The love life of convicted Russian operative and gun-rights activist Maria Butina is back in the news.

Only this time, it's accompanied by allegations of a Deep State conspiracy in the United States.

All of this came as a result of a lengthy CNN interview with Patrick Byrne (see below), who recenty resigned as the CEO of publicly traded online retailer Overstock.com.

In his conversation with host Chris Cuomo, Byrne alleged that the FBI encouraged him to have a romantic relationship with Butina. 

She's now serving an 18-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia.

Byrne also purported that Butina told him she was being groomed to become a future president of Russia. According to Byrne, four of the country's seven most important oligarchs were backing her.

In addition, Byrne made damning and unproven allegations on CNN about former FBI director James Comey. His claim was that Comey, through a lower-ranking officer, wanted Byrne to get close to Butina while she was under investigation.

At one point in the interview, Byrne said that he was speaking to Peter Strzok, the former chief of the FBI's counterespionage section. Strzok led the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

According to Byrne, Comey and two others, whom he identified as X and Y, were conducting "political espionage" against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and, on a more minor level, against Republican presidential hopefuls Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Byrne said that these officials weren't worried about Democratic Party presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders because they didn't think he could win.

"This isn't a theory of mine," Byrne said. "I was in the room when it happened. I was part of it."

Byrne disclosed that one of his friends, billionaire businessman Warren Buffett, encouraged him to tell the public about all of this.

"Warren Buffett told me I have to come forward," the former Overstock CEO declared. "He said 'You let the feds do their work. You have to come forward with what you know to the American people.' "

Buffett was a high-profile supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Byrne insisted that he quit as the CEO of Overstock.com because he didn't want the company to become entangled with the government. The company has a market capitalization of US$750 million,

Butina is best known to the American public for cozying up to the National Rifle Association and befriending Republican power brokers.

Byrne claimed that she even had a "private dinner" with Donald Trump Jr. and another person during a Kentucky NRA convention.

Byrne also mentioned that he had heard talk of Butina possibly planning a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at a conservative event in Tennessee.

Prior to Byrne's comments, there's never been any proof that Donald Trump Jr. met Butina. She's been accused of being a Vladimir Putin operative—which she has denied from prison.

During the CNN interview, Byrne repeatedly said that the FBI were "not the bad guys here" when they requested his services in 2015 and 2016 to get close to Butina.

But by the end of the interview, he was suggesting that Comey was taking instructions from two others to dig up material on all the potential presidents.

Byrne didn't identify who those two others were.

He felt that they were letting a "can-o-scandal" develop.

"And some day, they're going to shake it up and crack it and spread it all over the Republican Party," Byrne said. "And then I thought, well, there's no way the FBI would do that. There's no way President Obama would do that. I like President Obama. I think he's a fine man. He's a class act. I thought there's no way."