Far-right fisherman Kieran Kelly, who is originally from Helvick, near Dungarvan, emigrated to the US in the 1990s but returned to Ireland for a couple of years over decade ago and set up a group called Anti-Drugs Movement (ADM).
He has lived in various countries, including Indonesia, but claimed this week he was travelling back to the US where he is now a naturalised citizen.
Last year, a US court ordered him to pay almost €500,000 for making repeated false claims about a rival business on social media.
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Jim Gavin and his wife Jennifer canvassing in Dublin
Despite not living in Ireland, Kelly has strong views on Irish politics and society and describes the Taoiseach and Tánaiste as “treasonous bastards”, Sinn Féin as “traitors”, gardaí as “pigs”, Muslims as “ragheads” and “cockroaches” and the media as “state controlled”.
The ADM group, which initially had backing of dissident republican-linked figures, got embroiled in a feud with Sligo gang boss Barry Young and notorious Dublin criminal Mark Desmond.
However, Kelly later fell out with his republican associates and disbanded his group before becoming involved in anti-immigrant protests.
Mr Gavin, who is the Fianna Fáil backed candidate in the presidential election, said this week that he has sent legal letters to social media companies after “invented and utterly false” smears of a “very personal nature” which contained misinformation about himself, family and friends were posted online.
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Kieran Kelly made ‘malicious’ accusations against candidate Jim Gavin
Kelly, who was behind some of the posts, said this week that he wants to launch a new political party and would take down the Irish government.
Kelly was supporting Maria Stein’s unsuccessful bid to get on the presidential election ballot and said he spoke to her by phone recently. Ms Stein confirmed she took a call from Kelly in an interview on RTÉ this week.
“I got a call from this man I didn’t know anything about him before,” she said.
“He told me he was involved with other Irish-American businessmen who are looking to set up a political party I think in Ireland. I listened to him he didn’t mention anything about any other candidates.”
It is not Kelly first foray into activism and over the years he has been involved in anti-drugs activism, anti-immigrant activism and environmental activism.
More than a decade ago he set up the ADM and vowed to take on drugs gangs in Ireland.
He initially had the backing of republican figures, including Aaron Nealis, who was injured in a gun attack which claimed the life of former Real IRA Dublin boss Alan Ryan in 2012.
ADM became embroiled in a feud with the Sligo gang led by Barry Young, who had recruited notorious Dublin gangster Mark Desmond as muscle.
Mark Desmond
Speaking to the Sunday World at the time about the feud, Kelly said: “The Desmond/Young gang is in shreds at the moment and we’re going to destroy this gang. Desmond and Young are still about but they’re in hiding.
“There is a steady escalation of clashes between anti-drugs activists and this gang and other gangs. We’ll do whatever we have to, to stop them.”
He told the Sunday World the group was focusing at the time on five specific drug gangs. He said shots had been fired at anti-drugs activists over taking on dealers.
Kelly said he didn’t trust gardaí so ADM were taking it upon themselves to take on gangs.
Desmond was later shot dead in a separate dispute while Young is serving an 11-year sentence for organised crime offences.
Despite the anti-drug stance of Kelly’s group, he bizarrely launched the group with the help of a convicted drug dealer.
Locals heckled him after they pointed out that a convicted drug dealer helped organise his first anti- drugs march in Dungarvan in 2014.
Keith Keohan, from Convent Lodge, Mitchell St, Dungarvan, set up the speaker system and stood beside Kelly as he made a speech saying everyone in the town knew who the drug dealers were and they had to be stopped.
In November 2013 – just months before the Dungarvan march – Keohan was convicted over a cannabis haul of €44,500.
Locals at the march also heckled Kelly, saying a second person assisting with the march was also a known drug dealer in Dungarvan.
Kelly later admitted Keohan was a drug dealer and said he was no longer welcome in the group.
Republican figure Aaron Nealis
There was further controversy for ADM when a Waterford grandmother said her life had been made hell after Kelly wrongly labelled her a drug dealer.
He has been naming and picturing drug dealers online and warning people to get out of the drug trade.
However, not all those he named were big-time drug dealers or even drug dealers at all.
One woman whose details were posted online was an innocent grandmother who he falsely described as the “oldest drug dealer in Dungarvan”.
Kelly, who had previously gone on radio to say he would happily pass information onto gardaí about drug dealers, wrote a message to the grandmother and her daughter saying: “I know you both are lowlife rats for the Gardaí.”
The grandmother said Kelly posted her details after she confronted him about putting her daughter’s life in danger by telling drug dealers that her daughter had passed on information about them to Kelly.
He secretly recorded the woman’s daughter telling him about drug dealers in the town and then released it which led to her fleeing her home in fear.
Kelly later defended his actions to the Sunday World claiming the woman’s daughter had given him information she said she had heard about his son’s death which she later withdrew.
Kelly’s son Wayne (16) was found dead in the water in Dungarvan in November 2007. The death was officially ruled as death by misadventure at the time but Kelly insists he was murdered.
Kelly was in the US when his son was found dead and when he returned to Ireland he offered €10,000 reward for information on his son’s death.
The woman who came to him with information, who was not in Ireland when Wayne Kelly died, said she had been told he been assaulted on the night he was found dead.
Kelly later fell out with republicans who had backed his ADM group and disbanded the group.
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Kieran Kelly made ‘malicious’ accusations against candidate Jim Gavin
He then became more involved anti-immigrant activism and helped organise a march against Muslims and Roma people which he called an “anti-ISIS” protest in Waterford in 2015. He was also one of the people who marched on the home of a Roma family in Waterford city the previous year.
Three families had to be evacuated from the house after a mob kicked in the door and smashed the windows of the home.
Kelly made a number of rants against Muslims around that time calling them “ragheads”, “cockroaches” and “the biggest danger ever faced to our people”.
He said he wants to set up an Irish version of British broadcaster GB News and broadcast it from the US and also wants to set up a new political party. He also claims he has information which will bring down the government on Monday.
Jim Gavin and Kieran Kelly
Today’s News in 90 Seconds – September 29th