Patrick Byrne built a reputation on claiming inside knowledge of conspiracies few people ever verified. On Friday, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled his biggest claim yet, an $800 million bribery scheme between Hunter Biden and Iran, never happened. The ruling cost Byrne $1.7 million. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson, a Reagan appointee, entered a default judgment against Byrne after years of litigation. The case traces back to a 2023 interview in which Byrne claimed Hun

eorge Washington never knelt in the snow at Valley Forge with his cocked hat resting beside him and a shaft of light breaking through the trees. Historians who have spent careers on the man say so plainly. Thomas Tweed, professor emeritus at Notre Dame, has traced the image to a story invented by Mason Locke Weems, the same early biographer who gave America the cherry tree. Weems never witnessed anything himself. He wrote up an account from a secondhand source, a Quaker named