Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne testified before the House Select Committee investigating the events on Jan 6, saying he told them that they are “drawing a tiger from a cat.”
During the 8-hour closed-door hearing on Friday, Byrne discussed his key role in a post-election White House meeting where he urged then-President Donald Trump to investigate fraud allegations.
Byrne told The Epoch Times in an interview his testimony covered a wide range of topics—from his meeting with the president on Dec. 18, 2020, to his concerns over the integrity and safety of election equipment.
Byrne was the latest witness to testify in front of the committee. He described the meeting as “surprisingly friendly, cordial, and professional.”
“Notwithstanding the fact that we weren’t going to agree” about the Nov. 3, 2020, election, “we agreed that there was a lot for me to fill in from Nov. 4 until Jan. 7 [2021]. I think they seemed to be appreciative,” he told The Epoch Times on July 16.
“They had a lot of questions, and they really did not know the answers, and I was happy to provide them with the answers. I do feel that if they knew the truth about everything, they would understand the truth was different than [what] they were guessing—and significantly more benign.”
The White House Meeting
Byrne had hoped to engineer a meeting with Trump when he used a prior invitation from a staffer to tour the White House with former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell. The trio met with Trump in the Oval Office after the president happened to walk by, Byrne told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview the day before his testimony.
“I was the guy that everyone should be looking into. I’m the guy who pulled that famous meeting together. I’m the guy who presented the options,” he said.
The proposal put forth at the meeting was to have a team of cybersecurity specialists from the Department of Homeland Security go into the six counties where questions of voter fraud had surfaced.
By Eva Fu
