Gary Weiss has a great post detailing the weekend’s events with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock. Gary’s comments include:
More on the continuing adventures of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, whose paranoid fantasies and lengthy, self-incriminating message board rants are a fascinating spectacle. His increasingly surreal statements brought back fond memories of Baghdad Bob, the famously delusional Iraqi information minister.
In our last installment, I described how Byrne’s “forgetting” to report an SEC subpoena for a year might have been more than just an omission, but a misstatement.
Most CEOs would hold their peace in such a situation. But Baghdad Byrne continued to dig into the topsoil with his tongue, as he continued to verbosely investors asking a simple question: Why did he wait a year before disclosing his subpoena? It was a fascinating example of a slippery CEO refusing to tell the truth.
Byrne began the weekend mouth-fest by bouncing off the walls on the Investor Village message boards Friday night, reacting to questions from Joe Nocera, who wrote an excellent column in the New York Times Saturday morning.
f you comb through the muck you will note that Byrne’s central complaint against the Times was bogus. He was given hours of of time to respond to Joe’s simple query about the SEC investigation of Overstock, but refused to do so — because, no doubt, he knew his spin would not work with perceptive Nocera. This Internet addict’s “didn’t check my emails” excuse will go down in the pantheon of unbelievable Overstock excuses, right alongside “cow in the highway.”
Completing the surreal scene was Byrne’s loyal factotum, resident stalker Judd Bagley, who threatened a critic — Internet sleuth “ScipioAfricanus” — with “exposure.” So I guess you can expect the Overstock’s antisocialmedia.net smear site to be cranking up some fairy tales fairly soon.
He continues with:
The Patrick Byrne mouth-a-thon continued into Sunday, with Byrne continuing to push the “Groucho Marx challenge” in a series of ever-lengthier, ever-loonier rants. Note this pile of pretentious, dishonest mush, and this post repeating and amplifying the “Groucho Marx challenge” I noted earlier.
He also seems in intent on pushing the line that the SEC is aiming at a broad, widespread conspiracy and Byrne is just a cooperating witness. If he was, of course, they wouldn’t be issuing a subpoena, and his famous “celebration” press release (below) had already indicated that the SEC’s interest was largely hostile. Note the admission that “Some of the requests suggest the whispering of the blackguards, but I remain unconcerned about their hokum.”
Blackguards” is Byrnespeak for “critics who have made credible, well-documented assertions concerning me and my company.” It ain’t “hokum,” of course, and Byrne certainly seems concerned. Indeed, terrified.
That’s one of a number of contradictions and lies that oozed from Byrne’s weekend ravings, which I am sure will be giving SEC and other Overstock-watchers plenty of grist for their investigations.
Hopefully for Coenen, Sam Antar, the media, the SEC and everyone else following this story and toting up his lies and evasions, Byrne will continue to keep his tongue primed and ready for deployment. As hole-digging equipment it is a remarkable instrument.
Stay tuned for more in the “What Will Byrne Say Next” saga. I think this one is far from over.
