Dean Buckley Irish Politics

Aontú Can’t Have It Both Ways on Climate Change

In the upcoming Dublin Central by-election, Aontú are running Ian Noel Smyth, an architect who describes himself as an “environmentalist” and “green builder” on his X account. Smyth has previously contested Dublin Central as Aontú’s candidate in 2024 and 2020, and as the Green Party’s candidate in 2016. He also ran in the locals for Aontú in 2024 and for the Greens in 2014.

This is not an article about Ian Noel Smyth, but I begin with that context because I find it striking that Aontú would put him forward for election once again just after welcoming an out-and-out climate change denier as one of its newest councillors.

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Dean Buckley Investigative Reports

George Mitchell Was Scheduled to Fly on Epstein’s Jet in March 2013

A previous version of this article stated that George Mitchell and Ehud Barak were both speakers at an event at Vanderbilt University on 18th March 2013. Only George Mitchell was a speaker at the event, as Ehud Barak’s appearance was rescheduled to a later date.

George Mitchell was scheduled to fly on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet in March 2013, according to emails released as part of the Epstein Files – contradicting previous claims made by the former US Senator that he had no further contact with Epstein after the financier’s 2008 conviction for procuring sex from minors.

In an email dated 7th March 2013, Epstein asked his pilot Larry Visoski to add a stop in Nashville to an already planned flight so he could pick up Ehud Barak and George Mitchell on the way, though Mitchell’s name is misspelled as “geroge mitcehll”.

The 19th March trip appears in Epstein’s flight logs as a flight from St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands to Teterboro Airport, just outside New York.

But in an email dated 11th March 2013, Visoski confirmed he had obtained permission to land at Nashville, even though the stop wasn’t included in the border overflight exemption for the flight. This meant they would avoid going through customs at Nashville.

George Mitchell was a speaker at an event at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on 18th March 2013, the day before the pickup was planned. Ehud Barak was also scheduled to speak at the event, though his appearance was rescheduled for 7th April shortly before.

Mitchell has repeatedly maintained that he had no further contact with Epstein after the financier’s 2008 conviction. A spokesman for Mitchell claimed earlier this month that he “declined or deflected” invitations to meet with Epstein following his release from prison in 2009.

Mitchell and Barak were both among those Epstein sought to contact immediately on leaving prison.

In an email dated 28th July 2009, less than week after his release, Epstein asks the recipient to tell “ehud barak and geroge mitchell” that he was “free and home” and that they “can call the home number”.

Mitchell wrote in a 2003 letter to Epstein that their friendship, which Mitchell described as a “blessing”, began “more than a decade” earlier with a chance meeting at an airport.

Dean Buckley Investigative Reports

Jeffrey Epstein Pursued Bid for AIB Assets with Todd Boehly

Yesterday, I debunked an alleged Irish connection to the Epstein Files, so today, let’s look at a real one as a palate cleanser. As I said in my previous piece, I’m mainly looking at his financial affairs, and I’m still in the early stages because I’ve been waiting until the final tranche of documents was released before I put too much energy into it. Most of the financial documents are pretty dense and it’s going to take a long time, plus the assistance of people who know more about finance than me, to investigate it properly.

In the meantime though, let’s talk about emails in the Epstein Files showing that Jeffrey Epstein was part of a consortium that sought to purchase distressed property and loan portfolios from AIB when the bank put them up for sale in 2011.

The deal was being brokered by New York real estate investor David Mitchell of Mitchell Holdings, in partnership with financier Todd Boehly, then of Guggenheim Partners. Mitchell reached out to Epstein in early 2011 to see if he had any interest in investing himself, and to see if he could get Peter Mandelson involved. One of the more detailed emails on the subject also claims the involvement of the Freshwater family, the British property billionaires behind Daejan Holdings. Discussions on the deal continued until at least September 2011, when a tedious back and forth between Epstein and Boehly’s secretaries led to an eventual follow-up conference call. At that point, getting Peter Mandelson on board was still on the to-do list, though nothing further appears to have come of the talks regardless.

All the same, I find this interesting for a couple of reasons, first and foremost of which is that Todd Boehly – current co-owner of, among other things, Chelsea FC and the Golden Globes – tried to put together a huge international business deal with Jeffrey Epstein in 2011, less than two years after his release from prison. I hope he faces a thorough grilling about this relationship, and frankly I wouldn’t mind if it somehow led to the fall of his horrible company Eldridge Industries.

The second is that since that conference call happened on 19th September 2011, my research brought me to a file that featured Jeffrey Epstein’s plans for two days later on 21st September 2011, the exact date it has been falsely claimed he met former Minister for Justice Alan Shatter in Dublin. Not that it needed any more debunking, but Jeffrey Epstein was in New York that entire week. On the 21st, he had dinner with Jes Staley, his best friend at J.P. Morgan:

September 21, Wednesday *Gov. Richardson in NY* 7:30 Dinner w/Jes Staley Leons Dinner - We need to confirm this on Monday 5-9:00 Eva Andersson-Dubin's Antiques, Art & Design at the Armory (REDACTED) WE RSVP'd YES Plus 1

The third is that it underscores my larger point in my previous piece, which is that if Jeffrey Epstein had interests in Ireland, they are overwhelmingly likely to have been financial. My preliminary searches of the Epstein Files have turned up a number of financial prospectuses for Irish-based investments. In email correspondence with his lawyer William Blum regarding the drafting of new financial services laws for the US Virgin Islands, Blum cites “how Apple/Microsoft et al. are being taxed in Ireland” as the model they wanted to replicate. There are several documents regarding the details of Apple’s tax deals in Ireland from different sources, including transcripts from a Congressional hearing about them. This is what Ireland is to the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world: the tax haven nonpareil, a shining beacon of hope for people already so rich the annual interest on their wealth eclipses what most people will earn in their lifetime.

Epstein’s only other evinced interest in Ireland seems to have been in the Northern Irish peace process as a model for Israel and Palestine, and even then, he seems to have been interested in the US and UK figures involved, not the Irish. To put it bluntly, I don’t think that Jeffrey Epstein had the geopolitical sophistication to realise Ireland could be useful to him as more than just a financial jurisdiction.

He was also enough of a weird race science eugenics guy that I kind of suspect he probably thought of the Irish as inbred savages who weren’t worth much to him. I suspected that before I ever read his texts about how our “horrible asses” are “genetic from the potato famine”, and I suspect it even more now.

Dean Buckley Investigative Reports

Alan Shatter is Not in the Epstein Files (Obviously)

This article has been updated to include a screenshot of the post by @TheFlareNews originating the false claim that Alan Shatter met Jeffrey Epstein.

Last night, I had the unfortunate responsibility of informing Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon that he had been taken in by a right-wing hoax. Gannon posted, on Bluesky and Instagram, a screenshot of a 2011 itinerary – featuring a meeting with then-Minister for Justice Alan Shatter – supposedly from the Epstein Files released by the US Department of Justice. The screenshot was accompanied by a statement calling for full transparency around this alleged meeting between Epstein and Shatter.

That itinerary, a screenshot of which I’ve reproduced below, is in fact from the September 2011 calendar of former US Attorney General Eric Holder:

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 (Brussels, Belgium -) Dublin, Ireland) 9:00AM CEST 9:50AM CEST 11 :15AM CEST 11:40AM IST 12:30PM IST 1:00PM IST 4:00PM IST 5:30PM IST 6:00PM IST Meeting with JHA Cluster Meet II Greet Embassy and Mission Personnel Wheels Up: Brussels (EBBR) Wheels Down: Dublin, Ireland (EIDW) Meet and Greet Ambassador Rooney Working Lunch, Speech, and Q&A, llEA Meeting with Justice Minister Alan Shatter/Secretary General Brian Purcell Meeting with Ambassador Rooney Family Dinner with Ambassador Rooney and Patricia Rooney RON: Ambassador's Residence

Gannon immediately deleted both posts when I informed him of his error.

For the avoidance of doubt: there is absolutely zero evidence that Alan Shatter and Jeffrey Epstein have ever met or had contact of any kind, and Alan Shatter does not appear in the Epstein Files. This is easily checked as the Epstein Files are searchable on the US Department of Justice’s website and have been made even more searchable on a variety of third-party platforms, my favourite of which is JMail. You can also find Eric Holder’s speech at the IIEA online.

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Dean Buckley Investigative Reports

Fine Gael TD’s Tech Firm Received Almost €5,000,000 in Public Contracts Over Ten Years

Zing Technology, a firm co-founded by Fine Gael TD Naoise Ó Muirí in 2007, has received public contracts worth almost €5,000,000 over the last ten years, according to records obtained from various bodies under the Freedom of Information Act 2014.

Naoise Ó Muirí has represented Dublin Bay North since the last election, having previously served twenty years as a councillor in Clontarf. He is a former Lord Mayor of Dublin, and now serves as chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy.

Ó Muirí co-founded Zing in 2007 and he remains managing director. He is the majority owner of the firm, with 79% of its shares.

He declared ongoing contracts between Zing Technology and four public bodies on the Dáil Register of Members’ Interests.

The company also has an ongoing contract with the Royal Irish Academy of Music, which is not a public body under the Ethics in Public Office Act, but is under the Freedom of Information Act.

According to its website, Zing “helps companies maintain and improve unsupported software applications” and specialises in “financial services and government agencies”. It lists Mazars, DekaBank, Zurich, AXA, Cigna, Brink’s and G4S among its corporate clients.

The four ongoing contracts declared by Ó Muirí are with Bord Bia, the Marine Institute, Táilte Éireann and the Valuation Tribunal. The total value of each contract to date varies from just under €100,000 over eight years with the Valuation Tribunal to over €2,000,000 over four years with the Marine Institute.

The contract with the Royal Irish Academy of Music was signed in 2018 “for the design, development, implementation and support of online applications services and platform migration with support and maintenance of RIAM legacy systems”.

An extension was agreed in 2020 “for the continuation of additional enhancements and support to the platform”. The total value of the contract to date is €399,416.

Prior clients during the ten-year period covered by the FOIs (2015-present) include Pobal and An Bord Pleanála, whose contracts terms were 2015-2020 and 2020-2021 respectively. Zing was also contracted by Fáilte Ireland from 2009 to 2012.

As a county councillor, Ó Muirí was only required to disclose contracts with local authorities, and it is unclear if Zing has received contracts from any other public bodies since 2007.