by Erin Elizabeth, Health Nut News:

Overstock founder and CEO Patrick Byrne, who resigned Thursday amid ties to a goverment probe related to 2016 election, claimed former FBI official Peter Strzok directed him in the summer before the election to pursue a “romantic relationship with Maria Butina.”

Butina is the Russian woman accused of attempting to win influence in powerful Republican circles at the direction of her country’s government.

Byrne said Thursday on Fox News that he had helped the federal government with investigations two other times in the past, including to “help them take down people on Wall Street.” He also alleges that top officials in the Obama administration, including former FBI director James Comey, approved of the bureau’s requests of him.

Some years after Byrne’s previous contact with the FBI, he said officials from the agency (who he characterized as “the Men in Black”) reached out to him again in 2016. He clarified that it was top-level people reaching out to him, not rank-and-file FBI agents. He told Fox News:

“I was given some fishy orders and I carried them out in 2015-2016, thinking I was conducting law enforcement.”

“I didn’t know who sent the orders, but I did them. Last summer, watching television and some congressional hearings, I figured out where these orders came from. They came from a guy named Peter Strzok.”¹

Byrne also named other individuals who are either officials or former officials with the FBI.

According to CNN, Byrne met with Justice Department officials earlier this year and shared similar information about a romantic relationship with Butina, which was encouraged by the FBI. Justice Department officials found aspects of Byrne’s story to be credible because he shared operational details that were not generally known.

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Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation over anti-Trump text messages he traded with his mistress, Lisa Page. He was fired from the FBI in August of 2018.

In an interview with Fox News, Byrne did not describe specific actions Strzok allegedly asked him to take, but characterized them as “political espionage.”¹

The FBI, according to Byrne, approved and “encouraged” him to build a relationship with Butina, a Russian national who is currently serving prison time in the US for failing to register as a foreign agent.

Byrne stated that, ultimately, all of the supposed information he gathered from his experiences landed in the hands of John Durham, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut. Durham has been leading the investigation into the origins of the Russia probe at the direction of Attorney General William Barr.

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Byrne publicly disclosed last month that he was involved in an FBI probe into the Russia investigation and admitted to having a relationship with Butina. In a statement on August 12, he said:

…it was the third time in his life that he helped the Men in Black: the first was when my friend [former NBA player] Brian Williams was murdered, and the second was when I helped the MIB shake up Wall Street a decade ago.”¹

After interviewing Byrnes, Fox News correspondent Martha MacCallum asked once Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to react to the former business executive’s claims. Whitaker said:

“He’s describing it like he was being used as a source and being inserted into a situation by the feds, and there are protocols for handling sources. All of this can be corroborated. That’s the key. This whole situation has to be corroborated and the nice thing about John Durham is that he has the full picture of everything that was feeding into this investigation.”¹

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