oh, I gotta win next time, right,
so I will pay this inflated price, and it's almost
tapping into gambling to you know what I mean for sure.
(06:43):
So there are other retailers like Walmart, Walmart Giant in
the brick and mortar physical scene, but also pretty big digitally.
I Kea will also deliver things. The subject of today's story,
sort of somewhat is one of these also ran online retailers.
(07:05):
It is called Overstock dot Com. This is not an
advertisement for Overstock dot Com in any sense, and it
is it is also not the story you might be expecting.
So but just just for a reference, if you do
head on over to overstock dot com right now, there
is a fall home blowout, at least as we're recording this,
(07:27):
and it's almost all furniture. Yes, yeah, why is that
strap the again? We'll tell you. Here are the facts.
Over Stock describes itself as a quote this from their website,
a tech driven online retailer located near Salt Lake City
in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. Their story begins
(07:50):
way back in guy named Robert Brizel founds a company
calls D two Discounts Direct Brazil sells this business to
a guy named Patrick m Byrne, who gives it its
current name. Overstock originally sold just that overstock. Overstock is
(08:10):
a term for surplus inventory surplus amounts of products. So
let's say, Matt, you own a chair emporium, Yes, and
it's nine nine. Let's say it's you own a chair emporium.
Business has been great, and you've invested a lot in
(08:31):
buying some chairs that you thought were going to be
super hot. What kind of chairs were those? Again? A
lot of it was modern. Um, I mean that we
were really banking that people were going to go with
a whole new millennium motif. You know, yeah, yeah, it
didn't really pan out. It turns out people were still
into wicker and kind of the old school would Um.
The biggest problem though, was that my website started to fail,
(08:54):
right because you had gotten into the dot com aspect
and you thought we wouldn't have you know, maybe I'll
just sell all my uh artists formerly known as Prince
branded Party like it's had a lot of that actually
dining sets. So so now we're in trouble because it
didn't work out for the chair emporium businesses looking dire
(09:17):
along comes over stock, and Overstock says we will buy
not just some of your inventory that you're trying to sell,
we'll buy all of it if you give us a
huge price break. Yeah, I'm really trying to get out
of this business. So you know what overstock deal. All right,
So now we're over stock. We have all of these
(09:38):
artists formerly known as Prince dining sets and modern chairs,
and now we go to our website over stock dot
com and we sell it to the public at prices
that are even below wholesale. Oh yeah, um again this
was this was pretty great, and that's how it went
(09:59):
for quite a while there at over Stock. But then
they started to branch out, especially since Patrick Byrne, this gentleman,
came through and started to run things. Yeah, they started
selling not just close out stuff. Oh we should mentioned
they also sold returned merchandise, right, yeah, dinged up or
returned knit, maybe a scrape or two on it. So
(10:21):
nowadays Overstock has branched out, thanks definitely thanks to Patrick Byrne,
into selling new merchandise. So if you go to the
website that you just described matt on their fall furniture blowout,
there's probably a lot of stuff that was surplus inventory,
but there's probably some new stuff in there too. It
(10:42):
looks fantastic on the site. I got to say again,
this is not a commercial over Stock, because we probably
we're going somewhere with this, and it may not be
where you think. So over Stock experienced its first billion
dollar revenue year in two thousand and ten. Not bad
at all, right, uhine to two thousand ten, So what
(11:05):
is that eleven years something around there? It's pretty great,
and that's very much the work of Patrick m Burne
and his team. Well yeah, exactly the whole team. But
there's there's something interesting here that I just want to
inject because we're gonna hit on a little bit later
while all that's occurring. Remember the downturn in the economy
(11:25):
happens right there around two thousand and eight, two thousand nine,
and they recovered out of that to you know, get
their first billion dollar year just a couple of years later.
That's Ah, that's just a little marker to leave there
for you when you're thinking about over stock. Okay, and
then we'll get back to it later. So later on me, Matt,
(11:48):
this Patrick Burne guy, who is he no relation to Connell?
I would assume, but checked. Well, I know, I I
didn't ask in particular. It might be a sore subject. Well.
He was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana the good Old
Year in nineteen sixty two. His father's name is John J. Byrne,
and this uh John. His father was the former CEO
(12:09):
of Geico right at the subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Yes,
the the insurance company. UM interesting line there. So he
has all kinds of degrees from all kinds of places,
all of them prestigious of course, including Dartmouth, Cambridge, Stanford
and even Beijing Normal University he studied Chinese. He also
(12:33):
studied philosophy. The philosophy I believe was at Stanford. He
also is a three time cancer survivor. He has a
black belt in taekwondo, and he was an aspiring professional
boxer at one time. Yes, he was, and again a
PhD in philosophy I believe, if I'm not mistaken, and
a boxer. So he really thought about why he was
(12:54):
beating you up, you know what I mean, or he
at least had a firm ground to stand on in
in explaining it to somebody else or some existential dilemmas
I love that idea. Uh So he did as we said,
shepherd overstock into financial success. But the entire time he
(13:14):
did so, he remained a controversial figure, polemical, provocative, in
no small way problematic to some people. Oh absolutely, and
we're gonna name you or list off a couple of
things here that are they feel out there or at
least they feel against the grain to to a large extent.
(13:35):
But just to put this out there, in two thousand five,
this guy started talking about how there was going to
be this massive downturn in the economy because the entire
thing was a house of cards waiting to fall down.
And he talked about it up until two thousand eight,
right when we had this massive crash because of the
mortgage backed securities thing. He was literally, there's a there's
(13:59):
a super up of him you can find online where
he's going on all of these business channels and just saying, guys,
the sky is falling and it's our fault. Just get ready,
it's gonna be bad. Uh And he kind of became
a bit of a pariah for that, or at least,
you know, within the networks that push markets are great,
(14:19):
everything's great by pay people thought of him as an
alarmist or a chicken little. Yes, the sky is falling, right,
but that wasn't all he did. No No. In numerous
online postings and interviews, Burn railed against what he saw
as the fat cats of Wall Street, including one unidentified
person he apparently described as sith Lord or the sith
(14:43):
Lord and uh. In twenties sixteen, he and his site
deep capture dot com were found liable for defamation for
allegations they made against the Canadian national named Alta nazar Ali,
and they were ordered to pay a little bit south
of one million dollars. You can check out his blog
(15:05):
right now, Deep Capture and Deep Capture is interesting because
it exists concurrently, It exists in step with his Overstock career,
and you can read, uh, you know what what appears
to be. I don't know. Some people have described as
a checkl and hide kind of thing, but you can
(15:25):
read what appears to be two very different facets of
the same individual. In August of twenty nineteen, remember over
Stock is doing pretty well, Burn went off the rails
to as far as a lot of people in his sphere.
We're concerned because you see, he abruptly resigned from Overstock aid,
(15:49):
and he would go on shortly thereafter to sell his
entire stake in the company and throw it all into gold,
silver and wait for it, cryptocurrency, two of them, two
of them to flavors, as he calls it. So what
exactly happened, we'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
(16:17):
On August twelve, Overstocked presents to the public a strange
press release from Patrick Byrne. You have very strange. Um,
it's hard to even describe it, says overstock dot com
CEO comments on deep State, withholds further comment, and it
goes down to describe the Sarah Carter, someone who was
(16:40):
writing with the New York Post, I believe um, it says,
Sarah Carter has published two articles relating the following claims
of mine. And then it gets into some really crazy
stuff that you don't expect to see from a company
sending out a press release. Let's just talk about that
really fast. When somebody like I don't know, Fox News
(17:02):
puts out a press release, it's generally to let people
know of something an upcoming event, something that's big in
the news that's about to happen, or them announcing that
something is big happening with them, or if you're dealing
with a public company, it may have to do with shareholders,
something good that's coming around the corner. In this case,
it was very, very different. Let's read an excerpt. Starting
(17:25):
in operating under the belief that I was helping legitimate
law enforcement efforts, I assisted in what are now known
as the Clinton investigation and the Russian investigation. In fact,
I am the notorious missing Chapter one of the Russian investigation.
It was the third time in my life I helped
the men in black. Yes, it says that third time
(17:46):
I helped the men in black. And remember these are
Patrick Byrne's words, capital M, capital B. Yes. The first
was when my friend Brian Williams was murdered, and the
second is when I helped the M I B shake
up Wall Street a decade ago on. Fortunately, this time
turned out to be less about law enforcement and more
about political espionage conducted against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,
(18:07):
and to a lesser degree, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
In July eighteen, I put the pieces together. I immediately
last July came forward to a congressman and senior military
officer to the Department of Justice this April, and upon
my Omaha Rabbi reminding me of my duty as a
citizen late this June. To a small set of journalists
(18:28):
this summer, Mrs Carter was among them. Her two stories
are accurate, and he's he's talking about the reporting that
Sarah Carter, journalist Sarah Carter did on his above allegations
that Matt and I just quoted. Let's bracket that let's
go back to what was happening in the public eye.
According to coin desk dot Com, overstock itself, under Burns direction,
(18:53):
was already deep into the bitcoin game. It was one
of the first companies to accept payments and cryptocurrent see
it launched its own security token trading platform, and it
acquired companies behind some other cryptocurrencies, like raven Coin. This
led analysts to believe burn was ahead of the curve,
but maybe a little too far ahead of the curve.
(19:15):
And he also was accused of doing some sketchy things
to shareholders and the kind of fake out move by
paying some dividends not in cash but in cryptocurrency, which
you know, more traditional investors were not particularly receptive to.
On September, after the market closed. Burn filed his statement
(19:39):
with the Security and Exchange Commission as he see saying
that he had sold four point seven million over Stock
shares and that these shares would total over ninety million dollars.
These transactions were over the again coin desk reports. These
transactions were over the previous three trading sessions as the
stock price fell from a high of twenty nine dollars
(20:00):
and thirty eight cents to fifteen dollars and sixty five cents.
He had this blog post on his site, Deep Capture,
following a statement issued by Overstock where they said they
were going to halt this crypto dividend policy I just
described after New York Post report detailed behind the scenes
(20:21):
maneuvering this to Burn was seen as a leak, and
a perfidious one at that he said. In fact, he
said it was a leak from quote, a leak from
the deep State's pets at the SEC. Hold up, deep State?
What the hell happened to Patrick M. Burn? Here's where
(20:43):
it gets crazy. This was not some one time mentioned
of a deep state on Burns part. Uh. We we
remember that he criticized the FBI talking about deep state
men in black political espionage, interestingly enough, against both Clinton
and Trump. He also said that he was sure of
(21:07):
this after consulting with Warren Buffett, you know, famous of
Berkshire Hathaway fame for whom John J. Burne used to work. Yeah.
I don't want to be too much like Charlie Day
in the mail room connecting the Pepe Sylvia conspiracies here.
But as you and I found, Matt, he Burns resignation
(21:31):
from Overstock is just kind of the beginning of of
his story here. Oh yeah, it seems well, I don't wanna,
I don't want to talk too much about how I
feel about it, but it appears to be someone in
distress because then he goes on to CNN he holds
this thirty minute an interview, and it's the same day
that he officially leaves over Stock, right, and you can
(21:53):
see clips of this online. If you seek it out.
I put Patrick BYRNE CNN, you'll probably find it. Um.
He was claiming that the Federal Bureau of Investigation told him,
or somehow compelled him to begin some kind of romantic relationship,
or at least the beginnings of a romantic relationship with
(22:16):
someone named Maria Boutina, And you may recognize that name
because she's been in the news quite frequently there in
the past several years for being a Russian spy, or
at least being accused of acting as a Russian spy.
And you may think, well, why would the FBI, of
all the alphabet agencies send Patrick Byrne in to do
(22:39):
some reconnaissance and or shaping of you know, a Russian
spies work? Well, because I guess there's not a really
great answer, at least that's given in any of these interviews, right.
He also claimed that former members of the FBI and
officials specifically on the in the Obama administration had co
(23:04):
signed us had green lit it. For lack of a
better word, Former FBI Director James Comey responded to Burn's
comments by calling them ridiculous, and he said, the FBI
doesn't work that way. It was pretty succinct about it. Yeah,
But again, the it's so interesting to me because when
you're talking about jurisdiction and the alphabet agencies, the FBI
(23:26):
would be handling anything inside the United States if if
there there's espionage going on, the FBI would be attempting
to handle it. If it's interior to the United States, right,
But it definitely feels like more of the work that
you would think the CIA or the n s A
would be handling. But anyway, that's just that's just my
feel of the whole thing. There's another person who was
(23:49):
also a former FBI director, uh Andrew McCabe. He had
a comment and he said, well, you know, it's certainly
possible that this guy Burn maybe vall interered to give
information to one of these agencies about Boutina. But he
also was pretty aggressive in rejecting the notion that the
FBI would actually engage with Burn to get him to
(24:12):
go do this kind of thing, like send him on
a mission even though he's not an agent of any sorts.
Just the idea that they would send him to quote
engage in a romantic relationship with a suspected Russian intelligence
agent um. And he, oh, yeah, he said, quote this
that is simply not the sort of thing the FBI does.
So the former FBI officials at least have a united
(24:34):
front in this regard. And now we get into this
glass half full, glass half empty? Is the dress blue
or green or whatever? That old what was that Remember
that Facebook beam that went around where people were guessing
what color address was and arguing about it. Yes, I do.
(24:55):
I honestly can't even remember what colors it was supposed
to be. You know, the scary part is I can
remember what real news it was supposed to distract people from. Uh,
I'm certain it was. You know, you know how easy
it is to make something go viral. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
let's see what kind of actual war crimes were occurring
(25:16):
during the dress fiasco. But but regardless, I'm bringing up
that comparison because now for a lot of us, a
lot of our fellow listeners, there's a a sort of
dividing point we have to ask ourselves. Does this mean
that Burn is just spinning wild tales or maybe becoming
(25:41):
mentally unstable, or does it mean that the FBI is
unified in lying about what they're doing. Well, why would
you be upfront with it if that was something like
some kind of counter espionage thing you were trying to
pull with. You know, the FB and the c i
A are are own to bring in actors essentially who
(26:03):
were not fully agents, who have some kind of reach
or some kind of pull within a certain sphere of
influence right. I always thinking about Julia Childs and how
she was utilized as a fact finder, as an agent
of sorts where she would actually gather intelligence. Um, but anyway,
let's jump, let's jump really fast to that CNN article again,
(26:25):
because he he discusses in TWI meeting with Maria Boutina. Right, Yes,
he says he first met Boutina in Las Vegas. It
was at a libertarian conference. I believe Boutina was a
well known firearms enthusiast, and they spoke with one another
about guns in the US. And she later, according to
(26:47):
burn invited him to Russia. She said, I have some
high power connection. I have some people I want you
to meet, Right, And that's when Burne says he reached
out to the FBI and said, Hey, this this boutan
at characters trying to give me to go to Russia
and meet some sketchy people. I'm sure we can use
this somehow. And you know, you and I, according to
(27:08):
burn have already built a relationship because I helped you
out on those two previous cases. And again, according to
burn the agents told him that he had a non
standard relationship with the government. Well yeah, and and again
that wasn't it. We talked about this a little bit,
(27:29):
but just the fact that Burne himself went to the
Justice Department and shared with officials they're very similar story
about how he had this romantic relationship with Boutina and
how the FBI were the ones who said, hey, man, yeah,
keep going down that path. This is gonna be good
for us. We could use this. And again, this u
S official who's telling all of this, uh, or who's
(27:52):
like at least acknowledging that this occurred. Uh. This person
says that Justice Justice Department officials that burned up meeting
with they found a lot of his story to be
believable in some way, right, like saying, again, there are
parts of this I understand because he did share operational
details that were not widely known outside of those spheres. Right.
(28:15):
If you're if you don't know what maybe the ways
in which information is relayed within the FBI from one
informant to a larger body or from one to another,
you probably wouldn't know that stuff. And it seemed like
Burne just understood it at least. Yeah, Right, So that
adds a little more credibility to the claim here. The
(28:39):
The interesting thing is that other FBI officials, former as
well as current, will note that telling someone to rekindle
there a romantic relationship is really dicey territory legally speaking,
because it leads to a lot of you know, he said,
she said, situations they see some legal liability being involved,
(29:05):
and if you are the FBI, what you want is
something at the very least that appears to be an
ironclad case, so long as the judge looking at it
makes the decision you want the judge to make. I mean,
that's how that's how this sort of stuff works. That
is not a conspiracy. So, as Burne said, despite what
(29:26):
the FBI is claiming now, the FBI greenlit and encouraged
him to build this relationship with Boutina, and he would
meet with her every six weeks or so and they would,
according to talk about philosophy and politics. And then he
grew apprehensive when she said, you know, I'm friends with
Alexander Torsien, who was a banker linked closely to the
(29:50):
Kremlin and the Putin administration. And she said that this
banker was telling her to make friends, make networks, connect
employed nepotism in the upper echelons of American politics. It
is true that she was attempting to do this, and
(30:10):
it is true that she communicated with Torsion, according to
court filings in the case brought by prosecutors in d
C against her earlier right and Burns said that the
the FBI had originally told him to break off the
relationship and then told him to date her again. So
that's a very that's a very strange way to end
(30:32):
a relationship and try to get back with your X.
I'm sorry, honey, it's not you, it's not me, it's
the FBI. Get a break up, So especially saying that
it's coinciding with the Russian investigation, this whole rekindling thing
that the FBI was encouraging him to do. Yeah, but
I just want to hear somebody use that as a
(30:52):
breakup reason. I know. But let's say you are Maria
Boutina or you are an asset of a state of
some you know, powerful government, and your boyfriend from the
other side comes to you and it's like, hey, I
know the whole Russian investigation things going on, but girl,
I was wrong. We put on a little shot a
(31:16):
boys the band, let's work this out. I don't know
what they would put on and I don't know what
they You know, every relationship is its own foreign country, right.
I do want to hear from everybody this. This is
so pointless, but I'm so interested. Man, how would you
react if you were a significant other, um, married, dating, etcetera.
(31:41):
Came to you and said, we have to end this.
It's not you, it's not FBI. I feel like if
if someone said that to be with a straight face.
I'm the worst example of this, but I feel like
if someone said that to me with a straight face,
I'm not married or anything, I would probably I would
(32:02):
believe that they believed that, you know what I mean.
Either way, it feels like a good reason to break up. Yeah,
that's rough. With social media nowadays, you could just turn
right around and tweet out hey my signific and O
they're just broke up broke up with me because of
the FBI and tag them thanks er. Yeah, somebody's covers
(32:25):
a good way to do that. So there is, uh,
there is where we end with a with a high
level look at the story. But we want to give you,
because this is an ongoing event, we want to give
you some of the latest updates. Will do that after
a word from our sponsors. We have returned. In a
(32:54):
stunning surprise, the FBI has refused to officially comment on
Burns claims. That's why the people you hear us talking
about are either officials who have not given their names,
or they are former officials of the FBI who are
saying things like based on my experience, this doesn't make sense.
It's not what the FBI does. Yeah, please don't use
(33:15):
my name. I am an official from the FBI. This
is weird. That's enough. No, no further comment. What about Boutina,
Oh well, Boutina was I mean, she was a spy.
She was in quote, unregistered foreign agent of the Russian state.
She pleaded guilty December to acting in that way. She
was thirty years old that year. Uh yeah, pretty pretty weird. Yeah. So,
(33:41):
prosecutors alleged that she attempted to meet members of presidential
campaigns in the run up to the election, that she
worked with the n r A to support Second Amendment causes,
and she is currently serving uh part of her eighteen
month prison term. However, I can understand how for a
(34:03):
lot of people that might seem out there or harsh,
you say, okay, well, supporting Second Amendment causes? Isn't that
what any American can do? Should they so choose? If
I am a US resident and I want to meet
members of a presidential campaign, can't I also do that?
That seems like stuff I should be able to do,
(34:26):
And that is correct, that that assumption is correct. If
you are a US citizen, just don't collect too much
detailed information and put it anywhere. However, if you are
a foreign agent acting on behalf of a state, and
this is in the geopolitical sense, so a state in
(34:46):
this case is not Alabama. State is like Croatia or
Russia or the DPRK or the U S. If you
are acting under the direction of that state, then you
are legally required to read the same way that a
diplomat or a consular agent would have to register. People
in the U S State Department have to register when
(35:07):
they're abroad because they're not doing that. This makes it
spycraft unregistered foreign agent, that means spy basically, uh in
a rough way. So her attorney and fell it NA
Robert Driscoll said, when informed of burns resignation, he said,
you know, I wish him well. I think he raised
(35:29):
issues worthy of investigation at risk to his career as
has become a parent. So the the attorney here for
Boutina is clearly implying that he believes there's some sand
to this idea that the FBI was using Burn as
a as himself as an unregistered agent. Yeah, and it's odd.
(35:53):
It feels as though Burn was outing himself on purpose
for some reason, right, like he wanted to get out
from under something. To me, it feels like leverage of
some sort that was being placed on him. Again, that
is just my feeling about the situation. But he's the
(36:13):
one who talked to those reporters. He's the one who
opened his mouth and and disclosed that information while that
New York Post reporter was there, Sarah True, I don't know.
And then and then you start to lead down the
path of like, well, what is he actually doing and
what is what is he saying his intentions are for
doing all of these things. Uh, that's where in my
(36:35):
mind where it gets even crazier. Yes, let's let's go
to Burn's own words. How about that. Here's what he
had to say on September, just a few days ago.
As we record this, the other thing accomplished by the
Bitcoin metal investment moves I described above, is that my
ammunition gets moved outside acts of retaliation from the deep State.
(36:59):
This is important because in fact, I am now going
to shellack them. Actually, shellack is too weak a word
for what I intend to do to the deep State.
Sit back and enjoy the show. That's intense. So he's moved,
you know, a small uh big in most you know
(37:23):
of humanity, he's moved a huge amount of money. Yeah.
For for me, it's like way more than I will
ever understand in my entire life. But for a lot
of the players that are within his sphere, ninety million
dollars plus whatever else he had set aside um, he's
moved that much around somewhere. It's like an escape craft
kind of yeah, because he is moving physically to right. Yeah,
(37:44):
he was going to Australia, said he's gonna be traveling
the whole world. He's got uh. He said he gave
the keys to his cryptocurrency accounts to some priest he
met while traveling the world in some other country that
is not English speaking. It's a really interesting piece of
that blog post, where again, this is a blog post
that he he put out on deep capture dot com.
(38:07):
I think it's the one that's called a message to
my former colleagues at overstock. I believe it's a part
of that UM. And here for me, here's where it
gets the craziest. Ben he in twent two five, all
the way to two thousand eight, he was signaling to
everybody that he could that the sky was falling and
the economy is a house of cards. It's gonna fall.
(38:28):
He kept he kept calling it um an old man
on a breathing machine. And our economy is only alive
because it keeps getting money, like as in an oxygen
from a breathing machine. It keeps getting it funneled into itself. Right,
So this machine, which is essentially the Fed and the banks,
(38:49):
keeps printing money and keeps giving out money. And that's
the only reason our economy is still alive. And he said,
we're basically setting ourselves up to fail because we are.
We have seen banks selling the same securities to numerous people,
to you know, packaging them in different ways. But it's
all the same crap. And it was when he kept
saying basically, and then it came true. I mean, it's true.
(39:11):
He saw the writing on the wall, and again right
now he's moved to get into cryptocurrency, away from the
way banks work, the way uh economies function, the way
securities and exchanges are happening. He is signaling and saying,
we need to move away from this stuff because the
entire thing is a house of cards. It's not just
(39:33):
mortgage backed securities, it's everything. And he's saying that we're
going to see a major collapse and we won't be
able to get out from under it. It'll be much
worse this time. And he's basically going underground and taking
all of his money with him in the form of
precious metals and you know, cryptocurrencies, which cryptocurrencies, we've done
(39:56):
episodes on it before, but discussing what that really means
and how you would use it, especially in some kind
of post apocalyptic or post economic world, it's confusing to me,
but he understands it. But you can't eat gold. You
can't eat gold, but you can melt it down and
make some really pretty jewelry. Yeah, what do you think, folks?
(40:19):
Do you think that Patrick Byrne, Patrick and Burne lost it?
Do you think that he is off his rocker? As
people used to say, or do you believe that he
is onto something? And perhaps most importantly, what will happen
to him next? Also shout out to nothing but a
(40:40):
messenger on Instagram who wanted, Uh, Matt wanted you and
I to uh chug a leader of gravy for some reason. Yeah,
it's a it's a thing people are doing now, It's
a thing the kids are into. Is this a where?
Where is this in? What happens this? This is an Instagram? Oh?
He d M you yes, yes, nothing but a messenger
(41:04):
d M to me. I'm learning how this works. And
I wanted to wanted to uh what wanted to convince
us to drink leaders of gravy? And I'm just not
I'm not going to do it. I'm not gonna do
it all at once. But you know, I hope the
challenge goes to something, uh some worthwhile cause thanks thanks
(41:25):
Nothing but a messenger for letting us know that people
drink that much gravy at once. Yeah, um, your face
right now, Matt, Well, is it brown gravy? Is it
saw mill gravy? What are we talking about here? If
we're talking like Campbell's brown can, Yeah, that's the one. Nope,
if we're gonna head on over to Cracker Barrel and
(41:47):
have some of their delicious white saw mill gravy, that's
mostly it's mostly flour and water. Um, I'm okay with
that available now on overstock dot com. Uh, they're only
excepting cryptocurrency maybe matt money or bend Bucks. So thanks
so much for writing to us. This ends our conversation.
This ends our episode, but not our show. You can
(42:10):
continue exploring this strange story of Patrick Byrne and Overstock
on our Instagram, on our Twitter, on our Facebook page.
We especially like to recommend here's where it gets crazy,
our Facebook community page with our fantastic mods. Uh. But
it's a place where you can meet our favorite part
of the show, your fellow listeners. That's right, And as
(42:32):
we said at the top, if you want to give
us a call, we are one eight three three st
d w y t K. Leave us your comments, your
ideas for episodes, whatever you're feeling. If you want to
sing a song that's cool, please do not record three
minutes of yourself drinking gravy noises. Uh. You know what,
(42:54):
if you do that, I'll be the one that listens
to it. We'll be okay. We'll find a to mix
it into some new theme song. Maybe I'm not sure.
I'm not sure anyway, and enjoy the rest of your day. Everyone,
uh please please please. If you don't feel like writing
to us, are doing anything else, send us a good
old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com.
(43:36):
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