Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, an ally of former President Donald Trump, testified behind closed doors before the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, for nearly eight hours on Friday.
He entered the committee conference room a little before 10 a.m. ET and ended before 7 p.m. ET, with an hour lunch break. He took several small breaks to confer with his lawyer throughout the meeting.
Byrne played an active role supporting efforts to question and push baseless claims about the 2020 election, including attending a meeting in mid-December at the White House to discuss strategies to overturn the election.
That meeting with Trump also included former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his lawyer Sidney Powell, as well as some White House staff. It focused on ideas to block Joe Biden’s certification as president and discussed the prospect of seizing voting machines. White House officials in the meeting pushed back at the ideas in heated exchanges, CNN previously reported.
Speaking to reporters after his testimony, Byrne described the heated December 18, 2020, meeting at the White House as “benign.”
A source with knowledge of Byrne’s deposition said it was recorded and transcribed.
The December meeting, committee aides previously said, is of high interest to the panel’s investigation. They pointed to a tweet Trump sent the following day, encouraging his supporters to descend on Washington as a key moment that ultimately led to the violence on Capitol Hill on January 6.
CNN’s Jamie Gangel contributed to this report.