1. All those rumours – and more – were true.
After Sir Jeffrey Donaldson became leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in 2021, there was some speculation that he would resign his seat in the House of Commons and return to Northern Ireland on a full-time basis.
In July 2021, Donaldson told Ulster Television that he intended to resign his seat as a Westminster MP and become Northern Ireland’s First Minister before the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election. However, he had not yet figured out precisely how he would do so, as he was not a Stormont MLA.
In the event, he chose to remain in Westminster.
The perception among the circles of power in Dublin was that he did not want to strain his relationship with a male lover in London.
The dogs in the streets of the Irish capital became aware of the rumour.
Donaldson knew that many of his party colleagues and several journalists knew about his double life. At least one reporter asked him about it.
He must have known too that Dublin and London were aware.
2. Restoring Stormont despite the existence of the sea border.
The ramifications of this are enormous as he led Unionism during the negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol, first as DUP leader at Westminster, a position he acquired in 2019, and later as leader of the DUP. The Northern Ireland Protocol is a core element of the UK–EU Withdrawal Agreement agreed after Brexit. It governs Northern Ireland’s trade arrangements and regulatory alignment with the European Union, with the primary aim of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.
In 2022, Donaldson collapsed the Stormont powersharing institutions in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol, which established a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
Two years later, he reached a deal with the then UK government to restore the institutions.
Unionists were split over the issue.
Donaldson claimed the sea border was gone. Jim Allister MP, leader of the TUV, disputed this, claiming Donaldson was lying.
Allister has been proven right, as the sea border remains.
Did Donaldson cooperate with London out of fear of exposure, stated or unstated?
Was any pressure exerted by London over his private life?
His secrets are now – finally – being reported in the media.
3. Donaldson was the cheerleader for homophobia. The media didn’t call out his hypocrisy.
Powerful figures in the Irish and British media let Donaldson lead a double life despite his hypocritical opposition to gay rights such as gay marriage.
Why, for example, did The Irish Times, a champion of gay rights, let Donaldson – the arch hypocrite – demean, endanger and bait the gay community?
The DUP has a long history of opposition to gay rights. Ian Paisley led a campaign to ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ in the 1980s.
Did The Irish Times not know what every blabbering taxi driver in Dublin knew about Donaldson and his male lover in London?
4. Knowledge of Donaldson’s debauchery.
During a trip to Washington, a drunk Donaldson sat on top of a female Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). Ian Paisley Jnr told BBC NI’s Spotlight that he had witnessed Donaldson, blind drunk, trying to kiss her in a restaurant in a hotel. She was disgusted and slipped his clutches.
This fact alone establishes that his colleagues knew he was a sex pest.
Edwin Poots, who led the DUP for a brief period before Donaldson took over and is now Stormont Speaker, has admitted knowing that Donaldson had been texting a young woman. ‘There’s quite a number of people within the DUP who knew about this,’ he told ITV.
Jim Dowson, a Loyalist who was close to Ian Paisley Snr, revealed to Richard Sullivan of The Belfast Telegraph that he attended a meeting at Westminster with senior DUP figures in May 2007, at which he ‘blew the whistle on this guy’. He detailed Donaldson’s gay lifestyle. His source was Ian Paisley Snr. His claims were dismissed.
It cannot be ruled out that Paisley told others about Donaldson.
The circle of those ‘in the know’ would include those who alerted Paisley (unless he observed Donaldson’s behaviour himself while in the company of Enoch Powell MP and/or James Molyneaux MP – see below for further details.)
Another woman who encountered Donaldson told a friend in a series of text messages in 2020 that Donaldson was ‘a creep’ and a ‘weirrrdoo’. She asserts that Emma Little-Pengelly of the DUP and Deputy First Minister told her that Donaldson was ‘a danger’ to her. Little-Pengelly denies having provided the warning.
There were stories about Donaldson’s connections to people such as Enoch Powell MP and James Molyneaux MP, who were being linked – in published stories I wrote in Dublin’s Village magazine – to the Kincora Boys’ Home paedophile scandal.
Jim Allister MP, leader of the Traditional Ulster Voice (TUV), told The Irish News that rumours that Donaldson had abused children were in the ‘ether’ from March 2023, a full year before the former DUP leader was arrested.
As further victims emerge to reveal abuse at the hands of Donaldson, the media can hang its head even deeper in shame. They could have taken steps to investigate Donaldson years ago.
Why did they look the other way?
One thing is certain: investigating Donaldson risked drawing attention to the Kincora child abuse scandal.
Instead, the Dublin media (except Village and The Phoenix) went along with the egregious error-strewn Hart Report of 2017, which dismissed the notion that MI5 and MI6 had exploited the paedophile ring that swirled around Kincora.
The media is slowly waking up to the fact that the ghosts of Kincora still haunt Irish politics.
5. The Irish Times failed its readers.
UPDATE 3 July 2026: Newton Emerson of The Irish Times has confirmed that the stories in Village magazine were not ignored by his paper. He claims ‘they were just worthless repetition of familiar innuendo’. This is both defamatory and misleading.
The Village story broke new ground: that Donaldson’s mentor, Enoch Powell MP, had abused Richard Kerr, a former resident of Kincora. Kerr himself was the source of the story about Powell having abused him. Kerr has just settled his case against the Crown for £100,000. (More details below.)
There was nothing ‘worthless’ about Kerr’s account.
Richard Kerr is not a liar.
Kerr’s story was based on his first-hand experiences, not ‘innuendo’.
If Richard Kerr is a ‘worthless’ liar, why did Mark Hennessy of The Irish Times want to interview him?
SECOND UPDATE: Richard Kerr had agreed to be interviewed by Mark Hennessy on 7 July 2026, but changed his mind. He does not want to talk to anyone from The Irish Times.
Kerr is critical that the paper never attempted to speak to him before his legal victory and never conducted a proper investigation into the Kincora scandal.
It will be interesting to see if Newton Emerson apologises to Richard Kerr.
The Irish Times is by far the most blameworthy party in the Republic of Ireland in the failure to investigate Donaldson. Unlike smaller regional newspapers, it has the resources to carry out investigations of this nature thanks, inter alia, to massive government funding. It holds itself out as insightful, courageous and skilled. It is none of these things.
It sneers at the rest of the media, believing that it alone has the wit to tell the public what is going on in the world.
It is lazy and fills its pages with opinion pieces and regurgitates press releases. It has little interest in investigative journalism. By way of comparison, RTE television has an impressive track record at exposing hidden scandals.
Unfortunately, The Irish Times is viewed by large swathes of the country – or at least the well-heeled of South County Dublin and D4 – as the filter of what is and isn’t credible.
It should now – but won’t – give the 30,000 or so old age pensioners who purchase its print edition (and whatever number it alleges have digital subscriptions) – a credible reason explaining why it failed to investigate Donaldson, a key player in all of the most significant Anglo-Irish events of the last few decades. Donaldson was first elected to Westminster in 1997. He made his mark from the outset, including:
- His vocal opposition to David Trimble, leader of the UUP, due to the latter’s support of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement;
- Donaldson’s concerns about the implications of the agreement for Unionism;
- Donaldson’s fears about the lack of guarantees regarding IRA disarmament;
- the desertion by Donaldson, Arlene Foster and others from the comparatively moderate UUP to the more hardline DUP;
- the chaos over Brexit and the Irish border; and
- the precarious existence of the NI Assembly at Stormont;
- Donaldson’s role in the Windsor Framework which is a post-Brexit legal agreement between the European Union and the UK. Its primary purpose is to adjust the Northern Ireland Protocol, facilitating smoother trade and addressing political concerns related to Northern Ireland’s status.
Donaldson was no bit player. He was the man who represented Loyalism during the Brexit process. He negotiated on behalf of the DUP with Dublin.
He was also one of the handful of DUP MPs who held the balance of power in the UK after the 2017 general election. Theresa May had to go cap in hand to buy their support.
The Irish Times did not pause to consider that the positions Donaldson took in response to these events may have been influenced by people who knew about his transgressions.
The Irish Times cannot pretend to have been asleep at the wheel. Some of the heavy lifting had been done for it by Village and Phoenix magazines and Covert History.
6. The Irish Times’ spooky links to British Intelligence
Perhaps the people who work for The Irish Times are gormless innocents abroad who have no inkling of the dark forces who manipulate events from behind the scenes.
Perhaps some of them have compromised themselves.
Take your pick.
One of the paper’s most important political reporters – now working elsewhere – is a collector of pornographic images of young boys. [This is not a reference to a sports journalist at the paper who was convicted over his interaction with an underage girl.] The Provisional IRA became aware of this during the Troubles. It is likely that MI5 did too.
It is probable that this rotund individual, and other equally compromised reporters, fear to tread on the toes of the British government.
There was another key Irish Times staff member who was central to the reporting of Anglo-Irish events and who had an astonishing connection to a secret group run by MI5. He is no longer at the paper.
There are other indications of highly sophisticated and complex British intelligence influence at the paper involving the Marxist Official IRA. The late Dick Walsh, the paper’s political editor during the Troubles, wrote speeches for Cathal Goulding, chief-of-staff of the Marxist Official IRA. Walsh provided other services for Goulding, including taking part in ceasefire negotiations with the Provisional IRA.
The Provisionals maintain that the Officials entered into arrangements with British intelligence to undermine their organisation. This claim is less implausible than it may initially appear. Throughout the Troubles, the two factions were engaged in deadly conflict. At a time when their members were being killed by the Provisionals — and later by the INLA — the Officials were willing to make agreements with opposing parties. They reportedly divided territories in Belfast and elsewhere with the UDA to control extortion of the construction industry, and were also involved in a wide range of criminal activity including armed robbery and currency counterfeiting.
The RUC signally failed to dismantle these racketeering operations. The Provisionals contend that this inaction formed part of the alleged understanding between the Officials and British intelligence. It is also claimed that the Officials supplied MI5 and RUC Special Branch with intelligence on Provisional IRA activities. If these assertions are well‑founded, it follows that figures close to Goulding writing for The Irish Times acted as agents of influence within the publication, acting on instructions from Goulding and Garland.
Eugene Revey’s autobiography (2025) describes their prevelance in chilling detail. (Wait till you discover what the Official IRA cell at The Irish Times did to Ed Moloney, one of its reporters, when he tried to expose this – see below).
The Irish Times has a long history of acting voluntarily as an asset of British intelligence at senior management level, too.
See: Our Man in Dublin. [WebBook]
The man British intelligence appointed to lead its black propaganda operations in Ireland was a former employee of The Irish Times. His name was Hugh Mooney and he was an operative of the Information Research Department (IRD).
For more on Hugh Mooney, see The Smearmeister from the Irish Times
If Donaldson, or any of his colleagues, was/were being manipulated by the Home Office, the Foreign Office or the Northern Ireland Office, or factions within those departments with access to ‘kompromat’, the readership of The Irish Times was left blissfully unaware that this was even a remote possibility. (Meanwhile, readers of Village, The Phoenix and Covert History were bombarded with all sorts of evidence and theories about MI5 and MI6 wrongdoing.)
7. The British Embassy and NI Secretary of State, Peter Mandelson, instruct The Irish Times and other Irish media outlets about what they can and cannot print.
In the latest edition of Village, Frank Connolly describes how, in 2000, the British Embassy dictated to the Dublin media what it could and could not report at a press conference in Dublin hosted by Peter Mandelson while he was Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary. It concerned Mandelson’s intention to collapse the NI Assembly
The Irish Times would have considered itself the most prestigious and important paper present at the gathering. Yet, its representative did not object. Like the other outlets present, The Irish Times did exactly as Mandelson ordained – except for Connolly’s paper, The Sunday Business Post.
Why did the press department at the British Embassy (i.e. MI6) permit and encourage Mandelson to treat the Dublin media as their vassals?
8. Links to the Kincora vice ring.
I reported the link between Donaldson and Enoch Powell MP in the context of the abuse Richard Kerr had suffered. The article was published Village, in 2021, and later, in an expanded format, on this website.
See: Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s mentor.
Powell was besotted by Donaldson. He even tried to talk the younger man out of getting married.
The implication of the 2021 Village article – for those adept at reading between the lines – was that Donaldson was probably one of Powell’s victims and had been ensnared by the paedophile ring run by MI5, which swirled around Kincora.
The vice ring consisted of scores of men, only three of whom were arrested. It survived the eruption of the Kincora scandal.
It is a fact, well recognised by medical experts in the field of psychiatry, that abuse victims can sometimes end up abusing as adults.
Hence – and bearing in mind the widespread rumours circulating about Donaldson’s illicit extramarital homosexual life – the most serious questions arose about Donaldson’s vulnerability to blackmail years before his arrest.
If Donaldson had engaged in sex with Powell, MI5 probably knew of it. Worse still, it rendered Donaldson susceptible to blackmail from any quarter, not merely the Northern Ireland Office and its attack dogs in MI5. UUP and DUP voters do not readily vote for those who have engaged in homosexual acts, no matter that a young and impressionable Donaldson may have been a victim of a violent, sadistic and overpowering Powell.
All homosexual and heterosexual extra-marital transgressions enjoyed by Donaldson increased the likelihood that MI5, the UVF or possibly even the IRA, could manipulate him.
Enoch Powell was a paedophile who liked to beat up boys with a belt. He struck them with the metal buckle part of the strap while abusing them. One of his victims was Richard Kerr. No one at The Irish Times approached Kerr before Donaldson’s conviction in 2026, despite his revelations about Powell in Village in 2021 and on this website. Kerr had appeared on the BBC and Channel 4 by this stage too.
The revelations about the sordid Epstein vice ring, which trafficked minors to Prince Andrew, didn’t disturb The Irish Times from its slumber or inspire it to look at the existence of paedophile networks in Ireland.
The wider Epstein files saga didn’t distract the paper’s staff from their boozy lunches, junkets and frappuccino sojourns in Dublin’s best coffee shops, either.
For years, Donaldson’s website stated how much he admired Powell.
It was obvious that Donaldson’s relationship with Powell was the tip of a sinister iceberg, one that is now drifting into focus.
9. An enduring loyalty to the Crown.
Time after time, The Irish Times ignores stories which MI5, MI6 and the British embassy find embarrassing. Compare the coverage of British intelligence activities in The Phoenix during its 43-year existence with that of The Irish Times. There is none.
At the same time, the paper promotes an anti-neutrality stance, which fits hand in glove with the British government’s openly stated policy. See Psyop.
There was a time in the 1980s, while Douglas Gageby edited The Irish Times, when Britain’s allies in the paper were unable to control the narrative about Kincora. Ed Moloney was one of those responsible for digging up dirt about the scandal. He had sources at the top of the UDA who disclosed a lot of what they knew to him.
What happened to Moloney next defies belief. He tried to print an expose of the Official IRA in 1982, the same year he began exposing state complicity in Kincora. The Official IRA had a cell inside the paper. The story was spiked, passed to Sean Garland of the Official IRA and an attempt was made to kill Moloney. Two Official IRA officers told the UDA that Moloney was in the INLA. This was a lie designed to get Davy Payne of the UDA to kill Moloney. Payne revealed all this to Moloney at the time.
The Provisional IRA believed that the Official IRA began working with MI6 in the 1970s to undermine the Provisional IRA. In other words, allies of MI6 were involved in the plot to murder Ed Moloney when he was reporting on Kincora and the Official IRA.
I knew Ed Moloney and helped him get a lawyer a few years ago to correspond with the paper in an effort to get it to investigate the spiking of his story and the plot against his life. They refused to act.
MI5 also destroyed Chris Moore’s attempts to expose the truth about Kincora at BBC NI.
See: BBC.
10. The full extent of Donaldson’s depravity cannot be reported.
The British media is prohibited from reporting certain ghastly aspects of Donaldson’s depravity (for good reason).
His behaviour in respect of these events is so rakehellish that it raises the likelihood that Donaldson was viciously sexually abused in his youth, causing him to lose all empathy, balance and self-control.
I suspect Enoch Powell is the man who derailed Donaldson, but there are other candidates, e.g. William McGrath, a friend of Jim Molyneaux MP, leader of the UUP, 1979-1995.
McGrath, a vicious child rapist, was known to the RUC as the ‘Beast of Kincora’.
McGrath was a senior member of the Orange Order and commander of Tara, a Loyalist paramilitary group. He was also a branch member of the UUP and, for a while, a delegate to the party. He was also a friend of Jim Molyneaux MP of the UUP.
Molyneaux was also sexually interested in young men. When one young member left Tara, Molyneaux, who fancied him, made inquiries to find out why he had departed from it. Chris Moore published this incident in his first book on Kincora in 1996, while Molyneaux was a Westminster MP. He did not contest the report.
McGrath was not only a sadist, he also liked to abuse very young boys. One of his Kincora victims, James Miller, has described how he had an appetite for boys ‘with no hair between their legs’. Miller told the Hart Inquiry how the staff at Kincora
‘each had their favourites and they kept those boys for themselves. However, McGrath wasn’t that fussy about who he abused. He said himself he “liked” all boys as long as they weren’t too old’.
Miller also stated that the abuse he suffered at Kincora
‘started within the first week. It continued over the entire two years I was there. I have thought about it, and I would say McGrath abused me on 325 occasions, ranging from getting into bed with me to buggery. He used to bring me downstairs behind Mains’ office and down to where the freezers were. It was quieter for him down there. The things he used to do to me were sick. He would try to get me to have an erection but I wasn’t old enough. I wasn’t even developed which was the way McGrath preferred it. He used to say he liked boys with no hair between the legs.’
Another possible abuser was John McKeague, the sadistic leader of the Red Hand Commando.
In what must rank as one of the sickest and most disturbing contortions yet in the Donaldson scandal, Allison Morris discovered that Donaldson sent this Snapchat-filtered picture of himself to a woman after he sexually assaulted her in the DUP’s office in Westminster. (Surely a room bugged by MI5?) Donaldson originally assaulted her in 2016, putting his hand up her skirt and attempting to kiss her on the mouth and ply her with vodka.
11. Donaldson’s Evangelical Christian values.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was originally a member of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).
The UUP was led by James Molyneaux, MP, 1979-95.
Between them, Molyneaux, Powell and Paisley dominated Unionist politics during these years.
Donaldson inherited Molyneaux’s Westminster seat when the older man resigned in 1997.
Molyneaux was also part of the Kincora circle, again something The Irish Times refuses to investigate despite reports in Village.
Many of Donaldson’s colleagues came to despise him. David Trimble MP, leader of the UUP, felt he was a manipulative backstabber.
Donaldson switched to the DUP at the invitation of Peter Robinson in 2003.
Donaldson was relentless in presenting himself as one of God’s most ardent, sincere and pious front-line soldiers. He highlighted his religious beliefs during multiple TV and press interviews and public appearances.
He prayed with victims of sex abuse.
He gave sex education lessons to teenagers at his church’s Sunday School, warning them to avoid sin.
He opposed gay marriage.
Why did The Irish Times not expose any aspect of this ocean of hypocrisy, particularly after he opposed gay marriage?
Below is an interview clip from GB News during which Donaldson extols his Christian beliefs. The broadcast was hosted by an appreciative Arlene Foster, who led the DUP from December 2015 to May 2021. He spoke of the positive impact of a ‘faith approach to politics’, and why the Church should not be afraid to ‘raise its voice’ on political issues. ‘I find increasingly the Christian Church is reluctant to get involved in debate in the public square’, he bemoaned.
12. An openly boozy sex pest.
In reality, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP was a sex pest, rapist, adulterer, liar and child abuser.
He was also a drunkard who projectile vomited over the Mayor of Beijing during a trade trip to China, and over a taxi driver in Washington.
As outlined earlier, during a trip to Washington, a drunk Donaldson sat on top of a female Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). Ian Paisley Jnr told BBC NI’s Spotlight that he had witnessed Donaldson, blind drunk, trying to kiss her in a restaurant in a hotel. She was disgusted and slipped his clutches.
As stressed earlier, this fact alone establishes that his colleagues knew he was a sex pest.
Ian Paisley Jnr was also aware of Donaldson’s exploitation of a young woman (not one of those who testified against him during his trial.)
Did The Irish Times have no sources in Unionism that could have relayed any of this information to them?
13. ‘Proclivities’, a ‘risky lifestyle’, gay clubs and allegations about rent boys.
Jim Allister MP, formerly of the DUP and currently leader of Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), has spoken of rumours about Donaldson’s ‘proclivities’ and ‘risky lifestyle’ which predated his arrest in 2024. Again, if he knew, how could The Irish Times not have known?
Publicly, Donaldson described homosexuality as ‘sinful’. Yet he frequented at least one gay sauna, called Chariots Roman Spa, in London.
Two PSNI officers watched him enter the premises: Tim Hanley, former head of the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch and a colleague, a detective inspector. Both were in London working with MI5, whose HQ was close to Chariots Roman Spa. Hanley disclosed this incident to Mandy McAuley of Spotlight.
Chariots was a sex club. 300 naked or semi-naked men would attend at peak hours. Customers went seeking sexual encounters. Sexual acts took place in open spaces and semi-private rooms.
If other rumours are true, Donaldson also availed of the services of male and female prostitutes in London.
14. Expelling Billy Walker from the DUP.
In what must be one of the most two-faced incidents in his career, he booted another DUP paedophile out of the party.
15. Comparing a gay couple to the Shankill Butchers.
To the public, he was a zealous Christian gay basher, one who defended the right of a bakery shop in Belfast to refuse to provide a cake to a gay couple. He likened the couple to the Shankill Butchers. See the next video clip. The media let him get away with this blatant and cruel act of hypocrisy, too.
16. There was no secret about the allegations that Donaldson watched porn in his hotel in London.
Donaldson is an extremely grasping and ‘stingy’ individual, cheating fellow diners when totting up the bill for a meal.
He featured in the 2009 Westminster expenses scandal. He had to apologise for seeking and receiving £660 in reimbursement for pay-per-view movies on his parliamentary expense account. He repaid the money.
Details of Donaldson’s expense claims were published in The Daily Telegraph. It cited sources at several hotels who said the movies included adult films.
In a statement to The Daily Telegraph, Donaldson said he had not watched anything adult or pornographic. ‘Such material was not viewed on the date alleged, or at all,’ he insisted.
One hotel bill referenced ‘room service 2’. Asked by The Daily Telegraph what the reference meant, Donaldson’s solicitor said: ‘Clearly, it is impossible to be precise in relation to each and every item.’
There was one article – written by Davy McAuley of People Before Profit in 2009 – that came very close to the bone. See below
Again, none of this prompted The Irish Times to consider the broader possibility that Donaldson – the leader of Unionism – might be a compromised figure.
17. Donaldson and Jim Molyneaux.
Donaldson proclaimed his high regard for Enoch Powell and Jim Molyneaux throughout his career.
Donaldson was Molyneaux’s electoral agent. Molyneaux was interested in young males and was a friend of William McGrath, the housefather of Kincora Boys’ Home. McGrath and others ran Kincora as a ‘honey pot’ for Loyalist paedophiles for MI5 and MI6.
Donaldson probably knows some of the sordid secrets of Kincora. He was 17 when the abuse at the home was exposed by The Irish Independent newspaper. Three of the staff at the home were arrested, charged and convicted while most members of the wider circle walked away without even being questioned by the police.
The PsyOp arm of the British Army was aware of Molyneaux’s connection to William McGrath of Kincora (see below for more details).
See also Donaldson and Molyneaux.
18. A Clockwork Orangeman.
Donaldson was also a member of the Orange Order before he was expelled following his conviction.
The Rev. Martin Smyth was Grand Master of the Orange Order from 1972 to 1998. According to a 1973 press release circulated by Colin Wallace, a PsyOp officer at Lisburn British Army HQ, to a number of key journalists, concerning William McGrath, certain Orangemen were aware of what McGrath was doing. They included Rev. Smyth and James Molyneaux.
MI5 destroyed Wallace’s career after he persisted in attempting to expose the abuse at Kincora. See our Operation Clockwork Orange series starting here: Operation Clockwork Orange Vol 1 [WebBook.]
19. An astonishing and honest statement about ‘leverage’ and the reality of politics in Northern Ireland.
MI5’s file on Donaldson must be voluminous.
In what must amount to one of the most important statements made about the reality of politics in Northern Ireland, Norman Baxter, the former Operational Director of Intelligence of the PSNI Special Branch, told Mandy McAuley of BBC NI’s Spotlight that the government, i.e. MI5, guided figures like Donaldson, who had compromised backgrounds, in the direction they wished politics to travel. Baxter told Spotlight:
‘Well, I’d be convinced that the Northern Ireland Office or an element of the government would have known of that behaviour [Donaldson’s sexual activities] because it’s their role to know. Part of managing the peace process is to understand the political actors – to profile and to understand where there is political leverage, and then you apply mechanisms to guide them to where you want the political position to be. I mean, the government would have been failing in their responsibility not to deep-dive into the activities of MPs or other politicians.‘ (Broadcast by Spotlight 26 June 2026.)
produced one of the most important statements ever uttered about the reality of politics in Northern Ireland,
Baxter also told Spotlight that in mid-July 2000, he observed Donaldson drunk, carrying two bottles of wine in Westminster and that he moved out to the Westminster Terrace, where he had his arms wrapped around two ladies. He believes the women were in their early twenties.
Jim Allister, leader of the TUV, raised the possibility that Donaldson was blackmailed by the state during an interview on Spotlight. Allister is someone who has been at the coal face of Loyalist politics for decades. If anyone knows how the game is really played, it is him. Even his most implacable opponents would agree that he has never compromised his Loyalist principles.
What is his take? I’ll return to that in a moment.
[The jury had packed up and gone home by the time the Spotlight investigation was broadcast. The judge will pass sentence on his own. It is unthinkable that he could be swayed by press comments or fresh revelations. Hence, the criticism of the timing of the broadcast – i.e. before Donaldson’s sentence is handed down – by the PSNI is somewhat foolish.]
20. The police and MI5 do the right thing.
Donaldson’s actions eventually caught up with him.
I believe that Jon Boutcher, the current PSNI Chief Constable, is cut from a different cloth – certainly when it comes to child abuse cases – than that of many of his predecessors. In the past, the RUC would have covered up what a man like Donaldson did and passed the information to the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), so MI5 could blackmail the individual. This is what Kincora was all about. This is how Freddie Scappaticci was recruited. Scappaticci lusted after schoolgirls and watched pornography involving animals. Scappaticci eventually received a conviction for his collection of extreme pornographic images.
There has been some criticism that the PSNI might have searched four properties to which Donaldson had access for further evidence, but didn’t. Nonetheless, the core point remains: Donaldson was arrested, prosecuted, and successfully convicted.
The current Director‑General of MI5 also did not intervene to stop the PSNI investigation into Donaldson. It would be reassuring to attribute this solely to a fundamental shift in MI5’s approach – yet that may be too optimistic an assumption. While ethical considerations may have played a part, perhaps even a significant one, other pressures were almost certainly decisive. Most likely, MI5 lacked the appetite to confront Jon Boutcher over the Donaldson affair, particularly after spending decades concealing the truth about a string of other major controversies in Northern Ireland. These include the Stakeknife/Scappaticci case, the murder of Patrick Finucane, systemic collusion, the 1974 Dublin‑Monaghan bombings, and the Kincora abuse scandal. MI5 must recognise that such scandals do not fade away: they have repeatedly triggered official examinations, and above all the outcome the service most fears: a full statutory public inquiry. It is now facing exactly that in the form of the inquiry into its role in the assassination of Patrick Finucane.
MI5 faced significant embarrassment when it emerged that it had not initially handed over all its files on Scappaticci to Operation Kenova. Nonetheless, the full records were provided before the inquiry published its findings. This stands as one instance where MI5 ultimately took the correct course of action: it would have been straightforward to suppress the material, but instead much of the truth came to light.
The service can now draw a line under the Scappaticci affair and focus on its essential, widely valued responsibilities — disrupting bomb plots and other deadly threats across the UK, work at which it excels, and whose successes almost never receive public attention. Separately, Scappaticci’s victims remain free to pursue civil claims for compensation against the Crown.
‘Neo-Nazi caught by MI5 outside Morrisons trying to buy gun and 200 bullets for mass attack is jailed.’
https://mol.im/a/15962275 via https://dailym.ai/android
Irrespective of the motive, it was a wise choice by the Northern Ireland Office and MI5 not to thwart the Donaldson prosecution. Nobody is pointing a finger at them now on this particular aspect of the saga. Imagine if they had attempted to interfere, failed and now had to devote precious resources to a cover-up.
The damage to MI5 resulting from an attempt to thwart the prosecution of Donaldson would have been titanic, especially in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew and Epstein Files scandals.
If Donaldson was blackmailed by MI5 at any time in the past – as he probably was – a likely scenario is that he will keep quiet about this in return for favourable treatment while he serves his sentence, and hope for a possible early release. This being so, MI5 may get out of the woods relatively unscathed.
21. The Leader of Unionism in Northern Ireland, a Convicted Paedophile.
On 22 June 2026, Donaldson was found guilty of eighteen historical sexual offences, including one count of rape and thirteen counts of indecent assault against two women when they were children. The abuse spanned twenty-three years.
His wife, Lady Eleanor Donaldson, was found guilty of aiding and abetting him in connection with five of these offences.
The abuse included kissing ‘Complainant A’ and forcing his tongue into her mouth when she was in primary school. He also put his hands up her top to grope her.
His second victim, Complainant B, was also in primary school when he raped her. He indecently assaulted her on nine occasions, including once in front of Lady Eleanor.
Instead of intervening, Lady Eleanor turned, walked away and pulled the door behind her.
On another occasion, he shone a light on the genitalia of one of the children.
22. The call for inquiries.
The worst-case scenario for the DUP is that Donaldson was the victim of blackmail, or so afraid that MI5 knew of his sordid activities, that he did what the British government wanted him to do anyway.
Jim Allister MP of the TUV told The Irish News that information about Donaldson’s paedophilia and his known ‘risky lifestyle’ in London may have been used as leverage during negotiations ahead of the signing of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
As described earlier in this article, Allister has revealed that allegations that Donaldson abused children were in the ‘ether’ from March 2023, a full year before the former DUP leader was arrested.
Allister suggested that the intelligence services at ‘the very top of government would have been aware of that’.
‘And when you set that along the timeline of how Sir Jeffrey somersaulted from his opposition to the Protocol to implementation of the Protocol, then it does beg questions,’ the TUV leader insists.
Allister argues that Donaldson has lied and betrayed Unionism.
Bizarrely, Donaldson sent all sorts of contradictory signals to London and Dublin during the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiations. He even asked Jamie Bryson, a man with connections to the UVF, to act as one of his intermediaries. Listen to what Jamie Bryson revealed to Stephen Nolan of BBC Radio NI.
For more on Bryson’s background, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Bryson
Donaldson’s track record will be dissected in forensic detail by historians and interested parties for decades to come. My gut instinct is that in the short term, the TUV’s analysis could be particularly illuminating should they choose to produce one.
One thing is certain – don’t expect much from the slackers at The Irish Times.
Doug Beattie, the former Ulster Unionist Party leader, has called on the Police Ombudsman to investigate the intelligence the PSNI possessed a year prior to his 2024 arrest and whether any of it was ‘actionable’.
Jon Boutcher has stated that there was ‘no surveillance’ on Donaldson and that there was no ‘blackmail against him by the government’. As I expressed earlier, Boutcher is a breath of fresh air and has proven his integrity. But the Chief Constable must be relying on MI5 when he says there was no ‘blackmail against [Donaldson] by the government’. The reference to ‘government’ is to the Northern Ireland Office, which controls MI5. Unlike Boutcher, the pre-D-G Ken McCallum iteration of MI5 has no credibility when it comes to denials about collecting ‘kompromat’ about Northern Irish politicians. The pre-McCallum MI5 misled Boutcher over Scappaticci while Boutcher was in charge of Operation Kenova. [Time will tell how the current regime at MI5 has dealt with disclosure in the Dublin-Monaghan bombing investigation when the Operation Denton report is finally published.]
Many in the DUP knew that Donaldson was a bad penny, yet let him rule the roost until his arrest. They are likely to pay a high price for that in forthcoming stormy NI elections. The TUV must be set for a windfall.
23. A life derailed.
Something caused Donaldson to become a paedophile. I believe the most likely explanation is that he was the victim of abuse at a tender age. People like Powell and Molyneaux surrounded him. The latter had friends like William McGrath. Had Donaldson broken free of these men and received counselling, he may have managed to control his urges. Instead, he appears to have self-medicated with alcohol and taken a deep dive into Christianity, albeit a peculiar, repressive, and guilt-laden cultish version of Evangelical Christianity.
Perhaps he will seek help in the form of counselling in jail.
Perhaps he may one day disclose what drove him over the brink.
He will have a lot of time to reflect behind bars.
The Donaldson story has many secrets yet to be revealed. Mandy McAuley has let it be known that her DMs are open.
24. A sense of fear and trepidation.
Jeffrey Donaldson is not the only Loyalist with secrets to hide, albeit in his case, most of them have spilt out.
Another influential DUP figure is a wife-beater. On one occasion, the police were called out to the couple’s house, where they found blood all over the lady’s mouth. Ian Paisley Snr was furious when he was told about the assault.
The man has a conviction for violent and thuggish misbehaviour and once teetered on the brink of going to prison, albeit not in Northern Ireland.
He was also involved with Ulster Resistance, an organisation that smuggled guns into Ireland. Ulster Resistance was penetrated by MI5 agents, so it can be presumed the NIO’s files on DUP participants such as him are comprehensive.
See also: The Resistance Men.
Another well-known DUP figure is a serial adulterer who has slept with the spouse of at least one of his equally high-profile colleagues. This information has been a staple of PSNI gossip for well over a decade.
Any DUP, UUP or TUV figure of substance who has visited pornographic websites or arranged trysts with prostitutes online can rest assured that his or her digital fingerprint is there for others with hacking capabilities to find.
Jeffrey Donaldson is hardly the only Loyalist with secrets to hide.
Have other Loyalist dignitaries visited establishments such as Chariots, or its heterosexual equivalent? Who may have seen them enter? Leave? Who might have observed their gyrations inside? The potential observers could include literally anyone from police touts to Republicans.
With momentum building behind a border poll on Irish unity, Donaldson’s exposure is a development some Loyalists may have observed with trepidation.
Who knows what about whom?
I believe the Deep State in Britain has decided to ease Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom via a Border Poll held under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. It wants a unified Ireland to join NATO, or one of its proxies, in return. This would provide for the protection of Britain’s western flank and safeguard undersea Transatlantic digital cables. How many Loyalists with embarrassing secrets to hide are going to fight the campaign for Irish unity with everything they possess? I don’t imagine the DUP’s wife-beater will be too vocal, nor the DUP’s serial adulterer. The click of a few buttons at GCHQ will reveal a lot of secrets about other Loyalists who have visited all sorts of disreputable websites.
Again, I refer interested readers to this story: Psyop.
25. Further reading and press cutouts.
Sam McBride’s coverage of the Donaldson scandal has been masterful. He has made a strong case that a small regional newspaper such as his did not have the capacity to break the story before now. His argument has much merit. The same defence is not, however, available to The Irish Times, which had the resources to break the story. McBride’s account – which is full of fascinating detail – can be read by clicking on the next link:
McBride’s piece also establishes that he had the support of his editor in attempting to get Donaldson to admit to at least some of his hypocritical double life.
See: The DUP, God’s Soldiers. [WebBook]
See: The Mountbatten Dossier. [WebBook]
See: Kincora’s darkest secret.
Prince Philip’s illicit sex life was monitored by Soviet spies. [WebBook]
