john scott SoS ESQ
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tex trib</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div class="Page-twoColumn" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: calc(50% - 542px); padding-right: calc(50% - 542px); display: grid; gap: 30px; grid-template-columns: minmax(auto, 800px) 300px;"><main class="Page-main" data-module="" data-padding="none" data-width="full-constrained" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; --moduleBgImage:var(--moduleBgImage_lg,var(--moduleBgImage_md)); background-image: var(--moduleBgImage); background-size: cover; background-position: 50% center; min-height: 300px; padding-top: 0px !important; padding-bottom: 0px !important;"><div class="Page-articleBody" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 12px;"><div class="RichTextArticleBody RichTextBody" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; --font:var(--font-rte-body); line-height: 1.6;"><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">when Greg Abbott selected John Scott last month to serve as Texas’s top election official, the move generated little local controversy—a striking achievement in a state where the two major parties have staked out what they say are diametrically opposing views on voting. Republicans in state politics, predictably, welcomed Scott, a conservative Fort Worth attorney who was briefly hired by the Trump campaign to challenge election results in Pennsylvania last year. More surprising was that Democratic lawmakers, who only months ago fled to D.C. to protest an expansive voting bill, also largely embraced him, after a brief recoil, as the best option possible. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You know, [Scott] called me to tell me he was being nominated, and I said, ‘You know I’m going to be suing you?’” said Roland Gutierrez, a Democratic state senator from San Antonio, who has filed a complaint in federal court over Republican redistricting in the state. “We’ll go to court, and then we’ll have a beer.”</font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I never agree with Greg Abbott on much of anything, but at least with John Scott I know that he’s a competent person, a good person, and a good lawyer,” Gutierrez added. “This is a contact sport and I’m all about fighting the good fight, and I feel comfortable fighting that fight against John Scott.”</font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s a strikingly cordial tone in a state in which the debate over voting rights has reached a fever pitch. The Secretary of State is Texas’s chief elections official and is responsible for issuing guidelines to counties on complying with state and federal voting laws. The secretary also oversees election audits and voter roll maintenance. By picking Scott, Abbott, who has not shied away from taking full-throated partisan positions on everything from<a class="Link" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/greg-abbott-border-wall-south-texas/" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> border security</a> to making it more difficult<a class="Link" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/abbott-ballot-drop-offs-vote-suppression/" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> to vote</a>, may have found the single person capable of satisfying both parties. While he has the backing of Trump supporters, he also is an experienced bureaucrat who told me over coffee this month that he does not believe voter fraud swung the 2020 election. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Unlike previous appointees to the role, who were selected for their interest in Mexico policy or economic development—other components of the Secretary of State’s job—Scott also has experience with elections and running large agencies. He served as the Texas deputy attorney general from 2012 to January 2015, and earned a reputation as a fair but fierce attorney for the state.</b> Abbott then tapped him to be the chief operating officer of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, a 56,000-person agency that is several hundred times the size of the Secretary of State’s office, and Scott later served as chairman of the board for the Department of Information Resources, which provides IT services to state and local agencies. Gutierrez and Senator Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat from Laredo, say he excelled in both roles and will be able to deftly navigate the oddities of Texas state government from day one. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent decades, secretaries have viewed responsibility for elections, and coordination with county elections officials, as secondary to border policy, diplomatic relations with Mexico, and economic development. Scott already has shown that he sees the role differently, visiting three elections offices in the first six days of his appointment and scheduling a drop-in at a fourth. He said he thinks Abbott chose him because of his specific interest in and knowledge of elections. “I think it’s the only reason I was picked,” he said. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scott told me when we met in Dallas that his top concern is “bringing the temperature down” on voting by engaging more directly with local election officials and being transparent with the public about the voting process, all in an effort to create a common set of facts both parties can agree on. “If I can walk away and people go, ‘Hey, it works—the system is good,’ I can ride off into the sunset and go back to my happy old life, extremely pleased. It’s a worthy effort.” Five Republican and Democratic state senators I talked to told me he might be the only person in the state who can pull it off.</font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, it would be tempting for Gutierrez and other Democratic senators to write off Scott’s nomination on its face. Abbott has repeatedly claimed that voter fraud plagues elections, has asserted without evidence that thousands of illegal immigrants are registered to vote in Texas, and called multiple special sessions this year to force the passage of a controversial election bill. Given his zeal, Democrats worried that he would nominate a hard-liner who would allow Abbott, who’s up for reelection, to satisfy Trump voters as he battles<a class="Link" href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Gov-Abbott-tied-with-O-Rourke-holds-wide-lead-16581729.php" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> two right-wing challengers</a> in the GOP primary. Because Abbott waited until after all three of this year’s special legislative sessions to fill the Secretary of State position, there was also worry the nominee would run rampant without legislative oversight until facing confirmation in 2023, when the state Senate reconvenes. “I was really concerned about who [Abbott] would select,” said Zaffirini. “I was shocked when I found out it was John. Shocked. He is an absolutely wonderful attorney—I have referred friends to him for representation.”</font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other aspects of Scott’s record offered Democrats some cause for concern. As the state’s deputy attorney general, he defended in court Texas’s controversial voter ID law, which initially required all voters to provide specific photo identification, barring those without it from casting a ballot. (Litigation continued for almost two years after Scott left the office, and the law ultimately was partially struck down.) And in late 2020, the Trump campaign hired him, alongside Republican state senator Bryan Hughes of Mineola, to represent it in one of a flurry of lawsuits it filed to challenge the election result. A handful of counties in Pennsylvania had notified voters whose initial ballots were rejected,<a class="Link" href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/spl/pennsylvania-election-2020-naked-cured-ballots-trump-campaign-lawsuits-20201104.html" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> allowing them to correct them</a>, and Trump was arguing that those ballots should be thrown out because voters in the rest of the state were not offered such an opportunity—though Pennsylvania law does not bar counties from the practice. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though he doesn’t believe voter fraud tilted the election, Scott told me he felt the campaign had a strong equal-protection claim to make, even if it was always going to be a difficult case. “These aren’t the greatest cases in the world,” he told me, referring to equal protection litigation concerning election procedure. He only lasted one business day on the case. An appellate court ruled that the campaign had no standing on the issue, and Scott and Hughes withdrew—even as elements of the case continued on in lawsuits tried by other attorneys, until the Supreme Court eventually<a class="Link" href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-pennsylvania-elections-us-supreme-court-5cc6aee8c328c7bb1d423244b979bcec" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> declined</a> to hear it. “There wasn’t anything else to do,” Scott said of his decision to withdraw. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The brief representation set off alarm bells on social media and in some Democratic circles after Scott’s appointment. Jessica González, a Democratic House member from Dallas, said she believes the association with the lawsuit alone to be disqualifying, calling Scott’s selection “irresponsible.” Representative John Bucy of Austin said that he’ll reserve judgement on Scott, but that his work on Trump’s lawsuit gave him “real pause.” </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other Democrats said they see the brief association as a potential benefit. “If anything, I’m more confident,” said Zaffirini. Republicans will trust him, she and Gutierrez both said, because he has the Trump bona fides, and Democrats don’t have to be worried about his integrity. Both senators said they were pleased that Scott allowed the facts of the Trump case to guide his decision to end his participation. “He’s careful and honest,” said Gutierrez, who told me he and Scott have spoken extensively about the case, and that he is satisfied that Scott chose to represent the campaign “in good faith” before he realized there was not a firm enough basis to continue. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gutierrez recognizes that Democrats who share his views on voting are likely to have a more negative impression of Scott’s brief dalliance with the Trump campaign. But he said Democrats do not have the power to throw roadblocks in front of the governor’s selection. “As long as Democrats don’t vote and get these people out of power, we are going to be subject to whatever nominee this man [Abbott] wants, for the most part. Our ability to fight these nominations is limited,” he said. Like Zaffirini, he found himself shocked that Abbott would select a person who is “partisan, sure, but not an ideologue.”</font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;">Across the country, </span>secretaries of state are playing a far more public role now than they once did. What was once a bureaucratic, even sleepy, position in state government now comes with<a class="Link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/us/Arizona-Republicans-voting.html" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> intense scrutiny</a>, constant<a class="Link" href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/losing-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-loren-culp-sues-washington-secretary-of-state-kim-wyman/" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> threats of litigation</a>, and even<a class="Link" href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-georgia-threats/" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> threats to personal safety</a>. That is especially true of the position in Texas. While Trump’s many 2020 lawsuits were the legal equivalent of a long, deflating balloon sound, his impact on the state has only swelled in the last year. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earlier this fall, a day after Trump requested additional scrutiny of the election results in Texas despite his victory in the state and no evidence of misdeeds, Abbott introduced an audit of the results in the four largest counties. The move drew criticism from Democrats, but Scott said he hopes the audit will codify a “common set of facts” between the two warring parties. If they are working with the same information, he believes, they will come to more similar conclusions. He wants it to become a model for how other states can use audits to offer reliable data and meaningfully improve the system, rather than serve to sow doubt. To that end, the Texas audit he will oversee<a class="Link" href="https://www.votebeat.org/2021/10/4/22708800/texas-election-audit-greg-abbott-trump" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> will be notably different from the one Trump called for</a>. It won’t encompass the whole state, and the audit will be bipartisan, run by the state and counties, rather than an outside contractor as in Arizona and Wisconsin. While counties in those states loudly protested Republicans’ reviews, none of the four in Texas have meaningfully pushed back against Abbott’s demand.</font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scott told me he does not believe that mass fraud will be found. He said he wants the process to be a fair, good-faith assessment of how well the system works. “I want to illuminate the efforts that go into having a fair election, because I think anybody that thinks they’re not having a fair election may decide not to vote.”</font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Not all Democrats are buying it. González said the audits begin from the premise that there is something wrong with the system</b>. “Why audit something that works? That’s not why Trump asked the state to do this,” she said. “I think this will backfire.” She isn’t convinced by Scott’s reasoning for joining Trump’s lawsuit, either. She called his appointment “another way to placate Trump.” </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Secretary of State, Scott will almost certainly be caught up in litigation challenging Texas on its voting law passed in the wake of Trump’s questioning of the election result. The Department of Justice<a class="Link" href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-lawsuit-against-state-texas-protect-voting-rights" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> brought a suit</a> this month, targeting provisions in the law that criminalize mistakes made by those assisting voters who need help casting a ballot, and a provision requiring voters to provide an identification number on applications for absentee ballots and their envelopes that matches what the state has on record. The latter provision introduced a problem<a class="Link" href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-election-bill-contains-new-voting-obstacle/" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> documented by <i style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;">Texas Monthly</i> and Votebeat</a> in July. Some 1.9 million Texans are lacking one of two possible identification numbers in the voter roll, either a driver’s license number or a Social Security number. An absentee voter who incorrectly recalls or guesses what number they used to register initially will have their application or ballot rejected. Legislators partially addressed the issue, but the final version of the bill still relies on voters to take several steps on their own to correct the missing information. Scott declined to answer questions about the law, citing the ongoing litigation. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As he steps into the fire, Scott is likely to be better prepared than Abbott’s last two choices for the office, who saw their nominations fail before the Senate largely because of partisan election controversies.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> David Whitley, who had the job in 2019<span style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;">, </span>served for only six months<a class="Link" href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-Secretary-of-State-Ruth-Hughs-resigns-under-16195586.php" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> before resigning</a> after his office presented counties with a deeply flawed list of what it claimed were thousands of “possible non-U.S. citizens” on the voter roll. </span>Democrats demanded accountability, and civil rights groups<a class="Link" href="https://www.npr.org/2019/05/28/727528998/texas-voting-chief-who-led-botched-voter-purge-resigns" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> successfully organized</a> to block his confirmation.<b> Ruth Hughs, his successor, resigned from the post in May, after declaring the 2020 election to be “smooth and secure,”<a class="Link" href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-Secretary-of-State-Ruth-Hughs-resigns-under-16195586.php" target="blank" data-cms-ai="0" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(174, 97, 12);"> causing ire</a> among hardline Republicans.</b> Staffers of the Secretary of State’s office and two Republican legislative aides said they believed Hughs actively stayed away from elections after watching Whitley’s downfall: she rarely visited local election offices, and county election administrators interviewed for this piece could not remember having specific conversations about election policy with her. </font></p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scott said he isn’t worried about getting caught up in partisan drama. Because he’s never held elected office, he says he is inherently less ideological than many of his critics believe given his résumé. And because he’s uninterested in future government jobs, he said, there will be no need to inflate his reputation within his party. “I am trying to be as neutral as possible, because I think the one thing [we need to do] to bring credibility into the system is to be able to speak for both groups,” he said. “It’s like, <i style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;">Stop</i>, you know? You can have your debates on policy, but don’t have your debates on whether we have fair elections. That’s what I want. That’s the end game.”</font></p></div></div></main><aside class="Page-aside" data-modulewell="narrow" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;"><div data-module="" data-width="full" data-align-top="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; --moduleBgImage:var(--moduleBgImage_lg,var(--moduleBgImage_md)); background-image: var(--moduleBgImage); background-size: cover; background-position: 50% center; padding: 25px 0px 40px;"><div class="GenericPagePromoModule" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; --font:var(--font-1); margin-top: 20px; padding: 48px 16px; text-align: center; background-color: rgb(252, 228, 135); max-width: none !important;"><div class="GenericPagePromoModule-content-wrapper" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="GenericPagePromoModule-content" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;" /></div></div></div></div></aside></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/07/28/former-overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-was-one-of-trumps-wealthiest-election-deniers-he-has-some-big-plans-for-the-2022-midterms/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/07/28/former-overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-was-one-of-trumps-wealthiest-election-deniers-he-has-some-big-plans-for-the-2022-midterms/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx some</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">pOLITICS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne was one of Trump’s wealthiest election deniers. He has some big plans for the 2022 midterms.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Byrne is fast becoming one of the most important donors in conservative politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maggie Severns</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Domestic Policy Reporter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>July 28, 2022</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hours before then-President Donald Trump sent his infamous late-night tweet on Dec. 19, 2020, encouraging supporters to come to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, where it would “be wild,” he met privately in the Oval Office with three key supporters: Attorney Sidney Powell, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and — somewhat improbably — Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was Byrne’s first meeting with the president, but theories he professed about the 2020 election being stolen had caught the attention of Trump allies like Powell. In an hourslong meeting marked by shouting and insults, according to testimony later provided to Congress, Byrne and his allies urged the president to seize voting machines, which he has argued publicly were “hacked” by the company Dominion using fraudulent software developed for former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. (This claim has been widely debunked by fact checkers.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hear more from Maggie Severns about this story:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until recently, Byrne has flown under the radar in national politics despite his ties with Trump, a large following on social media and spending big on the Arizona election audit. Today, he is focused not just on the 2020 election but on those ahead: Byrne funded a major poll-watching effort last year for the Virginia gubernatorial race, which was a success for Republicans and has launched a campaign to monitor the upcoming midterms in swing states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If I’m correct about the hackability of this election — if, in fact, what I say is true — then the insurrection was November 3rd,” said Byrne, who spoke with Grid on the phone and via text message. “We’re just trying to expose it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While not well known among the general population, the Jan. 6 congressional hearings raised Byrne’s profile and documented him as part of the pivotal Dec. 18 meeting. Former Trump aides testified they were shocked the meeting, which lasted for hours, was happening at all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“First of all, the Overstock person, I didn’t know who this guy was. Actually, the first thing I did, I walked in, I looked at him and I said, ‘Who are you?’ And he told me,” former White House counsel Pat Cipollone recalled during a taped deposition. “I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice, and I didn’t understand how they had gotten in.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Via text message, Byrne did not deny the meeting was contentious but maintained the actions he requested would have been a “very quick” investigation. “Not commando SEAL teams breaking through walls,” Byrne added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Despite former Trump advisers rejecting Byrne’s beliefs, he is emerging as one of the most influential donors in conservative politics and a folk hero among Trump supporters.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Elected leaders appear to be hearing Byrne’s message. According to a text message exchange obtained via public records request by the group American Oversight, Byrne had offered to stop to meet with <b>Texas Secretary of State John Scott </b>when he was crossing the country in his private jet the following day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I would be honored to land wherever you are in Texas and come see you and share a pot of tea,” wrote Byrne.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I would love to visit with you tomorrow afternoon or another day if more convenient,” Scott texted back.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A contentious meeting at the White House</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It’s unclear why the 59-year-old ex-CEO has chosen to insert himself into the heart of Trump’s Republican Party. He told New York Magazine he’s spent $20 million into efforts to question the outcome of the 2020 election, including more than $3 million on the Arizona election audit alone, according to the leader of the Arizona Senate’s election review.</b> Byrne insists he has taken up the cause of “election integrity” because he is convinced America’s election system is in peril, and he has spent months and millions of dollars bankrolling investigations in various states and even producing his own documentary on the subject. Critics say he is promoting fake ideas that undermine democracy and do little for elections except continue to motivate the MAGA base.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a message that some parts of the GOP like to just keep sending out to fire up their base,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “Talk about a new ‘election integrity’ project is as much a way of keeping everybody involved, and interested, and upset, and angry as it is maybe a practical effort.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Dec. 18 meeting was what one lawmaker described as the “craziest” of the administration</b>. White House aides pleaded with Trump to accept that there was no evidence of election fraud, regardless of his friends’ claims about Venezuelan meddling and other unfounded ideas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts,” testified former White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Byrne maintains parts of the meeting are different from what has been previously reported. He said he laid out a strategy in which Trump would use past executive orders to instigate an investigation into the election that could have involved seizing voting machines but could also have been significantly less intrusive. “I am the one who spoke up and laid out the options,” Byrne said. Trump expressed interest in a less intrusive investigation that did not involve seizing voting machines or utilizing military personnel, </span>he added. Powell did not respond to a request for comment for this story, nor did a lawyer representing Flynn.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the meeting adjourned after midnight, Trump chose his side. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” he tweeted. “Big protest in D.C. on Jan. 6. Be there, will be wild.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s one of several moments during the weeks that immediately followed the election that Byrne surrounded himself with people who would be crucial to efforts to overturn the election results.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Byrne, who began raising the idea that the election could be stolen well before Nov. 3, spent time analyzing the results in South Carolina with Powell, Flynn and Trump ally and lawyer Lin Wood, who owned the property where they met and unsuccessfully tried to bring a lawsuit challenging the election results in Georgia. The group set up camp in Wood’s living room with whiteboards and laptops, Wood said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a recent interview he gave with the far-right Epoch Times, Byrne helped fly a group of people from Texas to Washington, D.C., in December for a pro-Trump rally timed with the Electoral College’s certification of the election. Unbeknown to him, Byrne said, three people on the flight were affiliated with the Proud Boys.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the weeks following the election, Byrne paid for flights for people to travel to Georgia and to Antrim County, Michigan, to investigate potential fraud brought on by Dominion voting machines. A report from the investigation — which was debunked by the state of Michigan — helped spread the notion that Dominion voting machines caused false election results. Dominion later sued Byrne, along with Powell and entities such as the conservative site Newsmax, for defamation; in court Byrne has denied any wrongdoing or violation of the law. (“I am confident in my position,” Byrne said of the lawsuit. “One of which is that their claims are rather fuzzy.”)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patrick Byrne has dedicated himself to MAGA causes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, Byrne is one of few business executives who has openly embraced the movement to deny the 2020 election results.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Byrne led Overstock for 20 years before resigning in 2019 after disclosing he’d had a romantic relationship with Russian spy Maria Butina</b>, who tried to infiltrate Republican circles in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Byrne claimed, and continues to maintain, that he was working on behalf of the FBI to stymie Butina, but outside evidence hasn’t emerged to show whether that’s the case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Byrne’s own account, he has become involved with a range of pro-Trump causes beyond his initial push to investigate the 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>He helped fund the ReAwaken America Tour, </b>which has drawn crowds of thousands of people skeptical about covid-19 and the 2020 election to hear speakers including Charlie Kirk, Eric Trump, and often Byrne and the Flynn brothers. He has claimed to support various groups in Florida that have fought against critical race theory. And he has said he is helping fund lawsuits brought by John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware laptop store owner who allegedly stumbled on a laptop left behind at the shop by Hunter Biden.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Byrne has also donated at least $88,000 to the <b>Conservatives for Election Integrity PAC, a group allied with the America First Secretary of State Coalition,</b> which supports pro-Trump candidates who, if elected, would have crucial influence over how state elections are administered.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Scaling the Virginia model</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Last year, Byrne poured money into Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial election — and believes he honed a valuable model for volunteer election poll-watching and oversight that he can use in the months ahead.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fairfax County, Virginia, was at the center of the effort, steered by people including Byrne, former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell and Leon Benjamin, a conservative politician now running for Congress. Byrne declined to say how much money he put into backing a group started by Benjamin, Virginians for America First.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Byrne and others believe they are improving elections — but election workers warn their work to monitor elections sows confusion and weighs down election workers. Republican efforts to monitor the Virginia election last year funded by Byrne created a “hostile environment” for workers, said Scott Konopasek, a longtime election administrator who served as director of elections in Fairfax County</span>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years and in four states. I did eight presidential elections. There is nothing like this,” Konopasek told Grid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Konopasek said the number of people and requests coming into his office made it more difficult to administer the election, even with one employee working full time to respond to public records requests. Starting in July 2021, he said he had numerous requests from people to “observe” parts of the election process and an observer was in his office nearly every day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not unusual for people to observe parts of the election process, and Konopasek said that in the past he’d seen it as an opportunity to teach about democracy. But the goodwill he’d seen from observers in past elections “has not been exhibited” by the new poll watchers, who appeared convinced Fairfax County was doing something wrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“They just overwhelmed us. It was almost like a DNS attack,” </b>Konopasek said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Byrne maintains his work is not malevolent. “Our research shows 83 percent of Americans consider ‘election integrity’ a high priority issue. The American people think something, they understand it if only latently, and they are absolutely correct,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Byrne plans to replicate last year’s work in Virginia across the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Along with the Flynn brothers, Byrne launched a project he calls “Operation Eagles Wings” earlier this year during a CPAC conference in Florida. The effort will target nine swing states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Byrne has hired Mark Loyd, a former Virginia elections worker and longtime Tea Party activist, and Tim Meisburger, who along with Loyd served in the Trump administration at the U.S. Agency for International Development</b>. Expanding the “Virginia Model,” Byrne said, entails training volunteers who will work reaching out to low-propensity voters, serving as election poll watchers, observing the elections process and monitoring absentee ballots.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“2022 offers us the opportunity to repeat a Virginia-type victory all around the nation,” Byrne told Grid in a text message.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s next …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What happened in Virginia and Arizona may be just a preview for 2022 and 2024.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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