Dearest Emma: It’s Not You It’s Me (Emma Brown, Washington Post)

We’ve tried, Emma, let’s give each other that much.

Yet after 18 months of trying, it is time that we recognize that this relationship is not what we had hoped it would be at the start. After our first shy, fumbling yet adequate attempts in early 2021, I hoped for so much more might come of this relationship. I hoped it might become something breathtaking, historic.

Alas, it is clear to us both, I am sure, that it is best we move on. For both of us there are others out there to whom we will be more suited.

Reasons? I will share but two, minimizing them so as to make our parting sweet, and not acrimonious.

Wednesday I spoke to a group including journalists from Reuters and New York Times. I held up two items:•

• the DHS-CISA report (the one I call “Patrick Byrne was right again, again”) wherein the DHS at last acknowledges that there are nine severe security failures in election equipment in widespread use across the USA during November 2020. CISA shifted their position from “the most secure election in history” to one where acknowledge they do not know if those vulnerabilities were exploited in November 2020 (but will say mere that they are not aware of evidence that it was, which is a hell of a lot weaker claim).
• the Mesa County Forensic Report #3 (by Texas A&M Computer Science Professor Emeritus Walter Daugherty and cybersecurity CEO Jeff O’Donnell) which proves that those vulnerabilities were indeed exploited in Mesa County, Colorado in both November 2020, and April 2021 (a city election in Grand Junction, Colorado).

In sum, last month the DHS-CISA confirmed that the election equipment used in 2020 was extremely vulnerable to hacking, and the Mesa Report #3 proves that it was hacked.

Late last week I was in Vegas at the invitation of the Constitutional Sheriffs & Peace Officers Association . In the audience were reporters from (among other news outlets) both the New York Times and Reuters . I noted publicly that both had parroted the “baseless/Big Lie” claim endlessly, so I thought they would welcome a chance to explain why they either:

• still believed our allegations were baseless;
• would agree that our claims now indeed had a “base” (the DHS report gives overwhelming base to our concerns and the Mesa County Report #3 is decisive on top of that).

Given the amount of ink these publications spilled in their now-doomed attempt to maintain that our concerns were baseless, surely a minimal respect for intellectual integrity would cause them to leap at opportunity either to defend or reform their beliefs. So I gave them opportunity.

Instead, as is shown in the video, all the journalists in the audience (New York Times, Reuters, and others) sat staring into their soupr without a word. The same people who thought nothing of breaching standards of ordinary journalism by insisting upon a position that has since been retracted by the DHS-CISA and shattered by the Mesa County Report #3, turn out to refuse to open their mouths to provide even the most minimal defense of claims that they repeated endlessly but which have now proven to be erroneous (per DHS-CISA). Like barroom loudmouths who finally got called out and who sat glumly staring into their beers (a tendency I frequently noticed when I was a lad), the best journalists that New York Times and Reuters have to field…. turned out to be able to offer precisely 0 support or defense of the central claim made endlessly in their stories for 18 months, a claim which has now been shattered by the admission of DHS-CISA and the finding of the Mesa County Forensic Report #3.

Later I sat with one such highly regarded (“Pulitzer Price winning”) journalist privately. We spoke for some time, I answered many of her questions, then I asked this Pulitzer Price winning journalist:

Me: “I have a quick question. I mean No disrespect, I’m just treating you as an equal, as you are. Here [holding up DHS-CISA report] is the DHS-CISA statement from a month ago saying—”

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “I’ve seen that, yeah.”

Patrick: “Nine serious flaws –“:

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “I think the only issue with that-“

Patrick: “Now we have found [waiving Mesa document] exactly what they [waiving DHS-CISA document] has said-“

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “I don’t want to get into a debate about all this stuff, I’m just really interested in covering-“

Patrick: “But here’s my question: On what basis could one now say that our concerns are ‘baseless’?”

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “This [indicating DHS report] is not related to the 2020 … this is not….”

Patrick: “This says that the machines that the 2020 election was run on have nine serious –“

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “This does not say that there’s a… um… it’s not saying that there’s um…proof that um..”

Patrick: “But 18 months ago-“

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “the 2020 election…”

Patrick: [holding DHS – CISA report] “It says these failures would let people plant malicious software. There’s nine of them. Says ‘it could be done and we don’t know if it was done or not.’ They are no longer saying ‘It wasn’t done.’ They’re saying ‘We don’t know if it was done, ‘we have no evidence if it was done.’ That’s quite different. Now having said that, this [Mesa Report 3] says that it was done. So on that basis, would you agree that it would be inappropriate to use the word ‘baseless’ to describe- ”

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “I have looked at both of those reports carefully and I would not agree with that assessment.”

Me: “But you would agree that it is not ‘baseless’ anymore given that-“

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “I talked to many experts who have some really serious issues with these reports. “

Me: “I am not asking you to agree with the reports. I am just asking if, given these will you agree that it would be inappropriate to use the word ‘baseless’ to-“

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “I am not going to get into a semantic argument with you. I’m really not looking to do that.”

Me: “I’m really just asking you to defend a word that you have used in every article.“

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “No, yeah, I don’t know if I use it. I mean, I am not going to get into a big argument with you.”

Me: “I am just asking you to defend your words… On what grounds now is it ‘baseless,’ why could it possibly be ‘baseless’, [holding up DHS and Mesa] given these two -”

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “Neither of those things do – actually… say anything specific about the 2020 election.”

Me: “This [holding DHS] says it is entirely possible, and this [holding Mesa] says that it did happen.”

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “But the DA has said that [Mesa Report] report is false. Plus that report does not cover, does not say anything about any of the states where you are claiming that Trump won.”

Me: “Actually it does, in this sense. The DHS now says that the machines the 2020 election was run on had these vulnerabilities. While CISA says they have no evidence that they were exploited, wouldn’t a natural question be to ask DHS, ‘Well have you looked? You say there’s no evidence: have you looked? Did you look in any of the six places?’ Yet no journalist has asked them that. Does that seem odd?”

Pulitzer Prize Journalist: “I mean, I’m really just here doing reporting on, what the movement is, what your guys are doing, and one of the things I wanted to talk about is what you guys are doing in the eagle…, what it is…”

Patrick: “Fair enough”[I stopped bayonetting the wounded, and moved on].

That, Emma, is the best that one of your competitors has to offer. The kind of journalist whose Pulitzers and peer recognition are broadly touted by her publication.

Yet, while I cannot quite put my finger on it, Emma, I found my conversation with your colleague somehow… unsatisfying. Almost like I had been hoping to have tea with an Econ major with whom I expected an intelligent discussion, and ended up with a Policy Studies washout for whom the entire discussion had to be dumbed down then abandoned.

It got me thinking about us, Emma. I reached out and gave you the same opportunity, and you flatly refused to discuss this with me, even more obstinately than she did. You wouldn’t even venture the most minimal defense of your and your paper’s insistence on the “baselessness” of claims that are now fully “based” by the publication of DHS-CIA and Mesa #3 . You refused to make the most minimal defense of language that has appeared in your articles and newspaper for 18 months.

It got me thinking whether this intellectual relationship was really as fulfilling as I had hoped.

I mean no disrespect. I understand that journalism has become about other priorities than the old, tired ones about informing the public of the truth. Still, I began to think about how after all this time, we really have made no progress in our relationship beyond those early, heady days.

Then Friday I saw in your publication another article about me that, from the falsehoods and flat errors of its opening sentences to its repetition of the tired “baseless” narrative, would fail a undergraduate writing assignment in any credible journalism course. It got me, at last, to think about the question of whether, after 18 months, our relationship has progressed as I’d hoped. Or does it leave me with that same vaguely unsatisfying sense that Ms. Pulitzer did above… there must be another out there who is right for me.

Well since you ask, yes there was a second reason.

I am of the school that maintains that best predictor for a stable, long-term relationship is “shared values”. Along those lines, one of the things I liked about you from the start was your book, How to Raise a Boy. It was written from the same pre-analytical worldview your other writing displays, and a more thorough catechism of unfalsiable assertions could scarcely be found this side of a Scientologist’s training manual. Still, I saw you wrestling with issues like those I spent years of my own working through, and I admired you for it. Through your book, I came to like you.

But as you have known for 18 months (“The Bribery & Blackmail of Hillary Clinton & the Drug Rape & Murder of Maria Butina Deep State Stings Finale), I maintain that in 2015-2016 some federal officials not only bribed and blackmailed another federal official, but in addition, in order to complete a crime they were arranging they also buried what they believed to be an aggravated rape-and-murder (though, thankfully, the rape-and-murder was just a sting operation), then went on to railroad that same woman into 18 months in a windowless box to be fed a bowl of mush three times/day through a mail-slot.

I would have thought that for a woman of such sensibilities as your own, this behavior from federal officials would have drawn a parade of stories from you. Or perhaps one hard-hitting story. Or at least an inquiry. A couple phone calls to the officials involved…?

But Emma, you never even asked a follow-up question. Never asked about other witnesses to talk to or other evidence I suggested you might use to corroborate.

That is to say, you have chosen to take part in a cover-up whereby one woman was bribed and another woman was (in the eyes of those same officials) manipulated seduced, drugged, and raped by a guy plotting to murder her, and the federal officials just let it ride, so they could continue having the girl manipulated into playing her role in a Russian Collusion Delusion that they were then arranging. (There are nights I wondered, Is Emma actually even a journalist, that she will not bite on that? Or could just be someone looking for evidence to sustain pre-invented narratives useful to the WaPo? Naw!)

In sum, you and the Washington Post have taken part in covering up the bribery and blackmail of a federal official, and moreover, a rape-and-murder (that never really happened, but that is beside the point), and the railroad-conviction of that same woman. Is that really the right way “to raise a boy”? Is the boy you want to raise the kind who would cover-up things like bribery and blackmail, let alone rape and murder? I hope not.

Sadly, it has become clear that our values are not as aligned as I’d hoped. A relationship such as ours can tolerate a certain difference in worldviews, but when it comes to aggravated rape and murder, I am a purest: I am against it. No room for a woman who would let that slide to fit her political objectives.

So it is with sadness that your unwillingness to engage with the DHS-CISA statement and Mesa Report #3, along with the willingness of you and your newspaper to cover-up bribery and blackmail, and (worse yet) rape and murder, has made me suspect our values are not as aligned as I had hoped.

We have taken this ride as far as we are able to take it together. Let us part with kindness, but let us part.

Most respectfully,

Patrick M. Byrne

PS Yes, it is true that you may have been seeing me around with another of late. And yes, frankly, she does for me those things you would never do. For example, the whole world (including the J6 committee) has realized that it all comes down to what was discussed in the Oval Office the evening of December 18, 2020: since I was one of four people in the room and have no obligations to refrain from speaking, I would have thought my account of that Oval Office meeting might have been interesting to you and your publication. Yet for 18 months you have dodged it. Another has shown up and given me what I sought on our first date.

A man has needs, Emma.

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.