A SENIOR DUP executive member wore a wire in order to leak details of the party’s meeting to loyalist activist Jamie Bryson last night, the BBC is reporting.
The DUP’s 130-strong executive met at the Larchfield estate in Co Down, where party leader Jeffrey Donaldson briefed members over UK government proposals aimed at ending Stormont’s powersharing impasse.
After more than five hours of intensive negotiations, Donaldson told reporters that a deal had been struck after 1am.
However, efforts by the party to keep details of the meeting secret appeared seriously undermined when loyalist activist Bryson, who is a vocal opponent of the deal, began posting live updates from the meeting on X, formerly Twitter.
Bryson tweeted that the meeting was halted several times and attempts were made to find out who was leaking the information to him, with those present believing that it was being relayed from phones and calling for devices to be switched off.
Bryson also claimed that Donaldson told the meeting that members of the PSNI were trying to “block phone signals” at the gathering.
A PSNI spokesperson told The Journal: “The Police Service of Northern Ireland has no involvement in this.”
BBC News is reporting that it understands the “senior” DUP member who leaked the meeting to Bryson was wearing a wire.
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme this morning, Bryson confirmed that senior members of the DUP relayed the information to him, but refused to disclose their identities.
“Senior people in the DUP felt so exercised about this and felt that this was such a defining moment that they took the step that they did,” he said.
“Obviously I wasn’t in the room, the venue clearly wasn’t bugged by some hidden device. So there was clearly senior people – plural – within the DUP who felt so strongly about this, that they took this extraordinary unprecedented step.”
Speaking to the press following the meeting last night, Donaldson said that what was being reported by Bryson “does not reflect what was happening in that meeting”.
"What was being reported on social media does not reflect what went on in that meeting"
— Niamh Campbell (@niamh_journo) January 30, 2024
Jeffrey Donaldson gets passionate about tonight's party executive leak and says the word 'betrayal' was used to describe whoever that person may be #DUP @BelTel pic.twitter.com/21GrhZfJEK
“There are things on social media tonight purporting to have been said in that meeting that are a misrepresentation of what was said or what was happening,” he said.
“It disappoints me that perhaps there may have been someone in that meeting who was prepared to share some information with others outside of the meeting.
“You use the word betrayal. No one tonight in our meeting at any stage, or in meetings of my party officers has ever used that word. But it was used tonight to describe the person who was leaking out information that was properly part of a private meeting.”
Bryson is the editor of Unionist Voice, a monthly unionist newsletter and online site. He is a critic of the Good Friday Agreement, pro-Brexit and opposed to the Windsor Framework, saying it “does not restore the Acts of Union” and “entrenches the subjugation”.
He came to prominence after playing an active role in organising Northern Ireland’s Union flag protests in 2012 and 2013.
The demonstrations were staged by loyalists unhappy at a decision to restrict the number of days the Union flag was flown over Belfast City Hall.
Bryson was arrested and charged with six offences relating to the flag protests, leading to him spending over a month in prison before being released on bail.
In March 2015, he was given a six month suspended prison sentence after being found guilty of taking part in unlawful public processions due to his role in the protests.
In 2015, Bryson gave testimony to a Stormont inquiry about Nama’s dealings in Northern Ireland after making allegations about the sale of its properties.
He told Stormont’s Finance Committee that then-first minister Peter Robinson was one of five people who received a payment as a result the €1.6 billion sale of Nama’s Northern Ireland portfolio.
Robinson strongly denied the claims, describing them as “scurrilous and unfounded”.
At the time, Sinn Féin MLA Daithí McKay was the chair of the Stormont Finance Committee.
In 2016, The Irish News produced evidence from Twitter exchanges which it claimed showed that McKay organised a back-channel by which Bryson could hone his testimony.
McKay later resigned and was suspended from the party after the allegations.
Bryson has been criticised for comments he made on social media about the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), saying that they were not terrorists and describing them as “patriots that defended us”.
In 2018, he was arrested by the PSNI investigating criminality linked to the UVF in East Belfast.
As part of the arrest, police seized materials from Bryson linked to the Kingsmill massacre, where 11 protestant workers were systematically shot after their bus was stopped by men dressed in military clothing on their way towards the village of Bessbrook in Co Armagh.
Bryson claimed the material was seized unlawfully, and subsequently launched High Court action against the PSNI and the Security Industry Authority (SIA).
He argued that because he was a journalist, a different legal processes should have been followed to allow his home to be searched.
A lawyer representing the PSNI and SIA said they did not know Bryson was a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) when they applied for warrants to raid his properties.
In May 2019, the High Court of Northern Ireland declared that the warrants were wrongfully obtained.
Bryson has been critical of the Windsor Framework since it was adopted last year.
In a letter to unionist leaders last October, Bryson wrote: “The unionist base, according to all polls, stands firmly behind unionism’s principled stand – (Northern Ireland) protocol or power sharing, never both.
“A surrendering on these issues by returning to Stormont would – in our analysis – ignite significant instability, and without any doubt precipitate a return to mass street protests.”
In a strongly-worded response, Donaldson said “anyone who thinks that they can exert influence on policy or intimidate our party by making such threats is sadly mistaken”.
In the same month, Bryson gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which was investigating the effect of paramilitary activity and organised crime on society in Northern Ireland.
He told the committee he was worried that the process of transition of paramilitary groups towards civilianisation had halted while concerns over post-Brexit trading arrangements remained.
He said that paramilitary leaders had told him that young loyalists had been “beating their doors down wanting to join the organisations to fight against the Irish Sea border”.
Contains reporting from the Press Association
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