William J. Kelly’s Twitter account (@WilliamJKelly) claims roughly 2,200 followers, but an analysis by the bot-checker StatusPeople finds that 33 percent (roughly 736) of them are suspicious with another 27 percent not active Twitter users. His active follower count—the number of people actually possibly reading what he writes—therefore is likely closer to 800, 40 percent of his claimed total.

Kelly has claimed to be either an “Emmy award-winning producer” or “producer of Emmy award-winning television.” This creates the misleading implication that Kelly’s production house won a prestigious national honor like a Primetime Emmy, awarded in Los Angeles amid red carpets and starlets. That is not the case.

The Chicago/Midwest Regional Emmy publicity rules implicitly acknowledge that failure to disclose the particular award as Kelly does can create misleading implications. They state:

“All publicity, advertising or any written reference undertaken by nominees and award recipients to the Emmy® Awards, must clearly state that the awarded achievement is for a Chicago/Midwest Regional Emmy® Award.”

By omitting this pesky detail, he gives the mistaken impression that’s he’s on-par with actual journalists, worthy of a prestigious award given to the likes of Barbara Walters and Morley Safer.

Kelly currently hosts the commentary show “Power Player” on Chicago-area television station CLTV. If the arrangements for airing it are similar to his prior television and radio efforts, “Power Player” airs on brokered airtime—Kelly pays the network, rather than the network paying him.

In 2010, Kelly gained fleeting national notoriety for accosting future Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel while claiming to be a reporter for radio station WIND-AM. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Kelly actually purchased airtime on WIND, and the station’s manager criticized Kelly for identifying himself as affiliated with the station. The manager, Jeff Reisman, told the Sun-Times: “It was wrong for Kelly to call himself a reporter at WIND when he does not work for the station.”

Chicagoland Radio and Media reported that Kelly also paid for airtime for a sports show, his lifestyle show, and a radio version of the lifestyle show.

Kelly presents himself as an ideologically pure, crusading right-wing “Tea Party” conservative. He has condemned fellow Republicans for efforts to work within Chicago and Illinois’s Democratic-controlled politics, denouncing them as RINOs—Republicans In Name Only.

In 2010, Kelly ran a right-wing primary campaign against moderate Republican and former Illinois Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, who was running for Illinois State Comptroller. (Topinka won the general election.) During the campaign, Kelly accused another opponent, Oak Grove Village Trustee Jim Dodge, of being a straw candidate to divide the anti-Topinka vote, donating to Topinka, and supporting Democrats.

Kelly subsequently denounced Topinka’s record as Comptroller, on at least one occasion demanding Topinka cross over to the Democratic Party. Kelly also explored challenging Topinka in the 2014 Republican primaries. (He didn’t.)

Curiously, Topinka’s campaign committee (Citizens for Judy Baar Topinka) later disclosed paying Kelly’s production company Rev Productions $20,000 in two installments during 2013—both after Kelly’s will-he-won’t-he routine on a primary challenge. The payments (and rumors of other deals between Topinka and Kelly) led former Kelly sidekick Warner Todd Huston to accuse William J. Kelly of being a hypocrite:

“We have a guy going around saying that even a single dollar donated from the ‘wrong’ people makes a candidate a sell out, a RINO, free of any principles, and a traitor to conservative values. Yet that same guy is taking thousands of dollars in donations from a politician that he has repeatedly said is an example of corruption and all that is wrong with the Illinois GOP.”