Don’t dare call Jeffrey Epstein a paedophile: The inside story of Northern Ireland celebrity lawyer Paul Tweed's work to clean up the vile billionaire’s image, threatening the media on his behalf. Neither man would ever have thought we'd get to see this.

In Saturday's Belfast Telegraph: An important and unusually long read on Jeffrey Epstein and a highly significant link to Northern Ireland. I've been working on this all week and it involves a matter of substantial public importance.

🎧 Podcast (no paywall) with @ciarandunbarrach.bsky.social: How Frank Cushnahan was cleared after four-month Nama fraud trial - and what comes next.

Weeks into Nama trial, Frank Cushnahan and his lawyers took a big gamble which can only now be explained - but the former top business figure's legal problems aren't yet over.

Breaking News: Four months after his fraud trial began, a jury has cleared veteran Belfast business figure Frank Cushnahan of dishonestly failing to disclose he was in line for millions of pounds from the sale of Nama’s Northern Ireland loans in 2014.

There is a compelling practical case for an Irish passport office in Belfast. None of the historic objections endures to any significant extent. It is increasingly hard to explain this situation when there is such an office in Dublin, in Cork & in London.

Stormont can’t go on like this. It is a broken and a hapless administration whose rambling incoherence is now excruciating. The Executive is at open war with itself. The 'legislative' Assembly has spent just 9 minutes this year discussing NI legislation.

After almost two full days of deliberations, the jury in the Nama fraud trial - now just involving one charge against Frank Cushnahan - still hasn't been able to reach a verdict. Madam Justice McBride has sent them home for the weekend.

Frank Cushnahan has “a big mouth” and “builds himself up into something that isn’t true”, his lawyer has told a jury as the senior business figure’s defence came to a close in Belfast Crown Court.

The Belfast Telegraph - read and appreciated far beyond Belfast. Thanks, @thejeremyvine.bsky.social.

On 16 February, I'll be discussing the arguments for and against a united Ireland in Drumalis - a fascinating place in Larne which once was a grand home owned by Ulster Scots Presbyterians & from where the 1914 UVF gun-running was organised, but now is a Catholic retreat centre.

Ex-Nama adviser Frank Cushnahan ‘spouted nonsense’, his lawyer tells jury, because ‘he can’t help himself’ – but case against him is ‘hopeless’. Barrister asks why his elderly client would go into the witness box against Crown KC ‘at the top of his game’.

The NI civil service is going backwards, costing vastly more and employing more staff while outcomes get worse, a devastating audit report reveals. After RHI, Jayne Brady was appointed to reform & costs £290,000 a year - but a key failure is leadership.

Despite the DUP's deception, the Irish Sea border is hardening — and the Stormont committee it trumpeted is excruciating to behold. EU rules are neither being enforced strictly nor removed. The situation remains a mess that's awkward for everyone.

NI public sector workers could share in up to £100m in compensation – but have just days to apply for potentially getting it, a senior solicitor has said. The case centres on 'hurt feelings' over how super-generous final salary pensions were ended.

Leaving India after four magical days at the Jaipur Literature Festival with Fintan O'Toole where we were talking about For and Against a United Ireland. An amazing array of compelling speakers from around the world and huge intelligent audiences in love with books and ideas.

The Irish unity dilemma almost no one has considered, but which would impact everyone

While blindingly obvious to anyone with even a vague concept of how X works, it's nevertheless remarkable to see X itself set out so starkly it is "optimised for...hatred & calls to (or justifications of) violence...the design isn't neutral — it's profit-optimized for emotion": x.com/i/grok/share...

Why doesn't Sinn Féin want to tax the rich? A once-radical party which had a quasi-Marxist economic policy is now getting the poor to subsidise the rich. SF not only won't target wealthy people or huge corporations - but is making clear it doesn't want to. What's going on?

@fotoole.bsky.social discusses the preconditions surrounding the possability of a border poll. You can watch the re-broadcast of #RTÉTwip at 11:05pm on @rteone and at 6:30 and 10:00pm on the RTÉ News Channel 📺

Journalist @fotoole.bsky.social speaks on the financial factors involved with a United Ireland. You can watch the re-broadcast of #RTÉTwip at 11:05pm on @rteone and at 6:30 and 10:00pm on the RTÉ News Channel 📺

Journalist @fotoole.bsky.social on the possible benefits that a United Ireland could bestow on future generations. You can watch the re-broadcast of #RTÉTwip at 11:05pm on @rteone and at 6:30 and 10:00pm on the RTÉ News Channel 📺

@sjamcbride.bsky.social's thoughts on potential reignited violence as a result of discussing a United Ireland. You can watch the re-broadcast of #RTÉTwip at 11:05pm on @rteone and at 6:30 and 10:00pm on the RTÉ News Channel 📺

Journalist @sjamcbride.bsky.social speaks about the possibility of Northern Ireland's secretary of state calling for a border poll. You can watch the re-broadcast of #RTÉTwip at 11:05pm on @rteone and at 6:30 and 10:00pm on the RTÉ News Channel 📺

Today on #RTETwip @aine-lawlor.bsky.social speaks to journalists @sjamcbride.bsky.social and @fotoole.bsky.social as well as minister of state Neale Richmond, Sinn Féin TD Rose Conway Walsh and DUP MLA Phillip Brett. #Unity #UnitedIreland will be up for discussion. Tune in today at noon 📺

🏏And now for something totally different... having fun talking cricket and politics in the best part of the Stormont Estate with the terrific Irish Cricket Podcast.

An intriguing story from @markhennessy.bsky.social about a highly unusual move by the Irish Government: A declassified file naming Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly as an IRA leader has effectively been reclassified by being withdrawn from the Irish National Archives.

This year we're likely to see Stormont stagnate, but a potential tactical walkout and a splintering electoral landscape could reshape politics as the Executive flounders: Assessing the opportunities and threats for NI's eight political leaders in 2026.

Happening this spring! On March 14th, authors @fotoole.bsky.social and @sjamcbride.bsky.social will discuss FOR AND AGAINST A UNITED IRELAND at the Irish Arts Center in #NewYork. Their #NewBook presents the case for and against #Irish #Unification. Order your tickets at: production.irisharts...

One of the IRA’s most feared commanders blocked a proposal to hack into the systems of one of Britain’s biggest banks to steal vast sums in the 1980s, the Sinn Féin man behind the plan has claimed.

The stage version of For and Against a United Ireland is coming to America: If you're in New York in March, come see Fintan O'Toole & yours truly arguing both sides ahead of St Patrick's Day. Most tickets have gone but there are still some left:

Extraordinary documents I've discovered among declassified files show Boris Johnson's Brexit bruiser David Frost must have known it would be hugely problematic for Northern Ireland. In 2004 he gave Downing Street what proved to be a prescient warning...

Declassified files reveal government’s towering hypocrisy: It has cosied up to loyalist terror bosses it claims to want to crush. Top officials discussed meeting what they described as "UDA brigadiers", with no pretence they were anything but criminals.

The real significance of Mike Nesbitt’s departure as Ulster Unionist leader is what it means for the publicly unseen moves to engineer unionist unity.

Available soon! Renowned journalists Fintan O’Toole and Sam McBride provide an accessible and measured approach to the polarized #Debate about #Irish #Unification. @sjamcbride.bsky.social @fotoole.bsky.social Learn more and preorder FOR AND AGAINST A UNITED IRELAND at: undpress.nd.edu/9780...

Bertie Ahern posted a Union flag to Tony Blair, leaving Downing Street baffled as to what they would do with the "bizarre" unexpected gift from the then Taoiseach.

Tony Blair was “horrified” to discover in 1998 that almost no senior British Cabinet minister had gone to Northern Ireland for two decades - and ordered his senior ministers to prioritise travelling to NI.

More than five years after the Good Friday Agreement, Downing Street knew the IRA was still engaged in mutilation, developing weapons, gathering intelligence, targeting and intimidation, with Tony Blair telling Adams and McGuinness “they must stop”, declassified files reveal.

Two decades before the emergence of what has been described as the ‘Ooh, ahh, up the Ra’ generation, the British Ambassador to Dublin warned of the growing retrospective legitimisation of IRA terrorism in the Irish Republic, declassified file shows.

An "outrageous" secret letter from Taoiseach Albert Reynolds to Prime Minister John Major in which he denounced a decision by NI's Lord Chief Justice led to a blunt response after the LCJ wrote privately to the Government, declassified files reveal.

Whitehall departments effectively abandoned Northern Ireland after the Chernobyl disaster, failing to issue warnings or even answer the phone as a radioactive cloud headed across the Irish Sea, declassified files have revealed.

Less than a year after Gerry Adams gave evidence on oath in an Irish courtroom that he was never a member of the IRA, a newly-declassified Government file shows that he was described as a senior member of the IRA’s Army Council in the early 1990s.

On his last day as @belfasttelegraph.co.uk editor, Eoin Brannigan reflects on five & a half remarkable years - which began from his home in Dublin amid lockdown, involved crucial legal victories, and ultimately transformed the paper for the better with 16,500 paying subscribers.

A senior SDLP figure was involved in a clandestine attempt to get a top Irish businessman into the House of Lords, declassified files reveal. The highly secretive discussions ultimately failed, despite the Monaco-based businessman agreeing to be ennobled.

Despite having long been secretly talking directly to Martin McGuinness, as late as 2005 Jeffrey Donaldson told the Government that even indirect talks with Sinn Féin were unthinkable, declassified files reveal.

Jim Wells was put forward to be a DUP peer more than 20 years ago but was rejected, declassified government files reveal. Wells confirms that he knew about being proposed for the Lords only later when Edwin Poots phoned him out of the blue.

Declassified file: Civil servants were told a quarter of a century ago that Dublin Airport would pull more and more passengers from Northern Ireland unless there was a single Belfast Airport - but they fought to keep two smaller Belfast airports.

UDA ‘brigadiers’ declined McAleese-organised coach, fearing it looked ‘too much like a UDA day-trip’ amid Irish golf and social outings for gangsters. Senior NIO official suggested the only reason the British Government couldn’t do this so openly was that it couldn’t get away with it.

They knew: Declassified files prove Stormont understood Lough Neagh’s pollution decades ago – but then made it worse. Stormont explicitly knew that intensive agriculture was killing our waterways, but then used public money to encourage more factory farms.

Stormont’s minister for copy and paste: Liz Kimmins uses stock ‘blame the Brits’ answer 132 times in a year, prompting ludicrous Assembly responses. Almost whatever the question, ‘British austerity’ is the response. This is pathetic, but also revelatory.