Trump-Producing, Election-Denier Multimillionaire Funds Far-Right Groups Plotting Against Voters | Donald Trump

Multimillionaire and prominent election denier Patrick Byrne has increased his funding to the Maga-allied America Project and used it to funnel six-figure checks to far-right groups that promote election conspiracies in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere, according to tax records and voting experts.

Byrne, the former CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, said last fall that only $3 million of the $30 million the Florida-based venture had raised to that point came from the “public,” with the rest coming from him.

In 2022, the America Project nearly doubled its revenue to $14.3 million from about $7.7 million the previous year, according to tax records first disclosed by Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.

The America Project was launched in April 2021 by Byrne and Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser when he was president. Byrne and Flynn have both been vocal proponents of false claims that Trump lost the 2020 election due to fraud. They were also both present at a meeting with Trump and others in late 2020 to brainstorm ways to overturn his defeat.

The project’s website makes false claims of voter fraud resulting from early voting and mail-in voting, and bills itself as “an America First nonprofit organization advocating for rights and freedoms, electoral victory, and border security to save America.”

The project also boasts that its goal is “to be a conductor of the pro-freedom and pro-constitution movement, synchronizing and amplifying the efforts of those who wish to join us by connecting, training, funding and working together to save America.”

In practice, the America Project and Byrne sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Arizona-based We the People AZ Alliance and Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc., raising alarms among election watchdogs and some GOP veterans because of their inflammatory election-denying positions and leadership.

The Arizona alliance was co-founded by Shelby Busch, vice chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party, who was caught on camera in late June threatening to kill the county’s top elections official, Maricopa County Clerk Stephen Richer.

Busch said she would only accept a “good, Christian man who believes what we believe.”

Richer, who is Jewish, said in a tweet: “This is not healthy. And it is not responsible. And we should not want this to be part of the Republican Party” — underscoring Busch’s key role as a conservative activist.

The Anti-Defamation League and some religious groups condemned Ms. Busch, who is also the chairwoman of the state Republican National Committee, for her remarks. Ms. Busch did not return calls seeking comment.

Busch, who served as an adviser to Arizona Republican Senate candidate and prominent election denier Kari Lake, told Politico in a statement in June that “everyone knows I don’t like Richer” but said her comments were just a “joke” and “she would never condone violence.”

Tyler Montague, an Arizona-based Republican consultant, told the Guardian: “It takes a lot to make the Maga world wince, but it happened when Shelby Busch said she would lynch Stephen Richer, and hissed at Christian nationalists that they needed someone with Christian values ​​because Richer is Jewish.”

“She was central to promoting election fraud conspiracies and is tied to Patrick Byrne, who funds the Big Lie and his group in Arizona,” he said.

According to state campaign finance records, Busch’s group has raised nearly $400,000 from Byrne personally and The America Project since the start of 2023. Of that total, Byrne has contributed $280,000, while The America Project has given $120,000.

Joe Flynn, Mike Flynn’s brother, who served as the group’s president for most of 2022, told the Guardian that the project had tapped Busch as its Arizona “coordinator” for its 2022 election monitoring, canvassing and “election integrity” training program, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings.

Unveiled in early 2022, Operation Eagles Wings was billed as an effort to “expose ballot box shenanigans” and ensure “there is no repeat of the mistakes that occurred in the 2020 election.” Byrne indicated early on that he was backing the operation with $3 million.

Campaign finance watchdogs have sounded alarms about the extensive funding of Byrne and Busch’s proposed operation.

“This group was funded by deep-pocketed donors obsessed with fringe theories about election administration,” said Michael Beckel, Issue One’s research director.

Citing Byrne and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell as major funders of Busch’s group, Beckel added: “At a time when people across the political spectrum should be standing up to defend the integrity of our safe and secure elections, election deniers have used the We the People AZ Alliance to further erode trust in elections.”

Flynn is no longer affiliated with the America Project. Byrne did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.

Separately, Byrne and the America Project have donated more than $1.1 million to a law firm and group tied to attorney and election conspiracy theorist Stefanie Lambert. Lambert notably defended Byrne in a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which accused him of defamation for claiming the company helped rig the 2020 election.

The America Project’s largest donation in 2022, $700,000, went to United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc., a Michigan-based group that Lambert co-founded, as first reported by the Detroit News. Another $430,000 went to Lambert’s Michigan law firm, according to 2022 tax records.

Lambert played a central role in the 2020 election rush by Trump allies to find fraud that didn’t exist. Last August, she was indicted in Michigan for her alleged role in an operation to illegally access and tamper with voting machines in 2021.

In a twist, Lambert was arrested in March on the Michigan charges after appearing in court to defend Byrne against the Dominion charges.

Other America Project has donated to various groups and individuals known for promoting election conspiracies. In 2022 and 2021, for example, the project donated $200,000 to 423 Catkins Maize LLC, which is linked to Jovan Pulitzer, who is known for his election-denial statements.

Similarly, in 2022 and 2021, the project distributed about $330,000 to Pennsylvania-based OGC Law LLC, which employs attorney Gregory Teufel — who unsuccessfully tried to overturn a state law that allowed all residents to request no-excuse absentee ballots.

On another Maga front, the America Project also gave $150,000 in 2022 to Brian Della Rocca, a Maryland-based attorney who did legal work for the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop at the center of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy.

To expand the project’s mission and strength, Byrne in 2023 named Trump’s acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan as its CEO; a hardliner on border policies. Trump has said Homan would fill a key role if he wins again.

At the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Homan delivered a fiery speech Wednesday lambasting Biden’s border and immigration policies, darkly charging that “this is not mismanagement, this is not incompetence, this is intentional — this is a choice.”

In addition to his big checks to the America Project and allied groups, Byrne has tried to flex his muscles in other MAGA efforts with election deniers.

In a tweet last month, for example, Byrne touted that Michael Flynn, who now heads Maga-allied America’s Future, should be Trump’s vice president — and described a conspiratorial scenario.

“FLYNN knows how to get Trump out of jail. The world is at war and we need a general,” Byrne tweeted.

Flynn’s ties to Byrne were cemented during a heated White House meeting with Trump and other key election deniers on December 18, 2020, where Flynn and Byrne floated the idea of ​​using the National Guard to seize voting machines to help overturn Trump’s defeat.

When Byrne and Flynn, whom Trump pardoned after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador in 2016, launched the America Project, one of their first priorities was finding ways to block Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona by promoting falsehoods about fraud.

To that end, Byrne provided about $3.25 million of the $5.7 million in funding raised by Cyber ​​Ninjas, an obscure Florida firm with no experience in election audits that was tapped by Arizona’s Republican Senate to review the Maricopa County election results. The firm’s final report found that Biden actually got 99 more votes and Trump got 261 fewer than originally counted.