Ex-Overstock chief Patrick Byrne using Maga-allied America Project to steer large amounts to groups pushing fringe theories

The multimillionaire and prominent election denier Patrick Byrne has been boosting his funding to the Maga-allied America Project and using it to steer six-figure checks to far-right groups that push voting 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 $3m of the $30m the Florida-based project had raised at that point came from “the public”, with the rest coming from him.

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

The project’s website features bogus claims about election fraud stemming from early and mail voting, and styles itself as “an America First non-profit organization defending rights and freedoms, election victory, and border security to save America”.

The project also boasts that its goal is “to be a symphony conductor of the pro-freedom, pro-constitutional movement, synchronizing and magnifying the efforts of those who wish to ally with us through connecting, training, funding, and working together to save America”.

In practice, the America Project and Byrne have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Arizona-based We the People AZ Alliance, and Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, triggering alarms by election watchdogs and some GOP veterans due to their incendiary election denialist stances and leaders.