The Liberal was launched in January 2014 by Leo Sherlock, who built and ran it single-handedly as a sole trader and took the name, he has said, from the true meaning of classical liberalism. It grew quickly on social media, passing 100,000 Facebook followers inside six months, and Sherlock became a public figure in his own right, appearing on RTÉ's Late Late Show to declare his support for Donald Trump. The site states it is owned by the Locksher Group, an investment firm also belonging to Sherlock and registered in Belfast. In January 2017 it became the subject of copyright infringement proceedings brought simultaneously by Independent Newspapers Ltd, publisher of the Irish Independent, and by the courts news service CCC Nuacht, both alleging it had passed off their reporting as its own. The CCC Nuacht case concerned four articles published between 2015 and 2016. Sherlock strenuously denied the claims, and the site went offline during the controversy, which he attributed to a scheduled technical update. Today, The Liberal is mainly focused on immigration and asylum, crime and courts, criticism of RTÉ and the mainstream Irish press, the cost of living and emigration, and health service failures, from their base in Ireland. One interesting fact: the name is drawn from classical liberalism and the About page promises free speech and free thought, while MBFC files the site at the far right of its scale and lists it as a questionable source.