Patrick Michael Byrne (born November 29, 1962) is an American businessman, promoter of conspiracy theories, and libertarian noted for his views on public education and blockchain.

[4] Early in his Overstock tenure, Byrne attracted public attention for a long-running legal battle against naked short selling.

[7][8] While Byrne was a teaching fellow at Stanford University from 1989 to 1991, he was manager of Blackhawk Investment Co. and Elissar, Inc.[9] He was chairman, CEO, president of Centricut, LLC, a manufacturer of industrial torches from 1994 to 1997.

The company had generated slightly more than $500,000 in revenue the previous year by liquidating excess furniture inventory online, but was out of capital and shutting its doors.

[16] When Google later in 2004 went public via a Dutch auction IPO, Byrne commented that Wall Street firms similarly pushed negative stories, but did not keep it from going forward successfully.

In 2004, Overstock spent several million dollars to establish an online auction platform to compete with eBay, but the project was not successful and shut down in 2011.

[15] In the late 2010s, Overstock built a new $100 million headquarters at the base of Utah's Wasatch Mountains, although several rounds of layoffs had left part of the complex empty.

[27] In 2007, Overstock filed a second lawsuit against a number of large investment banks, alleging that the brokers engaged in illegal naked short selling.

[28][29][30] Fortune writer Bethany McLean said that Byrne had become a "hero to those who believe that short-sellers are the operators of Wall Street's ultimate black box, predators who destroy companies through innuendo, bullying, political connections—and sometimes through an illegal practice known as 'naked shorting.'"

Byrne financed and wrote a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post which said "Naked short selling ... is literally stealing money from the widows, retirees, and other small investors.

"[31] In a letter to The Wall Street Journal in April 2006, Byrne contended that "blackguards have practiced 'failure to deliver'" of securities, were "destroying businesses and (probably) destabilizing our capital markets.

In October 2011, Vancouver businessman Altaf Nazerali sued Byrne for libel and defamation in the Supreme Court of British Columbia for articles published on the website.

The Court found Byrne, his employee Mark Mitchell, and Deep Capture "engaged in a calculated and ruthless campaign to inflict as much damage on Mr. Nazerali's reputation as they could achieve."

[57] The father-and-son pair each gave a half-million dollars in 2004 for ads attacking Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, and Patrick Byrne also gave $2,500 to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, a group that attacked the Vietnam War service of Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

Along with Steve Bannon and Lin Wood, among others, Byrne was a leading figure in an assortment of allies gathered by Trump to amplify his conspiracy theory claims during his months-long effort to subvert the election results and cling to power.

[70] In August 2023, his involvement at the White House meeting led CNN to name him as the potential identity of one of the thirty unindicted co-conspirators numbered in the indictment leading to the Georgia election racketeering prosecution.

[64] In July 2022, Byrne agreed to testify before Congress during the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack public hearings on his role in the events leading up to the insurrection.

[75] In 2023, Byrne implied that he had damaging material on Jack Smith after he was named the special counsel into Trump related criminal matters in social media posts that he later removed.

[62] In addition to raising money, the group helped to recruit volunteers to count ballots and coordinate with the Arizona state Senate Republicans.

[87] In 2021, Byrne self-published his book The Deep Rig: How Election Fraud Cost Donald J. Trump the White House, By a Man Who Did Not Vote for Him, which details his experience promoting his various electoral conspiracy theories.

[63][89] Frontline broadcast an episode at this time that highlighted Byrne's consistent pushback when questions arose the veracity of his theories, without providing further evidence.

[63][89] During the audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, Byrne funded a documentary film, The Deep Rig, created by director Roger R. Richards, to promote his 2020 election-related falsehoods.

[95] The film premiered at the Dream City Church megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona, where Byrne spoke alongside the director and, according to The New Yorker, "a local QAnon conspiracist, BabyQ, who claimed to be receiving messages from his future self.

[73] Byrne's leadership of the "American Project" reflected his growing influence on the Trumpist right, with the organization playing a major role, in conjunction with other right-wing groups, in promoting election disinformation.

[104] In June 2024, tax filing documents which were recovered by Issue One revealed that Byrne and Michael Flynn's non-profit group American Project made money off of conspiracy theories.

[106][107] That year he also admitted to hacking the government computers of Venezuela used in their elections, confirming reports from the country that he had been involved in what was described by Byrne as criminal activity against the regime, which he stated included "at least one act of war".

[109] In the context of his election conspiracy theories, Byrne has also written posts pushing alternative cures to COVID-19 and questioning the role of vaccines on his blog Deep Capture.

He has stated that COVID-19 vaccines were either "poisoning Americans" or "putting miniature Covid-19 spike protein factories in our arms to wreak havoc with ovaries and balls".

[120][121] In 2005, Byrne provided financial backing to the Class Education, whose goal is to change state laws to require schools to spend at least 65 percent of their operating budgets on classroom expenses.

[15] He has been a life-long practitioner of martial arts, holding a black belt in taekwondo, and remains an avid SCUBA diver, skier, and skydiver.