>>10979488
Sauce of the Byrne - Butina connection:
https://www.deepcapture.com/2019/08/maria-butina-and-i-part-i-meeting-maria/
A frequently played video in the news this past year has been a clip from the summer of 2015 of a 26 year old Maria Butina standing up in a Las Vegas conference to ask Candidate Donald Trump a question. The conference was FreedomFest, an annual conference for liberals(1) that occurs in Las Vegas each summer, when freedom-oriented people descend on Vegas for four days and hear lectures on everything from Alexis de Toqueville to Hayek, from the Magna Carta to Bitcoin to Emigrating to Panama.
A glance at the schedule of the 2015 FreedomFest will confirm that I was at that conference as well. Wednesday, the opening day, I gave the keynote (“Turtles All the Way Down: How the Crypto-Revolution Solves Intractable Problems on Wall Street”), and participated in a panel Thursday. I left Friday afternoon. I believe Candidate Trump arrived and spoke Saturday, so we never crossed paths.
After my opening keynote, there was a line of perhaps a couple of dozen people waiting to talk, take a photo with me, or even ask for an autograph (it happens, and it is still weird). I noticed a well-dressed, professional, striking redheaded young woman standing off to the side, her position and posture indicating she was not seeking an autograph, but had purposeful business and was waiting for the people asking for photos and autographs to dissipate. She cut quite a figure, not just from her dress and physique, but mostly from her carriage. I guessed she was likely a reporter.
and:
https://www.deepcapture.com/2019/08/maria-butina-and-i-part-deux-romancing-maria/
At this point I am going to be discrete, other than to say that contact was re-established with Men in Black (I avoid using the “F” acronym for reasons that will become clear).
F = FBI
https://www.deepcapture.com/2019/10/maria-butina-finale/
As we left things….In July of 2016 the Men In Black came back asking me to rekindle a romantic relationship with Maria Butina. As I have emphasized, they were aghast at making this request of me. They emphasized it had never been done in their experience, that the USA is the Good Guy, we do not operate like the Bad Guys, and so on and so forth. But the request was coming from X, Y, and Z, federal officials of whom I had heard (incidentally, I initially misunderstood one detail, in that I thought the request was coming from all three: two months later they let me know that Z had added his signature to the request, and only then did I become aware of my slight misunderstanding of the original request). I emphasize again that there was no leering, no rubbing of hands gleefully, or laughing. Men in Black are honorable people, and they were extremely discomfited by the request they were communicating. They reminded me I had every right to say, “No”, and no one would think worse of me.
I agreed to carry out the request, joking, “It’s not exactly hardship duty.”
…