The happiest man in Dublin over the last few days, one might imagine, is the alleged Russian agent in the national parliament codenamed Cobalt.
For a few days there, Cobalt’s position was looking fairly precarious. The net, it seemed, was closing in. One Senator in particular – a suspect in some political Whatsapp groups – was speculated to have deleted some tweets which saw him pictured with two alluring young Russian ladies called Anastasia at an event – which took place well before the current unpleasantness in Ukraine – to celebrate “Russia Day”. A bad look, some people might agree, in the context of fevered speculation about Russian spies in our midst.
Of course, the Senator in question is likely entirely innocent of any crime other than the natural heterosexual male inclination to be photographed with attractive young women, and there is certainly no evidence of any kind in the public domain that he has done anything improper at all. Nevertheless, he, alongside a TD with an alleged reputation for skirt-chasing and another TD generally regarded as the sort of eejit who might get caught up in something like that were all having their names circulated in various Whatsapp groups. Perhaps none of them are guilty. Perhaps one of them is. Perhaps the true villain is sitting back and chuckling about it all with his handlers.
In any case, those handlers could hardly have done a better job for Cobalt than if they’d gone into the Sinn Fein organisation and hypnotised them into doing just about everything wrong that could possibly be done wrong in the context of a scandal about child protection and sexual impropriety.
We learned this week that the former Sinn Fein leader in the Seanad – as he then was – was using his spare time and energy to send sexual text messages to a 17-year-old boy.
Not only that, but he was also, Mary Lou McDonald revealed, sending other sexual texts of an inappropriate and unsolicited nature to another young man, though on this occasion the seductive missives were at least dispatched to a fellow of legal age.
Sinn Fein, upon learning of this, promptly sacked him, and persuaded him to resign his Seanad seat.
Of course, a party has no formal power to make a person resign their Seanad seat. The most the Shinners could have done, in the normal course of events, would have been to eject him from their party and to render him an independent Senator until his term expired. This is what other parties do, generally: Lucinda Creighton and Billy Timmins and Fidelma Healy-Eames were amongst those rendered “Independent” by Fine Gael back in 2013 for their refusal to vote for that year’s abortion legislation. They were not compelled by the party, nor could they have been, to resign their seats.
I mention this in passing because after our sexting Shinner resigned his seat, on mental health grounds, Mary Lou McDonald and the Sinn Fein organisation issued glowing tributes to him.
Now, they knew at this stage that he had committed sexual improprieties, and they knew that said sexual improprieties involved a child. Nevertheless, they extolled his character in public.
Mary Lou says that this was done out of compassion: In her version of events, the party was concerned for the sexting Senator’s mental health and wellbeing, and presumably did not wish to expose such a person to public shaming.
Curious, then, that she’s reversed her position on that, and the very same man, with his very same mental health issues, is now being denounced as a sex pest from the seat of the leader of the official opposition. He publicly identified himself an hour or so before Mary Lou took to her feet, presumably in the knowledge that he was about to be named (briefings that he would be named had circulated all day, and his name was in any case widely known in media circles).
His recovery, in Mary Lou’s estimation, must be quite something.
Certainly, I can’t imagine Sinn Fein would want anyone to think that a grubby little blackmail kind of deal might ever take place, where a person is urged to resign their seat or else their horny kid-texting might become public. That, we’d all agree, would be most improper – which is why we can take comfort in the fact that Mary Lou is only naming the sexting Senator now on the basis that she presumably thinks his health can stand it, and there’s no further risk to his mental health. Not, you know, for any political reasons. No, siree.
All of which brings me back, of course, to our Russophile friend, Mr. Cobalt.
Yesterday, separate to the matter of the sexting Senator, the Sinn Fein leader stood accused by another ex-Shinner, Brian Stanley, of “abusing” her Oireachtas privilege in an effort to smear him.
Oireachtas privilege, basically, is the notion that an elected TD in Dáil Eireann can say what he or she likes, about whomever he or she likes, without having any fear of being sued for defamation. Were you or I elected TDs, we would face no legal consequences were we to stand in the Dáil chamber and declare Mrs. Jones down the road a murderer and a thief. She could not sue us. The worst that could happen us is that which is happening Mary Lou – that someone else might accuse us of abusing our privilege.
Cobalt, at present, has been un-named because those in the media who know who he is do not feel that they can publish, on the grounds that he might sue them for defamation. But Cobalt could not sue his colleagues, were they to name him in the chamber. Something to ponder, perhaps – especially if you’re one of those TDs and Senators currently the subject of feverish speculation, given that such speculation is certainly wrong in one or two cases. There is only one Cobalt, so somebody somewhere is being gossiped about unfairly.
In any case, this week couldn’t have gone much better for our spy, assuming he exists. And it couldn’t have gone much worse for Mary Lou and the gang. You’d nearly wonder if the Kremlin was full of Fine Gael supporters, all along.