the news continues. i want to hand it over to chris for "cuomo primetime." >> i am chris cuomo. welcome to primetime. there is a wild story breaking on our watch. take a look at the internet. put in patrick byrne, ov overstock.com. everybody is doing it now. we are trying to get mr. byrne ready to be in position in the studio to tell you the story. he said he didn't want to get the company involved with certain government matters he has been involved with. like what? he said he was involved with the russian spy named maria butina. yeah. that one. the one we have all been hearing about. they had a romantic affair and then the government came to him and asked to be involved in that and all of the other operations involved in the election that is one of the wildest stories i

ever heard. i was on the phone with him. he said you have heard nothing. remember, this is not a fringe guy. he does have a website i want to ask him about but he ran one of the most known companies in the country. we have to hear the story. we are reaching out for a response from the u.s. government. we have not heard anything. 2020 alert, more republicans may be joining operation primary trump as the drum beat grows louder to find someone better. is that real or practical? anthony scaramucci is on a mission of his own. what is it about for him. what does he think is possible? is it worth it with the beatdown he is getting from people that used to be his friends. this is going to be an interesting night. let's get after it. all right. i am waiting on patrick byrne. i am going to bring in anthony

scaramucci. a growing number of republicans said they had it. republicans of conscious. they are saying he has the primary. we heard about bill well, he formally announced his candidacy. a former illinois congressman, joe walsh, he expressed serious consideration for a run and mark sanford is also still signaling interest with a tweet about an upcoming tweet to iowa. how real is that? let's bring in one of america's newest never trumpers. said he was wrong to support the president and wants to do whatever he can to make it right. good to see you. >> i am actually not a never trumper. but that is fine. just looking at the situation, and i would tell your viewers if you were on the board of a company and you had a ceo acting

this erratic and literally in a gigantic meltdown luke i was describing, like a chernobyl situation you would have to replace the ceo. he is running the free world. >> you know what you guys say. you said it to me and now his new defenders say it. you are saying you don't want him to be in there anymore. you want somebody else. forget about the label. what you used to say is this and what his defenders now say is this. he is just joking. living in your head rent-free. he is is messing with you because he talks in a way you can't handle. you want to attack his style. he is doing everything he says. you crazy people that can't handle his frankness get all upset, snowflakes. >> i must be living in the

twilight zone because you are taking the other side. but this is not even that bad. he has gone past the bounds of norm normalcy on so many things. but the breaking point for me is the full on racism. i am not going to debate whether or not he is a racist but when you are sending out the racist tweets and you are standing up there in el paso like this in that detached way it is a sign he has gone full blown crazy. as a responsible citizen in the united states you can't say it is okay. we know people inside the building that are whispering to each other they are right. are they going to come for our help. they absolutely hate the guys guts but they are scared out of their minds. look at what he did to me and my wife. he is is lighting us up on this

150 million twitter accounts. i am a private citizen, chris. he may not have early stage dementia but full blown fascism going after private citizens with the power of the presidency. >> i am well aware. but does it make it worth it to you? you are getting a little bit of a taste what the rest of us have to deal with. he has a lot of power. when he tells his people you are crazy and you need to be attacked it doesn't feel good. >> chris, we are wired similarly. we grew up in the same neighborhood roughly and we are wired the same way. i am a very resilient guy. that is nonsense to me and washes right over me. at the end of the day i reflect back on that stuff. i do not absorb it. people want to be dishonest on behalf of the president. if they want to twist themselves into a pretzel and lose their

entire personal integrity and life's personal history to explain what he is doing. i couldn't defend the racist tweets on bill maher that night. the next night he is coming after me and my family. he is is a full blown demagogue that needs blind obedience. once he gets hit a couple of times because he is a paper tiger bully, he starts to unravel like a basket case. this week the chosen one, the king of the jews. we are going to stop a state visit to denmark, one of our allies over a dispute over greenland. >> now they are selling t-shirts that has greenland as part of the united states but leaves out puerto rico. as a u.s. territory. that is okay. people are calling you, anthony and saying anthony, what are you doing. this is our guy. you don't want a democrat in there. what about the tax cuts.

the muscular foreign policy. sure his style is off. you need to keep him. be quiet. >> okay, chris. i am an entrepreneur. entrepreneurs try to curve the reality towards what they see in the future. george walker bush had a 90% approval rating coming out of the iraq war and lost in 1992. this guy is going to lose. he has a 62% disapproval rating. >> who is going to beat him? >> once the water hits him -- well, i don't think anyone will make significant announcements right now. maybe joe walsh. >> you think walsh has a chance of primarying donald trump? >> i think joe walsh has a chance to be eugene mccarthy and break the door down of the

nonsense. i do predict that the president will dematerialize from the office by march of 2020. there is no way he will stand for re-election when his approval rating. watch his approval rating go in to the low 30s, high 20s. >> why would that happen? >> and by the way -- why that would happen? go look at the ap number tonight. 62% of the country disapproves from him. he is rock steady in some ways. he is stuck at 42%. >> that's true. >> we can debate all of that. here is the bottom line. a couple of patriotic americans are going to come forward. not ex-cabinet members or things like that. some people of standing inside the administration, up on capitol hill are going to say that it is time to pull the guy. this is complete and total nonsense. when that happens i predict the

approval rating will drop. even the people in his base will want to win in 2020. the way to win in 2020 for the republicans is to pick a normal person that abides to many of the president's policies. the country is not ready for socialism. i don't want that. i am a republican even though i am being ostracized right now by the chairwoman of the national republican party who i happen to be and was a donor to. i find that ironic. we turn the whole thing into a personality cult. like-minded citizens that are patriots are going to come forward and we will articulate what is actually going on, why he is acting the way. and hopefully there will be a few people inside that say it is totally true. and then i predict his approval ratings will crash. he will likely leave the race. a narcissist like that won't subject himself to a humiliating

defeat coming in 2020. by the way chris, we know each other a long time. i may be a terrible communications director but i am an organized entrepreneur. watch me start it up. >> i will be watching. i think you were saying things to the media. we will see what happens. we will see how good you are at -- stick around if you can and listen to patrick byrne. the former overstock.com ceo. there he is. we will take a quick break. when we come back he has a story to tell you the likes of which i have never heard. stay with us.

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>> look, i don't say i never heard anything like this very often, but i never heard anything like this. the ceo of overstock, we all heard of that company. he resigned today. but he says it is not about the business. we will talk to him about all of it. he is waiting and standing by now. he didn't want to get the company tangled up with certain government matters. he said he had a romantic relationship with the accused russian agent, maria butina. you have seen her with the red hair many times. he said he wasn't just involved with her and someone had to tell him about it. the government knew and that the government was encouraging him. in ways he was not comfortable with. and it reached into the election and that he knows things about what was done by our government regarding hillary clinton and

our president. what does the u.s. government say? a u.s. official says mr. byrne did share information with him in a meeting earlier this year with officials. they found aspects of the story to be believable. he shared operational details that were not widely known. we have not heard from the fbi. the doj did not want to say anything but we are reaching out. patrick byrne is not a right fringe player. he ran a real company. he is known in the country. just so they remember who they are, dartmouth, cambridge, stanford. i did one of the first stories about overstock.com in the late 90s. people were saying you will never sell this stuff online. he did a dutch auction. he is was known as a renegade and became a wild success. now this. patrick, before we get into it. you told your story on fox news earlier.

i had read about it last week but nothing like what you are saying now. one of the main things of push-back that have come back. not from the company. the company says we respect you and thank you for your work and wish you well going forward. you have a website. people are saying he has a website. filled with conspiracy theories. respond to that and let's had are your story. >> in 2008 the weblogs internet award winner for best business blog in america won the internet award for the best blog on corruption in the united states. internet wide polls for the reporting in 2008 financial crisis. this is silly. this is a distraction. main event chris. chris. i didn't know if you remembered me 20 years later. i remembered our day or two

together fondly. in 2015, 16. i took some requests from the fbi. men in black. they are not the bad guys here. you will understand. they are not the problem. they passed a request to me from someone above to do stuff in the 2015, 2016. i never knew who it was. last summer watching television and watching congress rip apart some people, i put details together. i figured out who sent me the request. the man's name is peter strach. >> how do you know? >> it has been confirmed to me. >> by whom? >> by federal authorities. chris, i am not in the kindergarten business. i am not in the convincing business. i am in the business of warren buffett told me i have to come

forward. you let the feds do their work. you come forward with what you know to the american people. i am coming forward. i will do everyone a favor, let you know what happened business. i would be happy to do that. >> go ahead. what did they want you to do? >> the main event is this. first of all, your guy, it is not i was dating maria butina and they came to me and asked me to do anything. i met her. maria butina is not the main event. i was involved in helping them in that period in what i thought was law enforcement. it turned out to be political espionage conducted against hillary clinton marco rubio and ted cruz, major donald trump. primary political espionage against hillary clinton and donald trump. not a theory of mine.

i was in the room when it happened. >> what did they want you to do? what was the political espionage. >> i helped them two times in the past. once a friend got murdered, brian williams. if you google his and my name in "sports illustrated" you will find a story about this and it mentioned how i helped bring a murderer to justice. and you know about that on that fight i got. i was a one man occupy wall street. >> i remember. >> well, that work that i did ended up being triggering a federal investigation that put 200 indictments and another 100 people went to prison. the last i heard from them they told me, you know, you are going to see handcuffs come out this week and live the rest of the life knows your fingerprints. that was three weeks later. >> what did they want you to do

this time? >> i met maria butina. there is a video played a lot of maria butina asking donald trump -- >> we will play the video. keep talking. >> when you look that up you will see i was a speaker at the conference. what you will find is that maria butina came up to me after my speech, first to talk about guns. she was part of a people waiting for autographs. she told me about a guns rights group. i am a small libertarian, small republican. i am upnot a republican. i used to be hillary's biggest donor in utah. i brushed her off about the guns. she came back the second time and said i have a message to you from russia. there is a group of people that know about you in russia. they are liberals. we know about your relationship with milton freeman.

>> big economist. >> the economist. we talk about you on youtube. we watch them. we invite you to come to russia to speak at the central bank and speak on bitcoin and then i am going to take you to a resort. it will be shut down for three days. 45 people across the russian power structure, liberals, they want you to come in. they want to talk about -- i reported on a security clearance at the time. very low level security clearance. like a million americans do. i do minor work on foreign policy. i used to 15 years ago. very minor work. when you get one of those, you are signing a piece of paper when a bombshell russian comes up and tells you something like this. >> what did the government say?

>> next i heard from the fbi. it was from people i hadn't heard from in years. i am really going in to way too much detail. the main event is they encouraged me. they gave me a green light to build a relationship i thought on the grounds i might be able to get her in to some senior people in foreign policy that have an interest talking to her. >> they made you a source so people can follow the story? >> i am not a source. i am not a confidential informant or a spy. i have a non-standard relationship with the government as they put it. it was non-standard. >> they wanted you to talk to her and engage? >> they wanted me to engage. so i did. it took a couple of months to get clear on that. they gave me the green light. i engaged. it immediately turned romantic. it was clear between us this is

two -- she is on her way or was on her way to be president of russia. she is a super talented girl. >> maria butina is going to be president of russia? >> she was being groomed for it. maria butina explained to me that patrick, there are 50 oligarcs that run russia but seven really do. i am on close terms with four of them. i am being groomed to be president. the gun rights group that was started by an 86-year-old man and picked the 23-year-old girl. >> let's do this. i want the audience to hear how it lines up and --  >> i got to take a break. i am just saying let me take a break and i want to keep going. >> fair enough. >> stay with us. we will be right back.

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around with republicans they were hands off, even in the point where at one point i learned in several weeks she is going to some convention in the south. i thought it was tennessee and the conservative convention. don jr. will be on a sunday afternoon at 2:00 at the back of his hotel driven up the road to

her hotel. >> i don't think that ever happened. >> it never happened. wait a second. the main event was that i was like what do we have to do. take her away for the weekend. they said let it all happen. we are going to let it all happen. it became clear by january 2016 or the hypothesis was forming that the behavior was so strange. >> by they you think people in the fbi. you know who they are. >> yeah. men in black. and it was so strange i was thinking that it is like they are letting this scandal develop and some day they are going to shake it up, crack it and spread it all over the republican party. i thought there is no way the fbi would do that or president obama would do that. i think he is a fine man. a class act. i thought no way.

well that continued in february, march of 2016. i had that hypothesis by december 2015, are they letting it happen so some day they will pull the pen and there is an explosion of russian scandal. >> so people understand what is going on here, the fbi wanted you to continue your association to get information. they never told you that you need to have a romantic relationship with someone? >> eventually they did. >> that you had to have a romantic relationship. >> it wasn't them, it is x, y and z. i will tell you who they are. in march she invited me to russia again and give a speech in st. petersburg, blockchain and everything and then putin was going to come and i would have 60 minutes with putin. they told me to break up with her and i had something else to do and that involved corruption

with a federal official. i helped them on that matter. i thought it was strange they told me not to go to russia and then they had me help them with -- >> you know you are going to have to put names to who is in the federal government. >> hillary clinton. >> in terms of who you were dealing with on the fbi side. you are going to need to give names. it's pretty wild. >> yeah. you have not even heard wild yet. when the corruption investigation was done, i was told by federal agents. it seemed more about blackmail than it was about law enforcement. it was more about blackmail. hillary clinton. when that was done about three months later, in july. july 1st or so they came back to me and they said what a mistake that we made. russia. you are right.

russia. my gosh. the highest national priority. they said and they are very honorable men and women, the men in black. we want to be clear this never happens in the united states. we are the good guys. but we need to ask you to rekindle a romantic relationship with maria butina. >> members of the fbi that you are sure were members of the fbi. you know their names? >> i know their names. they said the orders are coming personally supervised by y and at the request of x and two months later they said mr. z added his name. >> i heard you say on fox if you go put a camera in jim comey's face and say the name patrick byrne you are not going to like the reaction it gets. >> that is the z. that is mr. z. >> you believe that jim comey

knew that you were being asked to do these things in the name of the united states government? >> not only knew but i was told that the request is coming from jim comey at the request of somebody. do not assume it is the president. do not assume it was president obama. do not assume that. absolutely. this is -- >> you have their names? >> yeah. this is the kindergarten stuff. >> when they respond they are going to say we like patrick byrne, but this story is 100% fugasi. >> i promise you they will no comment. they will not come out and deny it. if they deny it. >> do you have anything in writing? >> this is the silly part. this is wild. you have to have proof. >> chris, i am light years

beyond the world you are talking about. this is all sent in to the doj on april 5th and 30th. nine days later, may 9th they moved maria butina from an isolation cell in virginia to the nicest women's camp in the federal system. >> how do you know? >> may 14th john durham was appointed. may 13th. >> how do you know? >> her lawyer. her lawyer. >> she was in a special housing unit. a different type of housing that you have available. in some countries solitary confinement more than three months is considered torture. they sentenced her to 18 months in solitary confinement for 10 months until i went in and spoke up. >> are you sympathetic to butina? do you have feelings for her?

>> i am very fond of her. maria needs to go home to russia and be the next president. best thing for russia and the united states is if maria butina goes home a national hero. >> why would would it be good for us if a russian spy goes home and is a hero? >> chris. names are the guests of reality. you put a word like spy. this girl -- these are big questions. we are not going to get into them in soundbites. >> i am giving you a ton of time because i want the context. >> maria butina. >> it would apply if she were working for the russian government. >> the government does not allege she was a spy. it alleges she was an agent of influence. as the prosecutor said when he

stood up in court and all the while she had to be sentenced to five years that the meetings may have seemed -- she put it on facebook but an agent of influence can do great damage to national security. they knew about maria butina the day she landed in the united states. they knew about every meeting that she had with meeting like don jr. before she had them. the government knew about every one of the meetings before they happened. they put it in a box the size of a shower stall for ten months saying the meetings did grave national damage. >> to be clear in the interest of fairness because you said don jr.'s name. no allegation has been put on him that he was working with her in any way. if any way she capitulated with people but they didn't know who they were taking pictures with. >> absolutely. she had a private dinner with

don jr. and incidentally a kentucky nra convention sounding a lot like my memory of her talking about going to tennessee for a conservative mention to meet don jr. the government knew all about that months before it happened. >> i am just being fair. because there is no suggestion he did anything wrong. her trying to get close to the president's son is one thing. him knowing about it would be something else. you don't know of any proof of that. >> i don't think he did. i think she was doing this stuff. >> looking for an opportunity. >> they let it all happen. 100%. >> they think the u.s. government. >> they gave us a statement patrick saying some of what he say s has credibility because you knew things about operations that were not public. what have you done since? what has the fbi said to you?

>> well, this is a massive -- this is massively problematic that i have done that. >> why did you do it? >> because i am looking at my country going nuts the last three years. cnn, fox, msnbc. you are all chasing each others tails. you don't know what is going on. anderson is a good friend of a former friend. i have a lot of respect for you folks. i am watching my country rip itself apart for three years. i am watching people drive 600 miles to shoot 20 strangers at the mall. every time that it happens, i can't live with myself. it is harder and harder. since the last july i figured out enough of the missing pieces. i put together with mine. i said it is all political espionage. in june i went to see buffet. buffet is like my rabbi.

i have known him since i was 14 and he was 45. >> i remember you telling me about him when you started oc.co overstock.com. >> i went to see him june 20th. i walked through the story. he said you are coming forward to the public, patrick. i said i have only gone to the feds. they will be furious. patrick, you let the feds do their job. you do your job. you have to come forward. i gave him 20 minutes of counter arguments. he said don't worry about your lawyer. ignore your lawyer. i walked through every objection. he said it is never been like this in my life. the people are killing each other. you are coming forward right now patrick. i have. fbi is silent. the fbi are honorable guys. i am sorry their name is up in this. it is hijacked from the top.

it is all hijacked from the top. >> what does that mean? >> the organization was hijacked from the top by x, y and z. >> you know you are going to need to provide names of people you met with. >> i am highly confident that the department of justice will be providing the names on an indictment some day. >> you gave the doj the names of the fbi people you met with? >> i am not the only whistleblower coming forward. hillary clinton's supporters in hollywood were spied on. i am not the only person coming forward. >> it sounds crazy. i don't mean to use the word -- it is so unusual. i never heard anything like this patrick. >> it was a long time. it was weaponized.

i was in the middle of it. law enforcement was weaponized. i'm sorry. i like president obama very much. i did not vote for donald trump. our national security was weaponized. those three names are known to the government. it happened. it happened. i was told last october if i come forward that the forces of washington are going to grind me in to the dust. they are right. entirety of washington will come down on my head. that is why i had to leave overstock. >> are you willing to testify under oath to all of this? >> of course. of course. >> this is heavy allegations that the fbi wanted you to have any type of relationship let alone a romantic one with someone they believed was a russian political operative. >> yeah. normally that is an illegal

order or instruction. i want to be clear that the men in black were like this is really awful. we never heard of this in our career. the united states never does stuff like this. we are not the bad guys. but this request is coming from x, y and z. >> you think jim comey knew? >> 100%. >> patrick byrne, we will do our damnest to track all of it down. you say you will provide the names. they did not say you gave them the identities of anybody in their statement. they said you had certain operational knowledge that would not have been public. we will continue to do our work. the channels are open with you. i want the truth to come out. i appreciate you telling your side of the story here tonight. >> thank you chris. it has been an honor. i am going to lay low. best of luck to everybody. good news for republicans and democrats. the republicans are wrong. the democrats did not just dream

up the russian investigation. the fbi did. that i had me jumping up and down saying there was a problem and looking at it. the republicans are wrong to say that it was fabricated out of nowhere. what they are right about though is that it was actually being politicized. anyway, i am very sorry. i am going to lay low. best of luck. honorable for you to have me on. >> i am not telling you to do a media tour but you know people are going to want to vet the information and you know we will do the job responsibly. i will check back. i will let you know what i find out. >> patrick, thank you very much. patrick byrne resigned as head of overstock and now you know why. all right. i told you. i never heard a story like it. is it true? he swears it is. he said he will testify under oath. let's bring in a special fbi

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all right. let's bring in former fbi special agent asha rangappa. she heard the whole interview with patrick byrne. and, asha, just for me to remind some people what's been going on on in the show tonight, patrick byrne isn't some infowars, you know, extreme right-wing fringe lunatic. we wouldn't have him on the show. i wouldn't entertain anything bizarre like that. i know patrick byrne. i worked reporting on him when he started overstock.com. i followed him over the years. his business had some trouble. we looked at his blog. there's some stuff that is a little suspect but it has also received accolades in the past. and his story is very simple on one level. if he had contacts with the fbi that involved butina, the alleged russian spy, indicted russian spy, a prosecuted russian spy, then those names

exist, and if he wants to do his x, y, z thing right now, he can, but he says jim comey knew about it. he says he offered those names to the doj. they haven't said it. asha rangappa made a good point to me in the break. she said, you know, he wasn't in the indictment and not even under the mask of some source or anything like that. he says he had a nonstandard agreement with them. i get why you would be suspect about the story. so am i. but patrick byrne is not just some infowars guy, okay? he was a very legit business person of high success. overstock still has a market cap after two terrible years of $745 million. okay? this is an influential person in our country. he just resigned over this, he says. so with all that, asha, either it's true or it isn't. that's always true. it's a binary reality. but he either has the names and they check out as people who were or are working with the fbi who confirm it or not.

fair point? >> yeah. so what i can tell you, chris, is what i know about how fbi assets work in the counterintelligence division, and this would have been a counterintelligence asset. what he said that jumped out at me is that maria butina approached him and said that she had contacts in high levels of the government, that she might even be the next president of russia and that he had a close relationship with her. so what the fbi does when they suspect a foreign agent operating in the united states is if they know people who have access to her, and in this case he went -- >> he says he went to them. >> correct. he went on his own to the fbi. so they would of course say, well, get us what information you can. >> right. >> and so that to me seems completely normal. now, typically what would happen is that you would have two agents who would be communicating with an asset and they would be documenting every

interaction, every debriefing in a highly confidential case file, which would likely be only accessible by someone higher up. and so all of this would be documented. if you were, you know, if there were some oversight -- >> if there is proof, it should exist. >> it should exist. there is no nonstandard agreement. that part to me did not add up. you know, everything you do in the fbi is kind of under the assumption that it can be uncovered and will be -- >> the idea of having someone have a romantic affair, you're saying no way? >> look, if he had a romantic affair with her on his own and was providing information to them, i don't know that that would necessarily be out of the bounds. >> he says they asked him to do it. >> that to me seems incredibly suspect only because there is a lot of legal liability that's involved with that. you can imagine the he said/she said situations --

>> i actually can't imagine. i can't imagine anything like this. i've never heard of anything like this ever. and if it weren't patrick byrne i wouldn't entertain it, but i know him. we both know who he is. he was the ceo of a very legit and even if you look at his website, you'll say there is some stuff that is a little farfetched, but there is a lot that isn't. he's a respected, intelligent guy. his company has had a couple of down years, but i didn't hear anything coming out of the company that says patrick byrne had changed, that he's under some type of stress or not well. he's always sounded the way he does now -- >> well, chris, here's the psa -- here's the public service announcement i would have to your viewers, if you're a middle aged or older man who gets approached by a 23-year-old who says she has high-level contacts in the russian government and may be the next president of russia, like this is not going to go well for you. >> well, look, butina is a real situation. i mean, obviously she's sitting

in federal authority right now and -- >> she is a real situation, and so -- >> she was working lots of different people. so butina is real. >> and she can make sense -- >> it's whether or not what patrick said about his interaction was real. >> she can expect because she was both stating that she was basically an agent of a foreign power and a foreign national, you know, i would expect that the fbi would have been monitoring her communications. >> well, they didn't go after him. >> of course not. i don't think he did anything illegal. i don't think he did anything illegal. he would have been a source of information. >> all right. listen, let's leave it there. i don't want to get too deep into it. again, it's a man who has a very legit role in our society. he was ceo of a big-time company. he's not some infowars fringy guy, otherwise we wouldn't entertain it. and, look, this is a simple one, either the fbi comes out and says, look, god bless patrick byrne, but none of this ever happened, you know, or there is going to be something else. so, asha, thank you for helping us unpack the possibilities.

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i know you were listening to that. i saw patrick byrne on fox today. i had read -- >> i saw it, too. >> -- last week or earlier in the week about what he had disclosed. the doj said he did seem to know some operational things, but he didn't say he gave them the identities. he says he gave them the names of the fbi people he was involved with. look, either he has proof that he had a relationship with her and he's got proof because he wasn't ever obviously prosecuted by the government for his involvement. he also wasn't mentioned in her indictment. either he has the names or you got to feel bad for patrick byrne because as great as he rose to the society, something's off with him now. >> what did her people say? her attorney said, well, he's making some claims that are worth investigating. and i'm paraphrasing him. >> they're desperate to do anything to help her situation. >> exactly. >> she's got real trouble. like you, i read the story earlier with a healthy degree of