From the late Charlie Kirk, April 2025, following the charging of Russell Brand:
Every single allegation against Russell Brand concerns events that took place twenty years ago or more. None of them existed while he was a famous actor or comedian. All of them emerged once he became a highly visible dissident on politics and Covid.
Brand has been forthright about his behavior as a young man, but the idea he was a serial rapist is absurd and, more importantly, completely unprovable.
This is a political prosecution, plain and simple.
Kirk’s Turning Point USA organisation kept faith with Brand, inviting him to lead prayers from the stage the following October, shortly after Kirk’s murder; he also enjoyed the support of Tucker Carlson (who recently published Brand’s book How to Become a Christian in Seven Days), and just weeks before his trial he spoke at an event with Robert Kennedy Jr.
This was not just a matter of “innocent until proven guilty”, or even “we can never know”: those around Brand took the view that there was no case to answer, and they spoke of the complainants with contempt – thus in 2024 Dan Wootton told his viewers that the investigation was an example of police acting “regardless of the lack of evidence or credibility from accusers driven by overwhelming malice”. This was despite earlier allegations (from different complainants) that aired on Channel 4 Dispatches in 2023, including details of how one accuser had made a statement at a rape crisis centre the day after an alleged encounter in Los Angeles in 2012, and of what appears to be a text message from Brand in which he apologised for what had occurred. The Dispatches documentary did not prove the criminal allegations that eventually came to trial, but they were obviously grounds for circumspection.
Claims of “political prosecution” were also made by Brand himself on the same day as Kirk’s post, in a video “response” posted just after he was charged:
We’re very fortunate in a way to live in a time where there’s so little trust in the British Government… How do you feel about your legal system right now? How do you feel about some of the high-profile cases that are not being pursued and prosecuted. How do you feel that the Southport murders were handled? How do you feel about the government of Keir Starmer?
…I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord. I was a drug addict and sex addict and an imbecile. But what I never was, was a rapist. I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.
Brand appears here to be alluding to cover-up conspiracy narratives in relation to Southport (previously discussed here). It seemed to me at the time that this invocation, alongside his apparent belief that looking into his eyes would have some persuasive power, was so distasteful and trivialising that it was a red flag in itself, although respect for the legal process inhibited comment.
The decision to prosecute was made by the Crown Prosecution Service based on evidence received from the police, and that police investigation was launched after complainants had come forward. This has happened to various celebrities in recent years (with diverse outcomes), and the events leading up to Brand’s trial are thus quite explicable without needing the suggestion that he was targeted by the authorities because of his political opinions.
A weaker version of the theory is that there was some hidden element in the earlier decision made by journalists to investigate Brand, the outcomes of which inspired the trial complainants to come forward. Thus Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, as reported by GB News in 2023:
Farage said: “As for his behaviour with women and other people, well, I don’t know. It’s not for me to judge. There’s no evidence being produced. There are four people, maybe 5 now, that have come out of the woodwork.
“But you see, I understand that through his YouTube channel and much else, he has upset some very powerful people. He’s upset big Government, he’s upset Bill Gates and everybody.”
Farage continued: “But if you go out there and upset people, big powerful people, you’ve got to be pretty clear that there’s nothing they can really hit you back with… there are many… things in his own autobiography that he’s written about his behaviour with women that are disturbing, abusive and not very pretty”.
According to Sunday Times crime correspondent Jessica Sharkey, the paper’s investigation to Brand began in January 2019, when it “became aware of rumours circling in the comedy industry about his behaviour towards women”. This, of course, was a whole year before the Covid pandemic, which was when Brand tipped over the edge from New Agey woo into MAGA-aligned conspiracism. Sharkey reports that “some sources said that they had previously been approached by other media organisations but nothing had ever been published or broadcast”, and that there were “frequent setbacks”. Perhaps the paper pressed on regardless because of Brand’s continuing and increasing status as a political influencer, but that is what you would expect from journalists chasing a big story. The hidden hand of “big Government”, let alone “Bill Gates”, has no explanatory value.
As has been widely reported, the verdicts were mixed: Brand was convicted of one rape and three sexual assaults, but acquitted of two other rapes. The successful prosecution included disclosures that the victim made to friends and family and to a medical professional at the time – and in this instance the long delay of more than a decade before she made her police complaint worked in her favour, as it means her disclosures cannot reasonably be suspected of having been contrived for the benefit of building a prosecution narrative. There was also an incriminating text message from Brand apologising.
We don’t know why the jury acquitted in the case of the other rape allegations, but it seems likely that they regarded them as unprovable without the same sort of corroborating details. However, Brand’s supporter Laurence Fox goes further, suggesting that the outcome means that the jury found the two complainants to have “falsely accused” Brand, and asking “should they be facing custodial sentences similar to his?” Thus Fox adds to his shabby stock of gender resentment narratives, by pretending to believe that a non-guilty verdict ought to establish that a complainant committed perversion of justice.
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