Introduction

Just days ago, on an episode of Conservative Daily Podcast titled “GOPers Covering Up Election Fraud”, insurrectionist Colorado militiaman Joe Oltmann—whose presence in Donald Trump’s Insurrection Eve “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington was extensively covered by Proof here and here—lit into his one-time insurrectionist compatriot Patrick Byrne over a statement Byrne made about him.

In the relevant podcast segment, which begins with sixteen minutes remaining in the hour-plus recording linked to above—the very moment that Oltmann receives, live on-air, a message from someone alerting him to Byrne’s February 3 videotaped statement, which accuses Oltmann of regularly discussing a coming Second Civil War in private—Oltmann goes on a long rant about Byrne that has significant repercussions for the future of the United States.

And yet, this is only one of several transformative pieces of evidence that Proof reveals in the article below, as it turns out Oltmann’s response to Byrne is a falling domino that has caused others to topple—launching a new front in the January 6 investigation.

Colorado Militant Joe Oltmann Drops a Bombshell

Here’s what Joe Oltmann says at “15:39” remaining in the podcast above:

Hey, so you [referring to his podcast audience] need to know this: I got attacked by Patrick Byrne today. Somebody just told me I got attacked by Patrick Byrne.

So I’m just going to say this—mister [podcast] producer, you’re going to have to bleep this word—fork {sic} Patrick Byrne.

He [Byrne] said, “Given the whiff of violent language that I’m hearing [from certain fellow ‘election integrity’ advocates], I think I must no longer refrain [from speaking on Oltmann’s past statements about civil war].”

[Oltmann now addressing his co-host, Max McGuire]: Have I ever called for violence? Have I ever called for violence? [McGuire does not respond.] I’ve [only] asked people to get in the gap {sic}. I’ve asked people to do the right thing.

And so Patrick Byrne’s mad at me, right? Patrick Byrne’s mad at me. I’m not the guy who worked for the CIA! I’m not the guy who worked for the FBI! I’m not the guy who had an ex-girlfriend [convicted and deported Kremlin asset Maria Butina] live in my house and set her up—the Russian, Marie {sic} whatever! I’m not the one that did that!

I’m not the one that on January 6 [2021], walked in [to Team Trump’s Willard Hotel command center]—while the whole place is in a frenzy because of what was going on in D.C. and the propaganda they [the media, federal government, and the political left] were building while the FBI was creating what was happening at the Capitol—I’m not the one who walked in and asked [Trump lawyer Rudy] Giuliani, “Hey, do me a favor: can you go ask President Trump for a pardon [for me]?”

I’m not the one that did that. No—Patrick Byrne did that.

Oltmann’s bizarre empathy for the Russian spy Butina notwithstanding—and, for that matter, the dubious notion that Byrne ever worked for the FBI or CIA notwithstanding—the idea that as the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol unfolded Patrick Byrne hurried to the nerve center of Team Trump’s Insurrection Day operations and asked Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani for a presidential pardon is extremely telling.

As Oltmann continues speaking of Byrne, his story becomes even more dramatic—and troubling.

I’m not the one who was part of an election audit in Arizona that the only reason that it [the 2020 presidential election results] weren’t decertified in Arizona is because the report [from Patrick Byrne compatriot Doug Logan’s Cyber Ninjas outfit] was written like trash.

Logan got on this show and said, “It [using the term ‘fraud’ in his audit report] would have created a constitutional crisis.” I’m not the one where {sic} Logan got up here and said, “Oh, by the way, I fell asleep the night before the [Arizona audit] report was due.”

I’m not the one who said that the information contained in [pro-Trump data scientist] Jovan [Pulitzer’s] report is crap. No, that was Logan that did that. Logan said that what Jovan had [data allegedly proving the 2020 presidential election in Arizona was stolen] was garbage, and that he wouldn’t put it in the [Cyber Ninjas’ audit] report.

I’m not the one that said that.

Beyond the cracks in the insurrectionist cause that this rant reveals, it also hints at a topic that will return in the secretly recorded Patrick Byrne-Lin Wood phone call that Proof details below: the notion that, behind the scenes, the supposedly “independent” post-election Arizona “audit” that Patrick Byrne, Michael Flynn, and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell funded to the tune of millions of dollars was in fact a mere byproduct of clandestine backroom debates between insurrectionist Republican legislators in Arizona, among them the Oath Keepers-cum-politicians Wendy Rogers and Mark Finchem, fringe Trumpist “experts” like Pulitzer, and far-right activists like Oltmann.

Indeed, Oltmann implies that Doug Logan was so concerned about the pressures he was receiving to doctor his audit—including pressure from political figures who had publicly said their voters could rely on Logan’s work-product precisely because it was independent— that he told other Trumpists that to do as they were demanding of him would lead to a “constitutional crisis.” That crisis could have, it goes without saying, provoked precisely the Second Civil War Byrne insists Oltmann has been demanding.

But it gets worse.

Oltmann continues:

This guy [Patrick Byrne] wants to attack me. And he’s not just attacking me, he’s attacking [election-fraud conspiracy theorist and current Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate] Dr. Shiva [Ayyadurai]. But you know what? He [Byrne] attacked Dr. Shiva {sic} but—I just want to point this out—not before offering [Ayyadurai] fifty grand [$50,000] to be on his [‘election integrity’] team.

{Oltmann mimicking Byrne} “Hey, come work for me!” [But] as soon as you don’t want to work for Patrick Byrne—“Controlled Opposition” Patrick Byrne—[as] soon as you don’t want to do that, you become the enemy.

And now you have a guy who’s doing really good work {Oltmann is referring to himself} on an audit in New Mexico, [and] you want to attack [him]? I don’t care what you think about Lin Wood or about [insurrectionist New Mexico State University law professor] David K. Clements. I don’t care what you think about what they say about General [Michael] Flynn. I’ve never said anything [about any of that]. But if you {Oltmann is referring to Byrne} want to go “scorched Earth,” pal, let’s go!

Matter of fact, come on [Conservative Daily Podcast]! If you have enough guts.

But I don’t think Patrick Byrne does. I don’t think he has guts! Unless he’s trying to plan [against] and ruin people behind their backs. And hire media personalities to get into everybody’s family! No, I don’t think he [Byrne] has any balls.

Putting aside the now-cresting paranoia infecting the insurrectionist “movement”—evident in Oltmann’s casual suggestion that not only is Byrne secretly working for the federal government, but that the federal government is using Byrne and other plants to bring down the movement from the inside—this portion of Oltmann’s diatribe underscores that (a) Trump’s insurrection is spreading to states whose post-election “election integrity” battles have been much less discussed in major media, like New Mexico, and (b) the insurrection is currently experiencing—as we will see much more detail below—a major schism federal investigators can exploit if they move quickly.

On one side of this schism are Michael Flynn and his allies—militants like Byrne and Roger Stone who are hoping Flynn will run for President of the United States in 2024 if Trump is unable or unwilling to do so—while on the other are men who are (if this is even possible) more radical than Flynn and his QAnonist cohort, including Wood, Clements, and (albeit he doesn’t proclaim it directly here) Oltmann. This latter group of insurrectionists would be called dead-enders were they in another nation, meaning they believe it may be time for their political movement to disengage from American democracy altogether by ceasing to vote and, as Oltmann has indeed often implied, turning to violence. In lay terms, one can think of these two camps as (1) those who wish to steal the 2024 presidential election via a massive disinformation campaign, and (2) those who wish for there to be no 2024 presidential election at all, with American democracy replaced by a continent-spanning neo-fascist autocracy they will maintain at the barrel of a gun.

The above is no exaggeration. If you watch hours of videos of what these few men are saying to one another and the followers they’ve radicalized, you will understand this.

But Oltmann’s rant is most significant for the way it returns to the subject of Patrick Byrne in a fashion that Congress cannot now ignore (emphasis supplied):

You want to know what else?

I’m not the guy who stole a movie from a guy under contract! I’m not the one that did that. And then used {indiscernible} to make money! I’m not the one that did that! No, that’s you, Patrick Byrne. You did that. You stole it. Not me. You did. And if you want to go through all the details of this, I’m game. You want to sit on this show and run your mouth to me?

Why doesn’t everybody go to Patrick Byrne’s page and ask him, “Why did you ask for a pardon on January 6?” {Addressing Byrne}: Tell me! Why did you ask for a pardon? Why did you walk in there [Trump’s Insurrection Week Willard Hotel command center] and ask Giuliani for a pardon! Please—tell me!

I didn’t say a word about it [when it happened]. [And] I was sitting right next to you!

And here’s the bad part about it, Patrick Byrne: there was some idiot behind us—I don’t even know how he got into the place—that was videoing {sic} it! While you’re asking for a pardon!

So go ahead and tell the American people why you asked for a pardon.

Why did you say [to Giuliani], “What I did [before January 6] could [put] me in jail for a thousand years”? Why? You tell me!

This is explosive testimonial evidence—for almost too many reasons to count. But here are five key ones:

(1) Oltmann previously claimed that a picture of him in Trump’s command center on January 6 could not have been him—and could not have been taken on January 6—as he was never in the command center on January 6. Apparently, that was a lie.

Oltmann has said in the past that the reason he was never in Giuliani’s Willard Hotel suite on January 6 was that he was in a telecommunications-secure Faraday cage at Trump’s State Department trying to convince high-level Mike Pompeo allies to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.

But here Oltmann admits to being in the command center on Insurrection Day. This turns him into precisely the high-value January 6 witness Proof long ago wrote he was.

(2) Oltmann now says that he can testify to things said to—and presumably by—the then-president’s personal attorney on Insurrection Day.

According to Oltmann, he was sitting right in front of Giuliani for some period of time on January 6, 2021, and has clear recall of the events of the day. This means that Oltmann can tell Congress not only about what Patrick Byrne may have said during and/or immediately after the attack on the Capitol, but also what was said by Giuliani and others who—during the period of time Oltmann was in the command center—had direct contact with Giuliani. One of those people was Donald Trump, who called in to the command center several times on Insurrection Day.

If the then-president was on speakerphone during those calls; or if Giuliani related the substance of the calls to those around him (either conversationally or as part of issuing new marching orders to Trump’s legal team) as soon as his conversation with the president was over; or if—as major media reports, and as we all learned during congressional hearings in the Trump-Ukraine scandal is a penchant of Trump’s—Trump was speaking so loudly to Giuliani during their calls that his voice could be heard by individuals not on the call, Joe Oltmann may be able to testify under oath to statements made by Donald Trump in the midst of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

(3) Oltmann now insists that there is video evidence of the discussions that occurred in Trump’s command center on Insurrection Day.

This is, put simply, astounding. Proof, and I imagine many of you, would surmise that it’s never been imagined—by any congressional, criminal, or independent investigator—that the internal machinations of Team Trump on Insurrection Day were subject to audio recording and/or videotaping. But Oltmann says that’s exactly what happened.

{Note: And Proof now has additional evidence—see below—suggesting that Oltmann is right.}

(4) Oltmann doesn’t just say that he heard Patrick Byrne ask Rudy Giuliani for a presidential pardon from a few feet away. He heard Byrne admit to federal crimes.

One cannot go to federal prison “for a thousand years” just for committing a single violation of a federal criminal statute. Any person claiming that they could receive consecutive decades-long federal criminal sentences can only be referring to a very small block of federal offenses.

In this context, federal investigators would likely assume that Byrne is confessing to Seditious Conspiracy, many counts of Election Fraud, Espionage, or Treason. While this roster is necessarily speculative, it nevertheless stands in here as a reasonable assessment of the range (and gravity) of the federal offenses Byrne appeared to be concerned about in speaking to the president’s personal lawyer on Insurrection Day.

(5) Oltmann’s level of hatred for Patrick Byrne means that he’ll betray him if federal criminal or congressional investigators put Oltmann under oath, and that Byrne will sometime thereafter be put in the position of having to himself testify under oath and do one of the following three things: (i) assert his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination (which he says he will never do); (ii) admit to some serious federal crimes; or (iii) perjure himself.

As a former federal criminal investigator, I can tell you that one of the investigative goldmines you always hope for is two witnesses on the other side of your case who hate one another and are telling stories that can’t be reconciled. In his January 6 confession, Byrne says repeatedly to his audience of tens of thousands of viewers that he will speak candidly, comprehensively, and without an attorney to the House January 6 Committee because he did nothing wrong and has nothing to hide. Proof urges the Committee to take Byrne up on his offer, as the evidence tends to suggest that in fact Byrne did quite a bit that was illicit and possibly criminal in the run-up to January 6. And now Joe Oltmann says that Byrne has confessed to this in his presence.

If both Oltmann and Byrne are subpoenaed by the Committee and testify under oath, something must break. And since we didn’t even know for certain that Byrne was in the Willard Hotel command center on Insurrection Day until Oltmann confirmed it earlier this month; and since we now know that there’s videotape of what Byrne said to Giuliani (or else it was destroyed by Byrne or at Byrne’s direction, which could be its own federal crime, depending on the circumstances); something will give if both men are put under oath. And what that give will get Congress is intelligence about what was said and done in Trump’s Insurrection Day command center as our nation’s capital was under attack.

How We Know Joe Oltmann Isn’t Lying About Patrick Byrne’s Live Confession to Serious Federal Crimes

A good criminal investigator knows that people lie—a lot—and that when people are enmeshed in certain emotions they’re even more likely to lie, especially if the emotion in question is vengeful anger. So how do we know that Oltmann isn’t lying about what he says he heard Byrne say from a distance of a few feet away? Certainly, given the amount of anger toward Byrne that Oltmann demonstrates in the video linked to atop this article, we can see that Oltmann’s attack on his onetime compatriot comes at a time that he is trying to everything he can not just to embarrass Byrne but to destroy his reputation in the MAGA “movement.”

{Note: It must be remembered that Joe Oltmann isn’t revealing Patrick Byrne’s confession because he wants Byrne to be arrested or cares about any federal crimes Byrne may have committed. Rather, Oltmann’s point is simply that on Insurrection Day Patrick Byrne was thinking about himself and his own safety and security—not the advancement of Trump’s insurrection. While outside Trump’s insurrectionist inner circle Oltmann’s words will be perceived as contributing evidence to a possible future criminal indictment of Byrne, inside that circle Oltmann’s accusation will be taken as merely an indictment of Byrne’s character.}

So how do we know Oltmann’s story is true? Because he’s told it before—as a time he wasn’t angry at Byrne or in any was quarreling with him. Indeed, in his prior version of the story Oltmann actually elided Patrick Byrne’s name in order to protect Byrne’s reputation.

Here’s what Oltmann said in an earlier episode of Conservative Daily Podcast (about fifteen minutes into the episode):

I was there in [Washington on] January 6th. I met with Mayor Giuliani. I met with other people—because I was asked to. I was asked to meet with those people. And I’m going to say something to you {addressing insurrectionist Couy Griffin, then a guest on the podcast} and you may hate me for saying it: President Trump surrounded himself with what he thought was the best of a very, very bad situation. [But] Washington is a cesspool of people who have an unquenchable thirst for power and money. Unquenchable!

I remember sitting at the table [in Rudy Giuliani’s suite at the Willard Hotel] and someone walked in and sat down—and this is after [the riot on] January 6! It was after [the riot on] January 6!—sits down and says [to Giuliani], “You’ve got to get me a full [presidential] pardon.” And I look at him like, “What is wrong with you? Why would you say that?” And this person is staring—looking—right at Mayor Giuliani.

And I’m asking everyone [in the Willard suite on January 6], “Where’s the plan? To just pull out the evidence [of a stolen election]? Where’s the maturity? Where’s the basic maturity as men? [And] as women—whatever, there were women there [in Giuliani’s suite], too. Where are the basic principles of being focused on the goal of ‘truth only’?” And Couy, it [the maturity] wasn’t there [in Giuliani’s suite]. It wasn’t there. It was self-serving—people looking for power and authority.

And look, I haven’t said anything [about this] up to this point. Because I’m actually disgusted that we haven’t been able to get back to the point where we hold people responsible for the third of November [2020]. Because we have plenty of evidence!

When you {he is referring to Trump here} have that many Judases around you, and the Judases spread like a cancer—man, it’s taken down better men.

And I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of men better than President Trump. I just don’t.

That doesn’t mean he’s not flawed—I think he is courageous—but I do think that people went back to their homes [post-January 6], devastated, they went back to barely [having enough money for] paying the bills, in many cases. [They] used everything to come out to Washington and try to save our nation; but I also believe that that fire that he [Trump] lit is not going out, and they’re trying to figure out how to put it out, and they can’t. They can’t.

Besides Oltmann here repeating his allegation about Patrick Byrne at a time when he was not looking to out Byrne before the entire MAGA “movement,” what is notable in Oltmann’s monologue above is that he says he accounted Byrne—as of January 6, 2021—as being among the small number of key people Trump “surrounded himself with” in the final weeks of his presidency, indeed placing Byrne so deep inside Trump’s inner circle that he analogizes Byrne to one of Jesus’s (thus, Trump’s) apostles: Judas.

In a Follow-Up Confession, Byrne Has Now Accidentally Bolstered Joe Oltmann’s Accusation Against Him

Many people don’t realize that after Patrick Byrne’s recent January 6 confession was wildly successful in the only terms Byrne appears to care about—viewership—the former CEO took to Rumble a second time, offering a 25-minute “addendum” to his already 87-minute confession of participation in a coup plot. While not quite as news-filled as his initial confession, Byrne’s addendum is nevertheless extremely startling, for at least three key reasons:

(1) It turns out that Byrne was filming a movie as he was participating in a coup.

Byrne proudly cites his film The Deep Rig as having been filmed around the time of January 6. This is also the period during which this author received two private messages on Facebook from a self-identified Byrne intermediary (Proof is eliding the name of this person to avoid them being harassed):

This author did not respond to Byrne’s pre-election entreaty, though it is certainly telling that Roger Stone is now openly recruiting Michael Flynn to run for president in 2024; Byrne and Flynn have lately become nearly inseparable, according to Byrne’s confession and to statements he makes in his recent phone call with Lin Wood (see below); and prior to the 2020 election, Byrne appears to have been in touch with both Stone and Flynn about election issues—even as he was filming a movie on elections and deeply interested in a man whose actions determined, in large part, the outcome of the 2016 election: former FBI director James Comey. Byrne’s friendship with Flynn, his courtship of Giuliani, and his clandestine meeting with Stone, coupled with his fixation on the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, puts him much deeper inside the orbit of Trumpist “ratfucking” (a political term of art for election-related dirty tricks) than we previously had reason to believe.

And that matters—for reasons we’ll soon see.

But Patrick Byrne’s hubris aside, he seems to have literally cast himself as the implied protagonist of a documentary in which by all rights he should’ve been a minor player at best. Indeed, the significance of the revelation that Byrne was filming a movie during the period of time he was most involved in the so-called “election integrity” movement is that it may explain why Oltmann said of Byrne’s plea for a Trump pardon on January 6, “And here’s the bad part about it, Patrick Byrne: there was some idiot behind us—I don’t even know how he got into the place—that was videoing {sic} it! While you’re asking for a pardon.”

If the person filming Byrne on January 6 was doing so for the purposes of Byrne’s film—and admittedly it’s hard to imagine anyone turning on a video camera in that space, amidst that context, and on that day for any other reason—it means that somewhere out there is the “b-roll” for The Deep Rig; that Congress can find out who has that roll (or a copy of it) simply by looking at the credits of Byrne’s “documentary”; and that a congressional subpoena could thereby put the House January 6 Committee in possession of video from inside Trump’s January 6 war room on the very day of the attack.

{Note: At least as it’s been covered by The Arizona Republic, Byrne’s film seems to have a very interesting group of people behind it—from the standpoint of a criminal investigator. Among those who, at first blush, appear to have been in some way involved in Byrne’s film are Mike Flynn’s brother Joe Flynn, movie producer Steve Lucescu, former Mike Flynn employee Phil Waldron, film director Roger Richards, Bob Hughes, and none other than Oltmann himself. All appeared with Byrne on a panel during the film’s Arizona premiere, perhaps explaining this Oltmann comment from above: “I’m not the guy who stole a movie from a guy under contract! I’m not the one that did that. And then used {indiscernible} to make money! I’m not the one that did that! No, that’s you, Patrick Byrne. You did that. You stole it. Not me. You did. And if you want to go through all the details of this, I’m game.” One wonders, too, about Byrne’s willingness or ability to stand up to Phil Waldron’s alleged “black ops” plot if he was making a movie with him at the time, or even contemplating doing so at some point in the future. Byrne could hardly make a documentary alongside people with whom he’d burned his bridges.}

Not only would this film, or what videotaping of Byrne was happening in preparation for some future film project, presumably show Byrne confessing to federal crimes, it would also reveal Giuliani’s response to Byrne’s request for a corrupt pardon (“corrupt” as Byrne was asking for a pardon from a man with whom he co-planned a self-coup).

And this is only a small slice of what Byrne’s film’s B-roll would presumably reveal. Who knows what other evidence Byrne created of his own actions in the lead-up to January 6, on the day of the insurrection itself, and in the days immediately thereafter?

(2) We now know what Byrne did right after the attack on the Capitol on January 6.

In his initial January 6 confession, Byrne insisted that he and Flynn were so disgusted by Trump’s speech at the White House Ellipse—not because it was inciting a violent insurrection, but because it was vain, though of course this has been a Trump calling card for as long as either Byrne or Flynn has known Trump—that they immediately returned to Trump International Hotel (where Byrne had a block of rooms and where Flynn says he never went), packed their bags in preparation for departure, and left D.C.

Now Byrne says that that isn’t so.

Instead, Byrne now says, he stayed in D.C. through January 9 to coordinate transferring his entire team of election-focused cyber-intelligence “experts” to Michael Lindell’s custody (though it’s not clear what this looked like from either a financial, logistical, or operational standpoint, it’s how Byrne describes it). This is significant because we know that less than a week after Byrne now says he left Washington, the same Lindell was seen entering the Oval Office with documents that advised then-President Trump to declare martial law and replace the leadership of the U.S. intelligence community with individuals now suspected to have been involved in Byrne’s coup plot (most notably, Kash Patel and Frank Colon). When members of the White House press corps, having been able to take photos of Lindell’s document, asked him about it, he claimed he hadn’t read it and that it had been given to him by a group of “lawyers”—quite possibly, though we certainly don’t know this for certain yet, the same team of lawyers that had flocked around Team Kraken and Team Trump at the Willard Hotel during Insurrection Week. Byrne’s “addendum” is the first time we have ever heard of a connection between Byrne’s coup plot and the one Lindell proposed in the days after the attack on the Capitol, while Trump was still president and therefore still had the entire might of America’s federal executive branch within his command and control.

If indeed Byrne remained active in coup plotting even after begging Trump (via his attorney Giuliani) for a presidential pardon, it could mean one of several things: (1) Byrne was so certain that he had committed federal crimes that he was willing to do anything, even end American democracy via a declaration of martial law, to ensure Trump remained president (and he himself remained free of potential legal liability for helping to stage a self-coup); (2) Byrne was so invested in corruptly receiving a pardon from his co-conspirator Trump that he continued plotting with Trump post-January—even though he knew it was fruitless—because he thought doing so might earn him a pardon; (3) he floated ending our democracy purely to make his current or future film more entertaining and lucrative; (4) Michael Lindell was, from the start, more involved in the coup plot than Byrne’s initial confession admitted, and Lindell was elided from Byrne’s initial account in part because Lindell was the Team Kraken member who had brought intel from corrupt Brazilian politician Eduardo Bolsonaro to Team Trump; (5) Byrne’s plea to Giuliani to get him a pardon was in fact primarily an attempt to get back in front of Trump in the Oval Office, which (once Byrne had failed to do this) he and his fellow insurrectionists reacted to by sending Lindell instead, as Lindell did not have the baggage of having sold Trump on a failed coup plot on December 18, 2020); or (6) a combination of these—or even all of them at once.

Regardless of what precisely Byrne was up to on January 7, January 8, and January 9 of 2021, and whether or how this was connected to what may be deemed a second coup plot pushed by Lindell around January 15, 2021, if Byrne was filming The Deep Rig during this period it means there is likely still footage of who Byrne was speaking to and working with as he and/or Lindell conceived of a means of keeping Trump in power that did not involves GOP state legislators in the way Peter Navarro’s by-then-failed “Green Bay Sweep” plot had.

This, then, is the chief significance of Patrick Byrne’s revised insurrection timeline: it underlines that, whatever he might now say about having been opposed to “black ops” prior to January 6, once Navarro’s political coup plot had failed it seems Team Kraken fell back upon illicit plans Trump had only provisionally and partially green-lit when Byrne, Flynn, and Sidney Powell met with him in the Oval Office on December 18.

Up until now, journalists and even congressional investigators appear to have treated Lindell’s January 15 Oval Office as the last gasp of a lunatic’s (Lindell’s) ramblings. Yet the timeline and other details we garner from Byrne’s now two January 6–related confessions indicate that the January 15 Trump-Lindell meeting, however seriously or casually Trump may have taken it at the time, was a legitimate and concerted effort by previously unidentified persons to orchestrate a coup in the post-“Green Bay Sweep” political reality. In other words, by admitting he was coordinating closely with Lindell on January 7, January 8, and January 9 of 2021, Byrne may be admitting to involvement in what could be termed “Coup 2.0.”

Worst of all, Byrne would have done so after already being on video admitting that his past actions were criminal. If this video is recovered, it could establish the necessary criminal mens rea (“guilty mind”) for a charge of Seditious Conspiracy against Byrne for, at a minimum, his post-January 6 activities. For this reason, Byrne’s addendum to his first January 6–related confession may be even more important than his original confession.

(3) Byrne gives new details of “Meeting #3”—his, Powell, and Flynn’s private two-hour meeting with Trump in the presidential residence on December 18, 2020.

This third stage of the raucous December 18 White House meeting between Team Kraken and then–President Trump is important because it lasted past midnight on December 18 (thus, into the wee hours of December 19), and it is during those wee hours that Trump for the first time acknowledged—via his Twitter feed—both Peter Navarro’s “Green Bay Sweep” and domestic terrorist Ali Alexander’s Stop the Steal plot scheduled for January 6 (see below). We still don’t know who was present during this two-hour period in Trump’s White House residence besides Byrne, Powell, and Flynn, though Proof notes again that it was Navarro’s office that made the first stage of the December 18 meeting possible—so the possibility of Navarro joining the third stage of that meeting in person, via phone, or via video conference can’t be ignored.

But what is so telling about Byrne’s first detailed reference to this latter meeting is a moment between himself and Trump that he describes with some hesitation (noting that, in his view, one normally doesn’t speak about private conversations with a sitting president). What Byrne reveals is intended to put Donald Trump in a positive, if wildly implausible, light—as a man perfectly happy to accept defeat in a presidential election and abandon all claim to the greatest power and authority he’s ever known in his life—but what it in fact does is shed new light on Team Kraken’s original coup plot.

As Proof reported here, in his initial confession Byrne first implied that Team Kraken wanted to convince Trump that the 2020 presidential election had been attacked by a single nation—Iran—in a way that legitimized Trump seizing voting-machine data. But Proof also noted that, by the time Byrne was done with this first confession, it seemed that he was saying that a confederation of nations had attacked the 2020 vote, at least one of which (which we only know wasn’t Iran, China, or Russia, all of whom he named) he was unwilling to disclose. Despite insisting that President Trump was never presented, at any time on December 18, 2020, with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn’s “Hammer and Scorecard” conspiracy theory—which alleged a confederation of nations, led by Venezuela, attacked the 2020 vote—Byrne’s description of what he believes was done on November 3, 2020 sure sounds a lot like that very conspiracy.

And it matters. Because Byrne seems intent on hiding the source of Team Kraken’s foreign intel—a supposed Venezuelan “defector” who it seems impossible for Team Kraken to have located without the help of Lindell’s and Trump’s good friends, the Bolsonaros of Brazil (Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo).

So there’s a lot at stake in whether Trump was convinced to try to stage a coup on the basis of a theory holding that a confederation of countries attacked America in 2020.

It’s with all this in mind that we turn again to the 25-minute “addendum” to Byrne’s first January 6 confession, in which addendum he recounts a brief conversation he had with Trump in a doorway in the then-president’s private residence during Meeting #3 on December 18, 2020. According to Byrne, Trump leaned close to him and emphasized that he couldn’t leave the White House on January if “nations” interfered with voting on November 3 of that year. Byrne is quite clear that Trump said “nations,” plural.

This is the best evidence we have so far (if still imperfect evidence) that Team Kraken did, in fact, present Trump with its “Hammer and Scorecard” conspiracy theory in the White House, and that it was just a matter of minutes after the meeting at which this conspiracy theory was shared with Trump that Trump announced he’d be attending domestic terrorist Ali Alexander’s January 6 “protest” in Washington—an event that was scheduled to coincide with the joint session of Congress Team Kraken intended to see postponed at all costs. It was also an event whose January 5 warm-up rally in Freedom Plaza featured Trump administration official Peter Navarro as a featured speaker.

With this new evidence, January 6 truly becomes an international scandal. If indeed it was false “intelligence” from a foreign national that directly led to the violent events of January 6, House investigators—and for that matter, the CIA—must find out which foreign national(s) worked with the sitting President of the United States and his top aides to end American democracy. Proof has already done a great deal of work to array the evidence we have on this score so far (see here, here, and here).

One final note about Byrne’s second January 6 confession: during its latter minutes, when Byrne is again speaking of his eagerness to testify before Congress, he actually raises his hand as if he’s about to testify under oath (and thus under penalty of perjury). With this in mind, it’s incumbent upon Congress to hold Byrne to this demonstrative gesture, as well as his words, and not only bring him in to testify; not only hold him to his promise to appear without a lawyer; not only hold him to his assurance that he will not invoke the Fifth Amendment at any point; but make sure he is placed under oath before testifying—and then refer him to the Department of Justice for prosecution if (as he appears to have done repeatedly in his taped confessions) he perjures himself.

Ten Major Revelations From the Recently Revealed (and Secretly Recorded) Patrick Byrne-Lin Wood Call

{Note: Proof does not endorse the screenshot used to promote the video above. This video is offered here purely for its substantive content, not its editorializing “Clown World” framing.}

The above link takes you to one of the wildest audio recordings you’ll ever hear. In it, Patrick Byrne—speaking to far-right South Carolina lawyer and Team Kraken hanger-on Lin Wood, who is secretly recording the conversation—accuses Sidney Powell of being “batshit” and says she is currently under criminal investigation (one that Byrne implies he is aiding) for a “scam” involving tens of millions of dollars being bilked from Trump supporters.

Byrne also tells Lin Wood that Powell’s religious faith is an act she uses to get money from evangelicals; accuses her of repeatedly getting drunk and making passes at him; and compares her unfavorably to Meryl Streep’s character in the film The Devil Wears Prada. He also recounts what he says are Powell’s outstanding allegations against him: for instance that he “poisoned” her and that he “date-raped” her. He contends that he hasn’t spoken to Powell since April 2021, and that he will never speak to her again.

Byrne’s litany of shocking revelations seems to go on and on. Sidney Powell, he says, routinely files motions in court that she hasn’t even read. He more than implies that she’s a criminal fraudster who may have secretly made up to $70 million (not a typo) via an apparent charitable organization—Defending the Republic—that Byrne alleges is secretly a for-profit company offers “stock options” currently held only by Powell.

So what does any of this have to do with the January 6 insurrection? Quite a lot, actually—if you think like a federal criminal investigator. Consider the following:

(1) What happens if Powell is federally charged for fraud? If Powell faces Tax Fraud, Wire Fraud, Bank Fraud, or other fraud charges—especially at a time when she may be under investigation for Election Fraud—it gives the FBI enormous leverage over her to get her to talk plainly about the insurrection and the events leading up to it.

Not only was Powell at the now-infamous December 18, 2020 Oval Office/presidential residence meeting where it now appears Trump’s coup plot was hatched, but she also (according to Byrne’s call with Wood) was fired from Trump’s legal team for making face-to-face contact with domestic terrorist Ali Alexander. She has had innumerable private conversations with people like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn—discussions DOJ would surely like to know about. If Powell ends up being charged for criminal actions that post-date January 6, as Byrne implies she eventually will be, she could sign a cooperation deal with DOJ that would blow its insurrection probe wide open.

(2) What happens if the Powell-Byrne rift is never repaired? The news that Byrne no longer speaks to Powell—and Byrne’s implication that it’s possible Michael Flynn no longer speaks to her either, despite her having been his lawyer for an extended period—means that federal investigators (both congressional and criminal) may now have an easier time driving a wedge between the January 6 coup plotters than they previously imagined or hoped for. Indeed, the news that three people who were present in the White House during the formation of the January 6 coup plot are now at odds with one another in varying degrees and for varying reasons is absolutely terrifying news for Donald Trump. He likely would have presumed, in speaking to the leadership of Team Kraken on December 18, 2020, that he was speaking to a tight-knit group of loyalists who’d never betray him or one another. That no longer looks to be the case.

(3) How many more inculpatory Team Kraken recordings are out there? We now know that Lin Wood, who hosted most or all of Team Kraken at his sprawling South Carolina plantation in November of 2020, has been secretly recording calls with Team Kraken. We also now know that Patrick Byrne was filming a movie (with, presumably, as noted above, a great deal of “B-roll”) even as he was engaged in actions that could eventually be investigated as Seditious Conspiracy. We now know, through the Byrne-Wood call above, that Michael Flynn and his brother Joe Flynn fled Sidney Powell’s company in Florida because they believed she might be committing interstate crimes—a realization that would’ve given both men substantial cause to start memorializing their conversations with Powell and her actions respecting Defending the Republic.

The steady creation of as-yet-unseen audio, video, and documentary evidence by the members of Team Kraken is a dream come true for federal investigators, even if some of the content involved in these memorializations (for instance any sexual advances Powell may or may not have made upon Byrne, and any substances Byrne may or may not have given to her) is not only salacious but likely to be unfounded or exaggerated.

(4) Does more inculpatory evidence about Team Kraken’s schemes already exist than we realize? One of the biggest questions in America right now is whether DOJ is or is not seriously investigating the January 6 coup plotters. While Patrick Byrne and Lin Wood’s statements during the recorded call you can hear in full above are overheated and paranoid at times, they do establish one thing for certain: both men believe that their operations have been infiltrated by federal agents, and that these agents have a great deal of eyewitness testimony they intend to offer about what insurrectionists like Byrne and Wood have been up to.

Byrne and Wood agree that the Navy SEALs have federal informants among them who posed as bodyguards for Wood and others on Team Kraken. Whether or not this is true—and we can’t at present know whether it’s true or not—the possibility that it is true at least gives us some new insight into the sort of actions DOJ might be engaged in as part of its broader January 6 investigation (albeit it is still unlikely they have used such “movie-ready” methods of group infiltration).

So while my view tends to be that Byrne and Wood are overstating the likelihood of their operations being compromised—and overstating this by a considerable margin—the fact remains that DOJ does often rely on informants in complex criminal cases that involve otherwise hard-to-crack criminal enterprises. So as much as Byrne’s remark about SEALs remains hard to credit, neither can it be precipitously dismissed.

(5) The level of paranoia among the coup plotters is higher than we realized—and that’s all to the good. In the phone call above, Wood opines that Powell and Flynn won’t return his calls, despite him having hosted them at his plantation for at least two weeks during a critical coup-plotting period in mid- to late November 2020. As Wood doesn’t indicate that a conspicuous falling out with either Powell or Flynn predated them refusing to return his calls, the only conclusion we can draw at present is that the members of Team Kraken are avoiding being in touch with one another, perhaps in part for the very reason that Wood demonstrates in secretly recording Byrne: the perfidy of all of these individuals is such that they don’t trust one another, and don’t wish to create new evidence of their interactions and interrelationships.

Not only does this suggest that the coup plotters perceive themselves to be under some sort of federal investigation, it also neuters their ability to engage in high-level coup plotting again. It is only to America’s benefit that the number of individuals with the resources, connections and wherewithal to form a large-scale seditious conspiracy is comparatively small; if a potential hub of seditious activity has been overcome with paranoia and mutual distrust, it helps protect America from a redux of what happened on January 6, 2021.

(6) The coup plotters may have been discussing much more than just coup plotting during their many interactions—and it matters. During the call above, Wood reveals that he has had at least one discussion with Flynn about Flynn’s alleged involvement with Pegasus spyware (a topic addressed in some detail in the 2019 Macmillan book Proof of Conspiracy). Flynn’s ties to dodgy Israeli cyber-intelligence outfits has nothing to do with Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election—but a great deal to do with Trump’s efforts to steal the 2016 presidential election. We’ve never before had any indication that the coup plotters discussed one another’s murky pasts; with the call above, we now know that men like Wood may know more that’s of great interest to federal investigators than we previously realized. “Something’s not right right now with Mike Flynn. I don’t know what it is. I’ve tried to talk to him”, opines Wood at one point. That Wood says this just seconds after noting that Flynn made $1 million off spyware in 2016 and then lied to him (Wood) about it underlines that there is now an opening for federal investigators to get much more than just information about the 2020 presidential election from men like the South Carolina attorney.

Wood also says that “I thought Jim Penrose was a fine Christian man. But Jim Penrose may not be who he purported to be.” This is significant given Jim Penrose’s role as one of the key “intelligence” experts inside Team Kraken (a perhaps surprising distinction, in view of the fact that major media has paid almost no attention to him thus far). Byrne and Wood also agree that they have both heard that “Jovan Pulitzer is not a legitimate guy”—a significant point of concord given that Pulitzer, like Penrose, is deemed one of the most trusted figures in Trump’s “election integrity” movement.

(7) This call provides insights into the character of certain public figures that we might not have gotten otherwise. At one point Lin Wood and Patrick Byrne discuss Kyle Rittenhouse, the 2021-acquitted defendant who Wood briefly represented in a defamation suit Rittenhouse contemplated following his arrest for multiple homicides in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While it’s common practice among lawyers to avoid speaking ill of their clients—as they could not only be violating attorney-client privilege in doing so, but could also be creating new legal problems for clients that only they (as a person with special access to such individuals) could create—in the call above Wood repeatedly calls out Rittenhouse as a liar, alleging that Rittenhouse deliberately lied about him on national television (Fox News). While it is certainly not the business or interest of Proof to mediate in a dispute like this one, certainly candid—if ill-advised and unethical—diatribes like Lin Wood’s give us access to another view of people like Kyle Rittenhouse as well as his legal team, not to mention (as already noted) Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell or Trump’s first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn.

In this respect, the paranoia and perfidy of those with whom Trump has surrounded himself ultimately must out in the public square. Beyond being mildly entertaining, it is robustly probative.

(8) This phone call demands an urgent revistation of prior statements by key figures relating to the 2020 election. In his lengthy confession, Patrick Byrne said that his audience would be amazed at how little he ever had to do with the fraudulent “audit” his friend Doug Logan ran in Maricopa County, Arizona. But to Wood, Byrne admits that he and Michael Flynn contributed at least five million dollars—not a typo—to the effort. Just so, OANN “reporter” Christina Bobb, a member of the Willard Hotel war room who appears (the Daily Beast recently reported) to have created at least one key pre-January 6 coup memo, has at times been cagey about the work she did (despite allegedly being a reporter) to raise money for Logan’s “audit.”

During the Byrne-Wood call, Wood speaks candidly about Bobb reaching out to him to ask for $150,000 for the audit. This suggests that, at a minimum, Wood can speak to actions surrounding the 2020 election by a much wider cast of characters than we previously would have expected. In the case of Bobb this is particularly significant, as her precise role in the coup plot as an ex-employee of the Department of Homeland Security has up to now been shrouded in mystery.

Just so, Byrne confirms to Wood that he has had direct contact with insurrectionist GOP state rep Wendy Rogers of Arizona, another individual whose role in the coup plot remains unclear. What Byrne says about Rogers is shocking: he claims that he was told by Rogers that she “instructed” Doug Logan’s Cyber Ninjas outfit on how its final report should read, a degree of clandestine tampering in what was supposed to be an independent post-election report that confirms that—as its critics always said—it was entirely a sham. Indeed, Byrne’s words here may potentially justify the opening of an election fraud investigation into Rogers. That Byrne said he had “lunch” with a group of “senior [GOP] senators” in Arizona not only confirms that he had far more involvement in the Arizona audit than he’s now saying publicly but also that he is a key witness in any future Election Fraud investigation into Logan, Rogers, and other Arizona state representatives who are also known insurrectionists, like Oath Keeper and Stop the Steal leader (as well as Ali Alexander mentor) Mark Finchem.

(9) The call offers some major bombshells with implications for America’s future.

Wood, who has had numerous contacts with Flynn’s inner circle, says to Byrne that “he knows that he [Flynn] has been planting questions about whether he’s going to run for Vice President [with Trump in 2024]”, and then adds that the nature of the rumors he is hearing prompts him to want to know—from Byrne—“Is Mike Flynn running for president in 2024?”

As Proof has previously reported, Roger Stone has been behind an effort to recruit Flynn to run for POTUS in 2024 if Trump does not. Wood’s statements to Byrne underscore that this effort may be spoken of far more widely in the insurrectionist “community” than is currently realized by major media. “It looks to me”, Wood tells Byrne at one point, “that Mike [Flynn] is not fighting to fix [the] 2020 [election], Mike is looking for his own agenda to potentially run for office [the White House] in 2024” (emphasis in original).

It is shocking to think that major media has thus far focused almost exclusively on more “mainstream” alternatives to a 2024 Trump presidential run—like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and former Vice President Mike Pence (R-IN)—when in actuality, within the increasingly seditious MAGA “movement” (which at this point in time has an ironclad grip on the Republican Party), the leading candidate for President of the United States might be one of the most dangerous men in modern American politics: Michael Flynn. This Byrne-Wood call alone should be enough to get media asking serious questions about Flynn’s political ambitions—remembering, here, that Flynn was already rumored to be one of Trump’s top early VP picks in 2016.

(10) Statements made during the above call could presage the collapse of the GOP. A potential Flynn 2024 presidential run isn’t merely an academic matter, nor is it even merely a national security matter—though Flynn’s foreign entanglements are terrifying for those of us who’ve written at length on his professional dealings and geopolitical liaisons. It is also an internal crisis for the Republican Party. In this respect, Wood’s comments on Flynn are profoundly telling: “We [Republicans] cannot continue to vote in rigged elections….Mike was suggesting we could vote our way out of a rigged election system. That’s arrant nonsense! Mike wanted everyone to look forward [to a presidential race he might run in in 2024]—and stay in a rigged system—when he should have been saying what everybody knew, [that Glenn] Youngkin [a Republican who recently won the gubernatorial race in Virginia]….is a RINO Republican [a ‘Republican in Name Only’] or a communist—I don’t know—but he [Youngkin] is not a patriot….I think he’s a liar. I think he [Youngkin] is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Given that Wood earlier tells Byrne that U.S. elections are now nothing more than “a communist effort to take over our presidency”, what he is underlining with these remarks is an ongoing debate in the Republican Party: should GOP voters continue to vote? Wood avers that any avowed MAGA-movement champion who runs for elected office in the future will face accusations—in Wood’s view, well-warranted ones—that they’re supporting a clandestine communist takeover of the United States. Needless to say, if Wood’s rhetoric wins out over Flynn’s ambitions, it will be impossible for the GOP to consistently win elections in the U.S. at almost any level of government.

{Note: There are also certain statements in the Byrne-Wood call I don’t know what to do with yet, for instance Wood’s claim that “Joe Posobiec”—he seems to be referring to Jack Posobiec—used to “work under” and “serve under” Michael Flynn. Posobiec was posing as an OANN “reporter” on January 6, as was Christina Bobb, despite both of them being involved with the insurrection effort (Posobiec with Ali Alexander, Bobb with Trump’s legal team). Having not yet done a deep dive on Posobiec, and knowing only that he used to work in military intelligence, I can’t say whether he has the associations with Flynn that Wood claims. But the Byrne-Wood call is a goldmine of such leads, and as such deserves to be carefully listened to.}

Conclusion

It certainly now appears that there were multiple connected coup plots before, during, and after January 6—and that some video evidence of these plots exists. It also appears that there’s a sufficient schism, now, within the insurrectionist camp, and that enough inculpatory public confessions have been made by leading members of this camp, that the House January 6 Committee can quickly sweep in to demand, with a subpoena for documents and another for testimony, that two key individuals produce for Congress everything they know: ex-CEO Patrick Byrne and Colorado militant Joe Oltmann.

What’s more, these two men have already been caught in sufficient lies and other self-contradictions that they will begin their testimony before Congress profoundly and irrevocably wrong-footed—forced to either invoke their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination (which one of them has pledged publicly not to do), or else admit that they have been hiding their Insurrection Week actions for over a year now.

And Congress will be well-positioned to figure out why those lies were told, and what they were intended to conceal.

Stupidity is often what brings down bad actors. I learned this during my many years as a state public defender. But sometimes it’s vanity, instead. Byrne and Oltmann are so loudly self-righteous about their supposedly noble efforts to end U.S. democracy that they have provided federal investigators—both in Congress and the FBI—with a trail of evidence that cannot be ignored. And only some of that evidence is testimonial; some portion of it clearly exists in multimedia formats, whether it be prior statements made by Oltmann on his too-candid-by-half Conservative Daily Podcast or Byrne’s now multiple public confessions about what he was doing before and during and after January 6. Or we could look at Oltmann’s Facebook videos—previously reported on by Proof here and here—or what apparently is a whole film Byrne made on his dubiously legal conduct. All this must be seized by investigators before any of it is destroyed or otherwise compromised.

But Congress must also exploit the new divisions that have appeared within the coup plotters’ ranks.

At one point in the conversation of his with Patrick Byrne that he secretly recorded, Linn Wood actually advises Byrne to go to federal authorities and drop a dime on his fellow coup plotter Sidney Powell (albeit for financial crimes, not political ones). The consequences this would have for the January 6 investigation would have been fully unmistakable to Byrne in that moment, and yet he agreed with Wood that he would probably need to turn Powell in to the authorities—partly (perhaps even in major part) to save his own skin. Congress and the FBI can now leverage the same sort of cynical reasoning to question Byrne and Wood with respect to their actions on and around January 6, or even to cut a deal with Powell on some of her alleged financial crimes if she will reveal in full what she said to Donald Trump (and what he said to her in response) on December 18, 2020 and other key dates in the insurrection timeline.

It has been far too easy, for some time now, for members of Congress and federal law enforcement officers to dismiss people like Lindell, Oltmann, Byrne, Powell, Flynn as cranks, lunatics, or some combination of the two. What sort of person would conspire with these incompetent radicals, one might ask? The answer: Donald Trump. Donald Trump would, and apparently did, conspire with these people. That most Americans of sense would never partner up with them, or even (and here I speak from experience) communicate with them if they reached out, is immaterial. Sometimes alleged wrong-doers are every bit as stupid as those aiming to chase them down hope they will be, and that’s all to the good (unless you’re currently working as a state public defender).

That the January 6 coup plotters failed saved our nation. That the plotters are, in many instances, embarrassingly unsophisticated must be exploited to ensure the investigation of their coup plot doesn’t meet the same fate the plot itself did.