A little more than a week ago, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne wrote a bizarre internal memo to the company titled “Overstock.com CEO Comments on Deep State,” in which he explained his wariness of the FBI’s “Men in Black.” The memo was in response to “articles by Sara Carter, a journalist and Fox News contributor,” that Byrne had been involved in some capacity in the special counsel investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and their repeated Russian contacts.
Bryne then spoke to The New York Times reporter Michael Corkery, explaining he’d had a three-year relationship with Russia’s “access agent,” Maria Butina. Byrne said that at some point the relationship had been “romantic” in nature. You may recall Butina was a central figure in the investigation after she spent years cultivating relationships with top NRA executives and the Trump campaign. Butina was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in a federal prison for her part in that conspiracy. Her relationship with Byrne reportedly began after the two met at a Libertarian conference in Las Vegas in 2015.
Needless to say, revelations that the company’s CEO was possibly all-in on Trump’s bizarre “deep state” bullshit led to calls for boycotts of the e-retailer and plummeting stock prices. According to Bloomberg, the value of Overstock has dropped by more than a third in the two days following Byrne’s “deep state” memo. Three straight days of tanking shares is something the controversial CEO could not sidestep and the calls for his resignation became insurmountable.
In his resignation Thursday, the e-retail company founder said that he was “sad” face about leaving the company but ultimately he had no regrets. “Thus, while I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock, both as C.E.O. and board member.” Byrne said he’d received support from “patriot Americans” but declined to name anyone backing him to stay in the position.
Maria Butina remains in prison and is reportedly working on a tell-all book about life in a U.S. prison.
from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/33TLz6J
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