Every so often, the story flips — and the prosecutor becomes the one under scrutiny. In this episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, tech entrepreneur and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne claims to have helped file a federal whistleblower suit against Special Counsel Jack Smith, alleging serious misconduct from Smith’s time overseas.

Byrne, who says he worked with a team to track down whistleblowers across Europe, told hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone that multiple witnesses accused Smith of extortion during his tenure at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. According to Byrne, the accounts paint a shocking picture: Smith and an associate allegedly targeted former fighters from the Yugoslav civil wars, threatening them with war-crime prosecutions unless they paid large sums of money.

“These weren’t rumors,” Byrne said. “We got four different people with direct personal knowledge. They gave affidavits, tapes — everything. We built a federal whistleblower suit around it.”

That suit was reportedly filed in November 2023. Byrne says it quickly disrupted Smith’s high-profile work in Washington — even prompting his unusual request to the Supreme Court for an accelerated timeline in one of his federal cases just a week later. “It started nipping at his heels,” Byrne said. “It became something he had to deal with.”

But the reaction from Washington raised more questions than it answered. Byrne’s team submitted the whistleblower materials to five different inspector generals — including those from the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and State Department. Only one office, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, responded.

The letter, Byrne said, claimed to represent all five agencies and dismissed the complaint on the grounds that Smith’s alleged misconduct occurred before he returned to DOJ employment. Byrne compared that reasoning to hiring Pablo Escobar at the DEA and declaring his previous crimes “off the books.”

What truly alarmed Byrne, however, was what came next. The letter arrived on paper, not by email — and when his team checked with contacts inside the Inspector General’s office, no one there had ever seen it. “It had all been intercepted,” Byrne alleged. “That letter probably came out of either the White House or the CIA.”

If true, that would mean someone within the federal government responded to an active whistleblower filing with a falsified letter — a potential felony. Byrne called it “just another of the many crimes that could be solved in a day if we had a DOJ who wanted to solve any crimes.”

The discussion turned even more curious when the hosts raised Smith’s personal finances. Despite spending nearly his entire career in public service — mostly earning around $160,000 a year — Smith’s reported net worth sits near $20 million. “That’s a five-million-dollar resume at best,” Sam Stone noted. “So where did the rest come from?”

Chuck Warren put it more bluntly: “It’s crazy. Absolutely crazy.”

For Byrne, the whistleblower allegations — and the strange government response — fit into a larger pattern of selective justice and political protection. “They’ll go after anyone who challenges the system,” he said. “But if you’re part of it, you’re untouchable.”

As new details emerge, Byrne’s claim may force a closer look at one of the most powerful prosecutors in America — and whether the story behind Jack Smith’s past is more complicated than the one the public has been told.

Transcript

**Chuck Warren: **While we got some time here, Jack Smith, what’s going, we’ve talked to you before about Jack Smith. What is going on with it? I know he’s under investigation now as of August. What is going on with that?

****Patrick Byrne: **Well, I was part of a team that developed and filed a whistleblower suit on Jack Smith, federal whistleblower suit. I was working over in Europe tracking down some whistleblowers who claimed that when Jack Smith was in the Hague, he was part of some criminal court in the Hague, International Criminal Court. He was, he was shaking down according to these whistleblowers. He was shaking down. He would, he had a henchman name.

Well, he would a henchman. who ho would go to Eastern Europe and find guys who had fought in the Yugoslav Civil War and stuff and say, we know that in 1997 you killed three people in such and such a village. Jack Smith is gonna bring charges against you. But if you’ll put a million dollars in a suitcase, I’ll take it back and this will all go away. And he was shaking people down from 400 grand to 10 million or more.

And we got four different people with direct personal knowledge of this to go on the record, give us affidavits and tapes and everything, and built a federal whistleblower suit around it. That was back in 2023, filed it in November 2023. And frankly, that’s when the wheels came off Jack Smith’s little parade, because suddenly it really disrupted his timing. he’s

Do remember when Jack Smith suddenly applied to the Supreme Court to dramatically accelerate everything? That was a week after we put in a whistleblower thing on him. Because as that started nipping at his heels, it became something he had to deal with. And I’ll tell you something very strange about that whistleblower suit. Do I have 60 seconds?

**Chuck Warren: **Yeah we do.

**Patrick Byrne: **We filed it with five different inspector generals of DOJ, FBI, CIA, State Department, and I think one sort of general DC office and inspector general. We got a letter back from just the DOJ inspector general saying, going to, we’ve looked at this. We’re going to answer on behalf of everyone who looked at this. And it is whatever he did or didn’t do was before Jack Smith came back as a DOJ employee. So it’s not our business, which is a little like saying, Hey, I know that the Medellin cartel guy, what was that famous cocaine guy?

**Sam Stone: **Pablo Escobar.

**Patrick Byrne: **If you found out that the number two at the DOJ, at the DEA was actually Pablo Escobar Disguise, and he told them, said, well, whatever he did before we hired him, that’s not Inspector General’s business. It was ridiculous, but what was also ridiculous, that should have been an email. It came on paper, not an email. And then...

And then we dug into it and no one that we had another source in the DOJ, no one in the DOJ inspector’s office, inspector general’s office had any idea about it. It had all been intercepted. That letter probably came out of the either the Biden’s White House or the CIA. So that’s a huge crime. Somebody is answering on behalf of the federal government with a letter with on a fake signature. That’s just another of the many crimes that could be solved in a day if we had a DOJ who wanted to actually solve any crimes.

**Chuck Warren: **Well, what’s interesting about Jack Smith, I was just Googling it. So it’s reported he’s worth around 20 million, and I find internet net worths probably always undercounted to a great degree, right? But you’ve got to figure, this is a man that’s worked for the government since the mid-’90s. So, 94 to 99, local prosecutor. 99 to 2008, assistant U.S. attorney general, U.S. attorney in Eastern District of New York. In 2008 to 2010, International Criminal Court, which brings to what he did there.

He was also, in 2010 to 15 under Obama, chief of public integrity section of the DOJ. In 2015-17, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District, Tennessee. Then he was in the private sector from 17 to 18. And then from 18 to 22, he was Kosovo specialist prosecutor. So he’s worked the government $160,000 a year jobs and he’s worked $20 million minimum.

**Sam Stone: **That’s a $5 million net worth resume. Yeah.

**Chuck Warren: **It’s crazy. That’s absolutely crazy. That’s crazy.

Listen to the full episode of Breaking Battlegrounds anywhere you stream your podcasts!