/ourgirl/ Tina Peters case starts next week.
Looks like it's going to be spicy
Trump ally who denies 2020 election results threatens law enforcement
Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock, saidofficials would face “a piano wire and a blowtorch”if a case against a former Colorado elections official continues.
By Patrick Marley
and
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
July 26, 2024 at 6:38 p.m. EDT
Patrick Byrne, who has funded efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election, said in an online forum Thursday that law enforcement would face “a piano wire and a blowtorch” if they did not drop a case against an ally.
Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.
Byrne, a former CEO of online retailer Overstock, used the phrase half a dozen times Thursday as he participated in a nearly three-hour-long event on X Spaces. His remarks came amid heightened worries about political violence, and he acknowledged during the event that his references to strangling or blowtorching officials were threatening and could be considered felonies. On Friday, he downplayed his comments, saying he had been speaking metaphorically and is committed to peace.
The “Cyber Crisis: Saving Tina Peters” event was aimed at rallying support for the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., who faces charges accusing her of tampering with election equipment three years ago. Peters has pleaded not guilty, and her case goes to trial next week.
Byrne called out law enforcement and prosecutors during the forum, saying they would face violence if they did not drop the case.
🏛️
Follow Politics
“If you have any brains at all, which I’m not sure they do, they should be throwing in the towel and just surrendering and dropping this case against Tina because those who don’t are going to end up facing a piano wire and a blowtorch before this is over if I have anything to do with it,” Byrne said. “So I know that’s probably another felony, but f— it — threatening them like that — but there we are.”
Byrne, who said he was participating in the event from Azerbaijan, accused law enforcement of committing treason and claimed he had been hacking Venezuela’s government for two years.
“I don’t care how many felonies I’ve committed, and I don’t care that I’m committing felonies by threatening you,” he said of law enforcement. “You folks do your job or when this is over, the folks who are part of this are going to be facing, you know, piano wire and blowtorches before this is over. So you start doing your job and stop worrying about me.”
Byrne said Friday that his comments were “obviously a metaphor.”
“Please be aware that my turns of phrase like that are metaphoric expressions,” he said by text message. “There’s been no one more committed to peaceful resolution of this than I.”
He said his views on peace do not extend to people like former ambassador Manuel Rocha, who pleaded guilty this year to serving as a secret agent for Cuba for decades. “The only exception to peaceful resolution will be for any who turn out of Cuba and Venezuela, such as ambassador Rocha,” Byrne said by text message.
Byrne noted it was 4 a.m. in Azerbaijan when he participated in the event on X, and he may not have spoken as carefully as he otherwise would.
Spokespeople for the Colorado attorney general’s office and Mesa County district attorney’s office did not immediately comment Friday.
Byrne’s comments come three-and-a-half months ahead of the presidential election, as scholars, law enforcement agencies and election administrators raise alarms about the risk of political violence. Election officials have faced an onslaught of threats and harassment since the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob chanting about Donald Trump’s false election claims.
Two weeks ago, Trump was injured during an assassination attempt that left one of his supporters dead at a rally in Butler, Penn. The violence fueled new warnings of the risk to public officials and ordinary Americans, regardless of their political views.
Before today’s combustible political environment, the phrases Byrne used might have prompted outreach by authorities to advise against using such language, said Paul Charlton, a former U.S. attorney under President George W. Bush. These days, state and federal officials tend to take such talk more seriously. Byrne’s language, he said, “sounds not only like a threat but a confession and an acknowledgment that it could be a felony to make such a threat.”