In a strange, post-Mueller twist, the conviction of Maria Butina, the redheaded gun nerd and unregistered Russian agent, has led to the resignation of a prominent e-commerce executive. On Thursday, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne announced that he would step down from the company he founded, days after releasing a bizarre statement describing his involvement with Butina, the “Deep State,” “Men in Black,” and Russian-linked “political espionage” campaigns against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In a letter to shareholders, Byrne lamented that his continued presence at the company “may affect and complicate all manner of business relationships.”

“While I believe that I did what was necessary for the good of the country, for the good of the firm, I am in the sad position of having to sever ties with Overstock, both as CEO and board member,” Byrne said in the statement. The company’s stock price had plummeted more than 40% in the days after Byrne first revealed his participation, earlier this month, in what he called a “political espionage” case involving Russia. Following his resignation, the company’s market capitalization soared more than 8%.

It was an ignominious end for Byrne, a celebrity in Libertarian circles, whose labyrinthine involvement in the Russia scandal is difficult to verify. In an interview with journalist and Fox News contributor Sara Carter published last month, Byrne said he had been approached by Butina at FreedomFest in 2015, and came to suspect that she might be a Russian agent. Byrne reached out to the FBI to share his concerns, but, he said, was told to carry on with the relationship and report back. Over the next three years, he and Butina had a sporadic intimate relationship.

The story gets weirder from there. Byrne said he came to have doubts about his “nonstandard” relationship with the FBI and the intelligence community. He told Carter that he believed he “was being used in some sort of soft coup” against Trump. (Butina’s lawyer confirmed the two had a relationship, while the Department of Justice said it could not comment.)

It wasn’t until Byrne appeared on Fox Business Network, about two weeks later, that investors got spooked. Byrne claimed to have turned over evidence of a conspiracy involving Clinton and Trump. “I think we’re about to see the biggest scandal in American history,” Byrne told host David Asman. “Everything you think you know about Russia and Clinton investigations is a lie.... it was all political espionage. I think [Attorney General William Barr] has gotten to the bottom of it.”

“There is a Deep State, like a submarine, lurking just beneath the waves at periscope depth, watching our shipping lanes,” he continued. “And a nuclear icebreaker named the USS Bill Barr has snuck up on them and is about to ram them at midship.”

Last week, Byrne followed up with an official statement titled, fittingly, “Overstock.com CEO Comments on Deep State, Withholds Further Comment.” The last two grafs read like an average American’s nutty Libertarian uncle’s Facebook post:

In July 2018 I put the pieces together. I immediately (last July) came forward to a Congressman and a senior military officer, to the Department of Justice this April, and (upon my Omaha Rabbi reminding me of my duty as a citizen late this June) to a small set of journalists this summer. Ms. Carter was among them. Her two stories are accurate.

Having confirmed Ms. Carter’s two articles, I have fulfilled those citizenship obligations of which my Rabbi reminded me. I will speak no more on the subject. Instead, having lived in places lacking Rule of Law and having witnessed the consequences of its absence, I plan on sitting back and watching the United States Department of Justice re-establish Rule of Law in our country.”

The “Omaha Rabbi” in question is family friend Warren Buffett, who reportedly advised Byrne to “follow his conscience.”

Now, Byrne has followed it out the door. Shortly afterward, Overstock said that Jonathan Johnson had been named interim chief executive of the company.

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