Response to Lee Davidson (SLTrib) on My Twitter Suspension

Yesterday Lee Davidson’s of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a piece about my Twitter suspension (“Twitter suspends account of Trump ally Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock: Byrne has promoted bizarre election fraud claims” SLTribune, January 12, 2020). Lee’s piece is chockful of errors, omissions, and mischaracterizations, yet but I will refrain from criticizing Lee on the grounds that Lee did try to reach me for comment (yet his request never made it to me due to circumstances beyond the control of either of us). That is a shame, because it would have been possible to clear up his many misconceptions with a five minute phone call, and his piece would not have been so poor. Privately Lee has expressed a willingness to correct the record, so I am writing a short response here: that way we (the public and I together) can all see how the SLTribune handles itself with matter of simple factual accuracy.

Let us start with this phrase “Trump ally” . As a small “l” libertarian, I did not vote for President Trump in 2016 or 2020. In fact, I have never voted for a Republican for president in my life. Neither have I ever voted for a Democrat. Over the last two months I have stated this in numerous interviews and speeches that have been seen by millions. I know it appears on DeepCapture as well (for example, see “Reflections on Donald J. Trump” from October 2019, written when I knew people were someday going to wonder how I feel about DJT). When I met with the President on December 23 of last year, just a few weeks ago, he brought it up himself in a gentlemanly way, letting me know it did not bother him and he understood that I am acting on principle: Simply put, our system is about “Consent of the governed,” and we determine what our “consent” is by holding elections that are free, fair, and transparent. I believe the 2020 election was neither fair nor transparent, so I have a duty to act. It seems pretty simple to me but so far has been a point which has eluded the minds of the MSM, who describe me (in Lee’s [phrase) as “an ardent Tump supporter”.

“For example, Byrne had posted a series of widely shared tweets contending that counterfeit ballots were being counted in Georgia — a claim that even GOP officials in that state said was wrong.” Yes, the system has been vouched for Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger (who last summer slammed through a $100 million no-bid contract to install Dominion machines in Georgia and paid someone a $10.8 million implementation fee: maybe someone ought to look into who received that). There were indeed ballots with a receipt from a Chinese firm, and federally certified forensic analysts concluded that they came with different ink and paper and printing methods than other ballots in Atlanta. In addition, in recent days our team acquired the data for one key county in Georgia, are wrapping up their analysis now: I stand by my claim that Georgia’s election was rigged.

Lee quotes a NYTimes story about the meeting that occurred in the Oval Office a couple evenings before Christmas. That story has one unnamed source, no named sources, and presents a complete fabrication: that we discussed using the military to seize machines, rather than a suggestion that the DHS, FBI, or National Guard could be used to inspect the machines on-site, and their hard-drives imaged for analysis within the federal government. Here I am, on the record as a named witness, denying the claims that the NYT conveyed from an unnamed source: yet no sense of journalistic integrity impels Lee to convey my claim.

“Courts found no credible evidence that vote totals had been changed or manipulated.” Not one of the 60 or so cases that have been decided at state levels dealt with any of the evidence we have been generating. They were all procedural, along the lines of, “Voters in this county in this state had one set of rules, voters in the other counties in that state had a different set of rules, that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the XIV Amendment.” Not even Rudy’s Pennsylvania case departed from that pattern. The only cases that have availed themselves of our evidence has been the four cases that Sidney Power has filed with the US Supreme Court, which have yet to see rulings.

Davidson claims that I endorse a theory that the Nashville bombing was a missile strike. I do not and never did assert that a missile strike was behind the Nashville bombing. I retweeted a video , a second security camera’s vantage, which seems to reveal something strange about that: a plume of some kind rises a couple hundred feet in the air just a few seconds before the explosion. A missile would not explain that (how would a missile cause that seconds before its impact?) I tweeted that video not knowing or caring that it was embedded on a page alleging a missile strike, because I wanted people to see the video. I agree that a missile would not account for that plume arising seconds before the explosion, but I thought I would ask the Twitter audience to tell me what they thought about that oddity.

So I ask Lee: Do you see that plume in the opening seconds of this clip? What would explain it, to your inquisitive mind? I agree that it is not a missile, but is there anything odd here that you do see? It is true that I tweeted that video, but in that tweet did not embrace the “missile theory” as the explanation. I tweeted the video to crowd-source the knowledge of thousands. Naturally, out of an abundance of journalistic integrity you will include the link to this video when you write your follow-on about my response, so your readers can decide for themselves.

Normally I no longer even engage with journalists who get so much room in an article, or who had been so sloppy on such key points of an article. But as I said, I have confirmed that Lee did try to reach my for comment, but the message never reached me. Lee did offer in an email today to review a response: I choose to publish it here so everyone can see how committed Lee Davidson and SL Tribune are journalistic integrity, by seeing how they handle these rejoinders.

Why not write Lee Davidson at the SLTribune ([email protected]) and give him your thoughts. Post copies of your corresponce to him down below in this blog.

This story was first published on Deep Capture. Deep Capture features original investigative reporting on the all-too-cozy relationship Wall Street has with regulators, media, government and the intellectual establishment.