Patrick Byrne: Inside the Enemy Within and Orrin Hatch
In this segment of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren continue their discussion with Patrick Byrne, former Overstock.com CEO and creator of the docuseries The Enemy Within. Byrne’s series examines corruption in Washington and what he describes as the early formation of the “deep state.”
Byrne recounts how Senator Orrin Hatch became directly involved in his story. Before his book was published, Byrne asked Chuck Warren to deliver a magazine version of his account to Hatch. After reading it, Hatch invited Warren to meet with him the following week to discuss Byrne’s revelations. But before that meeting could take place, Hatch suddenly fell ill and passed away.
Byrne explains that this encounter is echoed in The Enemy Within through a dramatized scene in which he walks in a park with a senator. He reveals that the dialogue spoken by the actor is word-for-word what Hatch actually told him in real life.
The conversation underscores Byrne’s central point: respected lawmakers like Hatch and others in the Senate Judiciary Committee had already begun to recognize troubling signs of systemic corruption in Washington — the very forces Byrne now documents in his series.
Transcript
Sam Stone: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We’re continuing on now with Patrick Byrne, founder and CEO of Overstock, former CEO of Overstock.com. And he has a new docuseries out, The Enemy Within Docuseries. You can go to TheEnemyWithinDocuSeries.com to check that out. I watched all of it last night on Rumble, three episodes. I mean, was glued to the laptop there, Patrick. This is an incredible story you have told.
Patrick Byrne: You know, well, you know, it just occurred to me and Chuck, we did not plan this. Chuck and I actually haven’t spoken and I think in a long time.
Chuck Warren: A year.
Patrick Byrne: It just occurred to me because of course, the veracity of the story is what some people would question. Although the truth is, anything, if it’s toned down, it’s about 90% true. I had to smudge out some of the really bad stuff. The veracity, Orrin Hatch, retired Senator, you know, Senator Orrin Hatch plays a role. And I sent, there was a, before this book came out, there was a magazine that was about half the story, but I asked Chuck to take that to Orrin Hatch. Can you tell the story Chuck?
Chuck Warren: You go ahead tell I remember taking it to him and um.
Patrick Byrne: So he read it and then he asked you to come over like next Thursday to talk to you.
Chuck Warren: That’s right.
Patrick Byrne: Then you got a phone call the night before.
Chuck Warren: That he passed away.
Patrick Byrne: No, you got a phone call that he was sick and to delay you going over and that he was sick for a couple of days. And then that was the sickness he died.
Chuck Warren: That’s right, that’s right.
Sam Stone: And that alludes to an episode in the midst of the series where Orrin Hatch, Arlen Spector, and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, correct?
Patrick Byrne: Yes, incident.
Sam Stone: Had brought you in and asked you to help them pursue corruption and what they were seeing was essentially the Formation of what we now call the deep state, right?
Patrick Byrne: Exactly, exactly. In fact, the character in that movie, there’s a scene where I walk in sort of a public park. The character who plays me walks in a public park with a man in a suit. That was actually Orrin Hatch. And that conversation was word for word. The conversation was word for word. What that actor says is exactly what, which is in the book and in the magazine that the story version of this, that’s what Chuck gave to Orrin Hatch.
Anyway, was words were what he said to me that conversation with the guy walking around the lake in a park that was Orrin or Senator Hatch.
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