We’ve already heard how wild the last few weeks of Trump’s presidency actually were, but now someone on the inside is talking and they’re painting an even more disturbing picture of how Trump’s inner circle operates.
Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock — who also fancies himself a journalist as evidence by his “investigative blog” — was one of the handful of disruptors mentioned in an Axios article that chronicled a meeting between former Trump legal aide Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, the president, and Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani. The meeting took place shortly after the election, as Powell tried to convince the president to give her special clearance — and the armed support of the National Guard — to investigate her theory that agents working on behalf of the Venezuelan government and the late Hugo Chavez had tampered with Dominion voting machines. Byrne, of course, was part of Powell’s team, someone who also believed the president had ground to invoke his executive powers to overturn the election. Now, Byrne is cashing in on his 15 minutes, re-telling the build-up to and aftermath of that meeting on his blog and boy is he spilling some tea … or, in Giuliani’s case, an exorbitant amount of whiskey. Byrne relayed the events of that confrontation in the Oval while making some bold claims about Trump’s inner circle. Byrne wrote, via The Daily Beast:
“Over the next month and a half, a number of my colleagues interacted with Rudy from time to time, afternoons and evenings, and weekends. Nearly all mentioned two things: the inordinate amount of attention he was paying to his daily podcast, and his drinking. Something was clear to all who were around him: almost every evening, and many early afternoons, Rudy was shit-faced. That, and his podcasts, were the only guarantees in Rudy’s life.”
He also manages to confirm how easily swayed Trump was by members of his inner circle even while sympathizing with the former businessman’s plight, writing how he believed multiple times they were on the brink of proving their foreign tampering theory before a White House staffer would call and tell them Trump had been persuaded not to pursue Powell’s theory of voter fraud. The whole thing is worth a read, if only to understand how chaotic and dangerously unorganized the former administration was — at one point Byrne, Powell, and Flynn literally bluff their way into the White House — but, as with every story coming out now that Trump’s gone, take it with a grain of salt. If you had once advocated to literally sabotage our democratic system, you’d want to make everyone else look bad too.
(Via The Daily Beast)