The Utah Office of the Governor provided records Thursday of a January email chain started by former Entrata CEO David Bateman. The initial email authored by Bateman contained a link to the website of conspiracy monger David Icke, as well as a plea to embrace an anti-Semitic vaccine conspiracy theory. Recipients of the email were some fifty-plus of Utah's leading tech CEOs, investors and other public figures, including the sitting governor, Spencer Cox, as reported by Forbes earlier this year. The records may be downloaded below.
Bateman co-founded the Utah-based startup Entrata, a property management software company, valued in 2021 at over a billion dollars. By late afternoon Jan. 4, the day of the email, Entrata announced Bateman had been removed from the board, effective immediately.
The email chain was obtained through the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), the Utah equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act. The request was submitted to the Office of the Governor in the course of a research collaboration undertaken between this writer and Expanding Frontiers Research Director Erica Lukes.
The email obtained from Gov. Cox's office shows how Bateman began the message by stating his belief a sadistic effort to euthanize the American people was underway. He then provided a link to a video posted on the website of David Icke which asserted genocide is being conducted through vaccines.
“I believe the Jews are behind this,” Bateman stated in the email, adding that systematic extermination of billions of people would lead to totalitarian rule. “Utah has got to stop the vaccination drive,” he added in closing.
In addition to the governor, others in the email group included Matt Waldrip, a well-connected associate of Sen. Mitt Romney. While some requested in response to the message to be taken off the list, Waldrip quipped, “Please DO NOT remove me from future emails,” adding, “It's always informative to understand what the bowels of the human mind can create and helpful to know of the conspiratorial drivel being [propagated] around the state.”
Ken Davis was similarly among email recipients who pushed back. Believed to be the former Vice President of Technology at Raytheon and a celebrated Utah entrepreneur, Davis replied he had seen no solid research on “the vaccine CAUSING deleterious effects.”
“If you'd like to engage in a scientific conversation about what is going on, I'm happy to be a sounding board,” Davis continued. “But I will NOT participate in the wholesale slander of any group of people...”
“I don't want any part of this,” Brock J. Blake, CEO of Lendio concisely replied. “Anti-Semitic, divisive, conspiratorial.” Lendio specializes in facilitating business loans.
Other recipients included billionaire Utah Jazz owner and businessman Ryan Smith. Todd Pederson was also on the list, founder of Vivint, a smart home company that sold for more than $2 billion in 2012.
Damien Patton was among the more than fifty email recipients. This is presumably the former CEO of Banjo, a Utah-based social media mining company that raised at least $121 million in funding. The corporation made headlines for its artificial intelligence social media alert system that provided real-time updates to law enforcement agencies, but Patton also made news in 2020 when his history was discovered of ties to the Ku Klux Klan, Nazi sympathizers and hate crimes. A contract valued at more than $20 million between Banjo and Utah was subsequently canceled and Patton resigned immediately from his position as CEO.
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