There are going to be so many wild books out of the last administration


Wow. You just have to read this account of a last ditch desperate meeting in the White House.

Four conspiracy theorists marched into the Oval Office. It was early evening on Friday, Dec. 18 — more than a month after the election had been declared for Joe Biden, and four days after the Electoral College met in every state to make it official.

“How the hell did Sidney get in the building?” White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann grumbled from the outer Oval Office as Sidney Powell and her entourage strutted by to visit the president.

President Trump’s private schedule hadn’t included appointments for Powell or the others: former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, and a little-known former Trump administration official, Emily Newman. But they’d come to convince Trump that he had the power to take extreme measures to keep fighting.

That’s the beginning. That’s the sane part. Then the screaming begins.

Oh, and Giuliani shows up. And it goes on for about 6 hours until midnight.

It was remarkable that the presidency had deteriorated to such an extent that this fight in the Oval Office between senior White House officials and radical conspiracists was even taking place.

Yeesh, and I still see fanatics defending the Trumpkins.

Comments

  1. davidc1 says

    “Four conspiracy theorists marched into the Oval Office.”
    Sounds like the opening line of a joke .
    Yep the last days of the donald are staring to sound a lot like the last day of adolf in the Berlin bunker .
    When the news of the death of FDR filtered through to them they were ecstatic ,comparing it to the death
    of the Russian Czarina who Frederick The Great was at war with .
    Don’t know what straws the donald was clutching at

  2. raven says

    …former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne

    I recognize that name.
    Patrick Bryne has a long history as a nutcase.

    Byrne abruptly resigned his board seat and position as CEO of Overstock.com after it was revealed that he had an affair with a Russian agent. Jonathan E. Johnson will serve as interim CEO until a replacement is named by the board.

    Patrick M. Byrne – Wikipedia

    and

    LSLT headline
    Former Overstock.com CEO claims to have an army of ‘hackers and cyber sleuths’ that can prove Trump won reelection

    He doesn’t.

    He was born into major wealth, like his hero Trump, and has always been able to do and say whatever he wants
    Byrne is a two year old in an adult body.
    Byrne’s father was CEO and major owner of some large US insurance companies including Geico and White Mountain.

  3. Owlmirror says

    The article has more about what Byrne said at the meeting:

    Byrne, wearing jeans, a hoodie and a neck gaiter, piped up with his own conspiracy: “I know how this works. I bribed Hillary Clinton $18 million on behalf of the FBI for a sting operation.”

    Herschmann stared at the eccentric millionaire. “What the hell are you talking about? Why would you say something like that?” Byrne brought up the bizarre Clinton bribery claim several more times during the meeting to the astonishment of White House lawyers.

    Trump, for his part, also seemed perplexed by Byrne. But he was not entirely convinced the ideas Powell was presenting were insane.

    WTF?

  4. blf says

    @3, The loonysphereblackhole seems to think the FBI, using Patrick Byrne as an intermediary, bribed Senator Clinton so that, in case she won the Presidency, President Obama could use that bribe to control her or somethingguessing continue as “president for life”?

    It’s all quite vague and very Very possibly even more nonsensical than that synopsis. As others have pointed out, Byrne has “priors” with a history of crackpot conspiracies. There’s one something to the effect he allowed himself to be bribed by a KGB(?) spy to help the FBI(?) — I didn’t try to unravel that one — as another example.

  5. brucegee1962 says

    By the way, don’t you just love these “anonymous sources” articles where it is transparently obvious who the source is? In this one is so obvious that Herschmann is the primary source that the article might as well have been ghost written by him. I especially like this bit:

    Finally Herschmann had enough. “Why the fuck do you keep standing up and screaming at me?” he shot back at Flynn. “If you want to come over here, come over here. If not, sit your ass down.” Flynn sat back down.

    Might as well have brought up Herschmann’s steely jaw set against his wicked adversaries.

  6. davidc1 says

    Herschmann sound’s like he was the only one in the room who was playing with nearly a full deck .

  7. blf says

    @6, “Herschmann sounds like he was the only one in the room who was playing with nearly a full deck.”

    Considering who else was allegedly present, a dead and decomposing fruit fly had a “fuller deck” that all those combined.

    Eric Herschmann was one of hair furor’s lawyers (during the Muller investigation and also the first impeachment), and then became a “senior advisor” to hair furur — hair furian-speak for (wannabe-)dalek. So he’s not too trustworthy and shows remarkably bad judgement or at least a money-comes-first -second and -most attitude to the law. (And hence really Really Bad judgement if he expects to be paid by hair furor!) He’s considered to be a probable source for the quoted material in the OP, which suggests, given his track record and probable disregard for facts he isn’t paid for, those OP quotes should not be read on a low-salt diet.

  8. PaulBC says

    Coloring books? You are assuming these people can write. I imagine there will be a lot trashy attempts at best sellers, some written by ghostwriters and others by the principals themselves. Will any of it be worth reading?

  9. blf says

    PaulBC@8, “Will any of it be worth reading?”

    One, maybe, as we don’t know much of anything about this uniquely-placed individual: Baron Trump. He could be a Mary Trump. Or an Eric / Don Jr. He’s still young enough (he be 15 in about a month) not to have been directly involved nor have any criminal risk — but that also implies a wait of several years to learn anything, should he decide to reveal anything.

  10. JustaTech says

    @PaulBC @9: “Will any of it be worth reading?”
    Well, that bit certainly was entertaining, in a train-wreck kind of way. There’s a little of that unhealthy satisfaction that comes from watching two groups of terrible people fight. (It’s unhealthy because there’s far too much risk of fallout to the rest of us.)

  11. davidc1 says

    @7 Ok ,he was the one playing with a joker ,the card with the rules of Poker on it and the Queen of Hearts .

  12. blf says

    @11, And he thought he was going to play some cricket, albeit since cricket is rather an odd game anyways, perhaps that is the right sort of kit. However, the invitation clearly said it would be a hurling contest, albeit in usual hair furorian confused-gabble, they didn’t mean the Irish athletic sport, but the Czech political sport also known as defenestration…

  13. wzrd1 says

    I read it when it was first released. My greatest laughs were when the White House Counselor asked Powell if she really was an attorney and Giuliani being the voice of reason in the room.
    Frankly, it sounds like it was a mash-up of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Shining”. Thankfully, there were no axes available, only a room full of asses.

    Still, yeah, I’m sure that the source is Herschmann. Honestly, can you picture him challenging an aggressive retired US Marine? I buy that about as much as Cipollone being a masked crime fighting superhero.
    If the Secret Service had left the windows open, the squirrels would’ve buried the lot of them out on the White House lawn.