Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne claimed in a blog post on Tuesday that in 2016 his then-girlfriend, admitted Russian agent Maria Butina, offered to arrange a meeting between her beau and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Around the end of March, 2016, Maria called me excitedly: there was an upcoming conference in St. Petersburg, Russia... She had made arrangements for me to have a key speaking slot, on the subject of Bitcoin and Liberalism,” Byrne wrote. “I would speak, and then since President Putin was in St. Petersburg the same day (he may have been speaking at the same conference), it had been scheduled that I would have 60 minutes alone with President Putin (with Maria as translator).” Byrne goes on to write that, while he was excited to speak with Putin and “engage in some Miltonesque mind-openers,” he was unable to do so because he instead broke up with Butina at the urging of “Men in Black.” The former CEO has repeatedly claimed that he was an integral part of a “deep state” government plot surrounding the Russia investigation, and recently went on the Fox Business Network to further muddle his story.
