Garda cyber crime expert suspended over Harris hate tweets

A Senior member of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau has been suspended after he made sinister online threats against Tánaiste Simon Harris, Extra.ie can reveal.

Civilian Jonathan O’Neill, an executive officer at the GNCCB, called Mr Harris – whose family have been subjected to other vile threats – a ‘c***’ and said the fact the Tánaiste is walking the streets ‘without fear for his life is a failure of this country’.

Mr O’Neill also abused a well-known whistleblower, calling him a ‘psychopath’ who will ‘one day be beheaded by the freaks he advocates for’.

In one post, the Kildare man openly told his followers he that he works for the ‘Irish police’ and suggested that he can trace IP addresses.

The revelations come just weeks after Mr Harris and his family were advised not to return home until security checks had been completed following chilling threats that were made against them.

It also comes just over a week after a woman appeared in court charged with making threats to the Fine Gael leader and his family. A source in the Tánaiste’s office yesterday described the threats from a Garda member as ‘incredible’ and ‘absolutely shocking’.

They told Extra.ie: ‘The Tánaiste being threatened by people working in An Garda Síochána and then not even being told about it is incredible.

‘The Tánaiste is obviously aware of many threats, but he wasn’t aware that they were now coming from within the Garda.’

In response to queries from Extra.ie, gardaí this weekend confirmed they are ‘assessing the nature and the content of online activity by an identified person’.

A spokeswoman also confirmed a ‘member of Garda staff’ in Dublin has been suspended.

Extra.ie can reveal that the Garda employee, who joined the GNCCB as an ‘executive officer’ last year, made two separate threats against the Tánaiste.

On August 11 last, under a news article about a meeting the then-foreign affairs minister had with Ireland India Council following a spate of racially motivated attacks, Mr O’Neill wrote: ‘The fact that this c*** walks the streets without fear for his life is a failure of this country.’

Just over a month later, on September 15, he wrote on an X account under another news article about Mr Harris: ‘How this man is still walking around is beyond me.’

The Garda cyber crime bureau employee also posted threatening and abusive messages about the health service whistleblower Shane Corr, The Late Late Show presenter Patrick Kielty, and the journalist Joe O’Shea.

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In posts directed at Mr Corr, Mr O’Neill called the whistleblower a ‘freak’, said ‘karma will be sweet’ and told him his ‘time is coming’.

He also commented that the only solution for people with an opposing opinion to his is to ‘wipe them out’.

In another foul-mouthed threat, the Garda employee called Mr Kielty a ‘pretentious c***’ and told the TV presenter: ‘Your day and your leftist w****r allies’ days are numbered.’

Under a separate post about Covid vaccines, he said journalist O’Shea ‘shouldn’t be allowed walk down the streets without fear for his life’.

As far back as 2015 – nine years before he began working with gardaí – Mr O’Neill commented on Facebook in relation to water protests at the time: ‘Time to give these thugs in uniform [gardaí] what’s been coming to them for a long while!!!’ In recent months, Mr O’Neill boasted on X that is he is a member of the ‘Irish police force’ and can trace IP addresses.

He has also written misogynistic comments about the Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s wife and former US First Lady, Michelle Obama.

After he was threatened by Mr O’Neill, whistleblower Shane Corr made an official complaint at a Dublin Garda station on Tuesday, November 18.

Two days later, Mr O’Neill’s X account was taken down on the same day Extra.ie made an inquiry to the Garda Press Office. The whistleblower later received a call from the garda who had taken his complaint to confirm Mr O’Neill is a Garda employee at the GNCCB.

Speaking to Extra.ie this week, Mr Corr said of the threats made against him and some wellknown politicians and media personalities: ‘He goes from zero to 100 depending on what he is replying to.

‘The stuff he wrote to me scared the living daylights out of me.’

The whistleblower said he was ‘deeply shocked’ by the threats, and that his solicitor advised him to report it to gardaí.

‘So that’s what I did,’ he added. ‘I was at the window in the lobby [of the Garda station], and I showed the garda the sheets [print outs of Mr O’Neill’s threats]. I told him [the garda on duty], “either he works with gardaí or he’s gone to a great deal of bother to make it look like he does.”

‘Two and half days after I went to the gardaí, the [social media] account came down, an account that was up since 2009.’

Mr Corr said that he was particularly alarmed at the ‘brazen’ way in which Mr O’Neill openly boasted about working with An Garda Síochána.

‘He identifies himself by saying he’s a member of the Irish police, now that’s brazen,’ Mr Corr said.

‘Frankly, I think this guy can say what he absolutely wants and he hasn’t let his job in the [Garda National] Cyber Crime Bureau stop him.

‘If you look through his account, he talks about taking on the guards and [says] “the guards should get what’s coming to them”. He also mentions one guard in Kildare as power hungry… and that is since he started working with them.’

Mr Corr described the threats made against Mr Harris and journalist O’Shea as ‘vile’ and ‘extremely threatening’.

‘He also suggests he can get into people’s IP address. He makes vile comments about the Taoiseach’s wife and other women, which shouldn’t be aired.’

The Tánaiste and his staff were not aware of the threats made by the Garda member until they received queries on the matter from Extra.ie. A source in Mr Harris’s office said the latest threats are a serious concern to the Tánaiste, who had asked gardaí to brief him on such matters.

They told the Extra.ie: ‘The Tánaiste’s worry about all of these things is that, genuinely, some day somebody will be act upon these things, possibly towards him, but much more likely towards somebody he knows.

‘The last threats that were made public, a lot of the more ghastly facts of those threats, were not made public.’

The source said the ‘level of some of the online behaviour towards the Tánaiste is just incredible’.

They added: ‘[Former MMA fighter] Conor McGregor tweeted that Simon should never be allowed to walk the streets of Ireland safely again.

‘And in the 24 hours after McGregor tweeted this, he received about 18,000 tweets directed at him, and 75 per cent of them were originating from outside of Ireland.’

Gardaí this weekend confirmed they are ‘assessing the nature and the content of online activity by an identified person, which has been brought to the attention of An Garda Síochána’.

A Garda spokeswoman added: ‘As this assessment is ongoing An Garda Síochána cannot make any further comment. A member of Garda staff in the Dublin Region has been suspended from work.’

Additional reporting by John Lee.

*This article was originally published on Extra.ie.