[American Thinker] Patrick Byrne, Overstock's founder, has long suspected that Obama set up a police intelligence state that's been calling the shots in American politics since 2015. On Sunday, he pushed back against those of Trump's legal advisers demanding surrender. On Tuesday, he claimed that Obama had blackmailed Hillary Clinton to own her politically. If that's true, what Byrne is saying can upend the American political scene.
The New Yorker profiled Byrne early in December. Sheelah Kolhatkar, who wrote the profile, thinks Byrne is probably as crazy as John McAfee, with both given over to life-destroying conspiracy theories. Kolhatkar plays fair, though, and cannot deny his brilliance.
Former employees describe a memory trick he likes to perform, in which he studies a deck of cards for a few minutes and then recites back the order of the cards, one by one. "When he's on, he's smart, charming, complex, and brilliant," Marc Cohodes, who was once a critic of Overstock and is now an investor in the company, told me.
While Byrne may be eccentric, he's often right. He was the first to realize that investment firms and stock traders were colluding to drive stock prices down. He was accused of being paranoid, but the financial crisis proved he was correct. Additionally, while Byrne's tales about his adventures sound like fiction, that doesn't mean they are: 
|
