The “Cyber Crisis: Save Tina Peters” event was aimed at rallying support for the former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk who is accused of tampering with election equipment three years ago. Peters has pleaded not guilty and goes on trial next week.
At the forum, Byrne slammed law enforcement and prosecutors and said he would face violence if he did not drop the case.
“If they have any intelligence they should give in and surrender and drop this case against Tina because if I’m involved I’m going to be hit with piano wire and a burner before this case is over,” Byrne said. “So I know this is probably another felony, but let’s not make those threats, but it is what it is.”
Byrne, who traveled to the event from Azerbaijan, accused law enforcement of committing treason and claimed he had been hacking the Venezuelan government for two years.
“I don’t care how many felonies I’ve committed, I don’t care that I’m committing a felony for threatening you guys,” he said of police. “You guys do your job, or before this is over, the people involved in this are going to be facing piano wire and burners. So you guys do your job and don’t worry about me.”
Byrne said Friday that his comments were “clearly a metaphor.”
“Please understand that I am using these terms figuratively,” he said in a text message. “No one is more committed to a peaceful resolution to this issue than I am.”
Byrne said his views on peace do not extend to figures like former ambassador Manuel Rocha, who pleaded guilty this year to charges he served as a secret agent for Cuba for decades. “The only exception to a peaceful solution is someone who leaves Cuba and Venezuela, like Ambassador Rocha,” Byrne said in a text message.
Byrne noted that it was 4 a.m. in Azerbaijan when he attended the X event, so he may not have been as careful as he normally would have been.
Spokespeople for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately comment Friday.
Byrne’s comments, made three and a half months before the presidential election, come as scholars, law enforcement and election officials are sounding the alarm about the risk of political violence. Election officials have faced an onslaught of threats and harassment since the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by a mob shouting false claims about the 2020 election and Donald Trump’s election.
Two weeks ago, Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt that killed one of his supporters at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The violence fueled new warnings about the risks to public servants and ordinary Americans, regardless of their political views.
Paul Charlton, a former federal prosecutor under President George W. Bush, said that before today’s volatile political environment, Byrne’s words might have prompted authorities to recommend against using them. Today, state and federal authorities tend to take such statements more seriously. Byrne’s words “not only sound like a threat, but also like a confession and admission that making such a threat could be a felony,” Charlton said.
He said words alone are enough to prosecute a threat against a public official if authorities can show evidence of intent to cause harm.
“I think this is a case that deserves law enforcement attention,” Charlton said.
Byrne’s repeated references to the Peters trial and the prosecutors involved in it were a key aspect of his overall remarks, said Carol Lamb, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Southern California who was appointed by President Bush.
“He’s referring to specific court cases and talking about people who are suing, which is very troubling for the police,” she said. Even if he said he was speaking figuratively, she added, “if someone went and bought piano wire at his suggestion, what would be the problem?”
Two hours after The Washington Post contacted Byrne, he posted a statement on X, reiterating what he had told the reporter: his words were meant metaphorically. He added that he wants people to be peaceful, but that information will emerge that will “test our ability to be peaceful and my ability to contribute to that cause.”
Byrne argued in an online forum this week for the charges against Peters to be dropped. Peters is accused of taking part in a scheme to allow purported data experts to secretly copy files from Dominion Voting Systems devices in 2021. He faces seven felony and three misdemeanor charges in the case, which is scheduled for trial Wednesday.
Byrne has long defended Peters and others who have questioned the results of the 2020 election. Four days after the Electoral College voted for Biden’s victory in December 2020, Byrne joined other Trump allies in the Oval Office to argue that Trump might use the National Guard to seize voting machines. Also attending the meeting were Trump-backed lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Since then, Byrne has used his fortune and his nonprofit organization, The America Project, to fund efforts to expose flaws in Arizona’s election administration, including a partisan audit of the 2020 election. Byrne and The America Project have donated funds to groups such as the Arizona-based political action committee We the People Arizona Alliance, whose co-founder said in March that he would “lynch” Republican election monitors in the state’s largest county. He later said he was joking.
Courts and independent bodies have found no evidence of widespread election fraud.
Byrne led Overstock for 20 years. He resigned in 2019 after it emerged he had been romantically involved with Russian gun activist Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring with Russian officials to infiltrate conservative U.S. politics. She was deported after serving 15 months in prison. Byrne published a memoir this year that included a foreword by Butina.
Voting-machine maker Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Byrne in 2021. The litigation is ongoing. Dominion has won settlements with Fox News for $787.5 million and Newsmax for $243 million, and is seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Giuliani, Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Spencer S. Hsu and Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.
