Emergency rape announcement: Russell Brand

Russell Brand arrives at Southwark Crown Court on November 4, 2026 in London

Here’s the long and short of it, I guess: if the Crown Prosecution Service is going to declare Russell Brand a confirmed serial rapist — a depraved sexual predator of monumental proportions — and moreover, if the British media is just going to uniformly echo these charges with barely disguised delight, one would THINK (would one not?) that the factual predicate for such reputation-obliterating, permanent-society-outcasting, long-term-liberty-depriving censure would be 100% absolutely rock-solid. Unassailable and undoubtable to anyone of basic common sense, or average sensibility and intuition.

So then, what have we got here in terms of a presumably-no-brainer factual predicate? As in: offenses with which Brand was charged, and for which he has now been convicted? In light of such profound state-backed repudiation, with all due process of law afforded of course, the bloke rightly ought to be “Branded” forevermore as one of the worst things anyone could ever possibly be, correct?

Well, for starters, apparently not based on “count one” brought by prosecutors at trial. Because he was found “Not Guilty” on that one: that in 1999, a full 27 years ago if anyone’s keeping track, he raped a person whom he is said to have met at the Labour Party conference, and whom he invited back to his hotel room to continue their ongoing chat. The person is said to have accepted the invitation. Sometime thereafter, a rape allegedly occurred. Or at least that’s how the events have been latterly narrativized, and presented to jurors in 2026. Mind you: Brand was 24 years old when the incident purportedly took place. He is currently 51.

It’s hugely cumbersome and cost-prohibitive to obtain trial transcripts from English court proceedings — as though Shakespeare himself is hand-inscribing them by quill pen, in full iambic pentameter — so I will readily concede I do not have each and every bit of relevant facts and evidence at hand. Unfortunately. But like everyone else who did not attend court in person each day, I will have to make do. And it shall be a weighty task indeed to ascertain how it is that these UK prosecutors, in the middle of fighting the case of their lives, found it most prudent to charge Brand with “rape” stemming from conduct that allegedly took place in the previous millennium, and for which no contemporaneous evidence was ever produced. And in relation to which, no police report was filed for approximately 24 years — until a “documentary” got shown on TV. This is what yielded a big fat “Not Guilty” as the jury’s first order of business. Why resort to such long-ago evidentiary gambits, if the volume of damning material on Brand was so totally overwhelming, and “everyone knew” he was a criminal sex pest, as the online rumor mill has so confidently assured us of late? Surely an embarrassment of riches for punitive state power?

Here’s just a small sample of how the British press, famous for its stiff-upper-lip reserve, opted to convey the 1999 “rape” charge against Brand — at least before it was rejected by jurors:

Not much followup on those highly imaginative and vivid “monster” metaphors post-acquittal, it would appear. Instead, we’re treated to a dramatic reading of courtroom dialogue by the Daily Mail’s latest foray into “true crime” podcasts — because of course the Daily Mail would have some sort of “true crime” podcast. Challenged by the defense barrister as she unspooled her nearly three-decade-old tale of Brand’s purported criminal behavior, the anonymous complainant icily retorted: “He wanted sex, and I was there. I did not consent to rape.”

Come again? How could one even theoretically consent to “rape”? Is it no longer the case that “rape” is by definition non-consensual? Which is to say: if one consented to a sexual act… how could it then be considered “rape”? Do we need to convene an emergency trans-atlantic seminar to decipher what the word “rape” means in this current boundary-bending year of 2026?

Who knows. The jury seemed to be similarly confused, or at least dissatisfied with the prosecutors’ explanation, since they proceeded to acquit Brand on the “rape” charge that had attracted by far the most histrionic media fixation. Of course there was no commensurate flurry of screaming coverage when the acquittal came down, since it was duly drowned out by the news that he’d been convicted on other charges: a mixed verdict which gets more and more peculiar the more you examine it. “Guilty” of “sexual assault” for when he allegedly lunged into a woman’s breast out of nowhere, at a party convened by MTV in 2004 — but likewise “Not Guilty” of rape for allegedly man-handling that same woman into the toilet against her will, unzipping his trousers, and forcing her to perform oral sex? “Not Guilty” for “attempted indecent assault” at another MTV function in 2001, when he allegedly grabbed hold of a woman’s arm and tried to pull her into the toilet, and she only managed to escape by narrowly wresting herself free from his diabolical grip? “Guilty” of sexual assault at a London radio station in either 2004 or 2005 — the precise timing of this one was left open to debate — when he allegedly pinned the complainant against a wall and kissed her “sloppily,” in what she described (circa 2026) as a violently “frenzied” manner. He also touched her bum, she explained. The sudden attack took place in full view of assorted colleagues, the complainant recalled; a nearby man just “started laughing.” So rather than go promptly to police to report this apparent sexual assault they’d witnessed, the bystanders instead reacted with laughter. Hmm.

And then, finally, in what may have been the strangest and most “meta” charge of them all, he was found “Guilty” for sexually assaulting a Channel 4 employee in 2009 — Channel 4 being the same media outfit whose explosive “documentary,” produced in conjunction with other Brand-hostile journalists at “The Times,” is what spurred all these allegations in the first place. As well as the criminal prosecution itself. No word on whether the prosecutors brought in Alice’s Looking Glass to court that day as an explanatory exhibit. It might’ve been helpful as the nature of the alleged assault was explained: two accused male co-conspirators in Brand’s crazy entourage, and named without hesitation as Jack Bayles and Gareth Roy, allegedly approached the complainant at the Channel 4 studio and informed her that Brand was refusing to continue work on their joint audio-recording project unless she randomly gave him a massage. “I thought they were joking because I didn’t expect somebody to say that,” the complainant testified. “Then I saw by their faces that they weren’t joking.” It was at this point that she was apparently “forced” to perform the requested massage, although whether her claim is that the massage was performed entirely under “forcible” conditions, i.e. extreme duress, is not quite made clear by the second-hand media accounts. Brand then launched another one of his signature lunges, she alleged — this time head-first into her groin area as she was seated in an unspecified chair. Some media reports allege that she alleged she could “feel his breath on her vagina.” And when she looked over to the two male co-conspirators for help mid-assault, the pair responded only by “shrugging and gesticulating.” Followed by bellowing out more callous laughter.

By the way, all these complainants were permitted to testify from “behind screens” — no one in the courtroom could see their faces, or learn their true identities. Nor was Brand afforded the right to directly confront his accusers. Say a little prayer for the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution, won’t you? Continually eroded by American prosecutors as much as they can get away with, but at least not totally abolished — yet.

Brand’s lawyer “cross-examines” a blue patio screen

Let’s take a deep breath and return to that “count one” acquittal for a moment. The complainant there was one of many who were said to have “come forward” after they either personally viewed, had clips served to them on social media, or otherwise drew inspiration from the September 2023 “documentary” produced by the valiant journalistic task-force of Channel 4 and “The Times.” These two powerhouses had joined forces on this pressing investigative endeavor in “autumn 2022,” according to a behind-the-scenes recap — which just happened to be right around the time Russell Brand was announced by the American right-wing-ish video platform Rumble as their new marquee (and obscenely well-compensated) broadcaster / pundit / streamer guy. He was soon to be joined by the likes of Donald Trump Jr. and Dan Bongino, which likely raised some further eyebrows over on “Fleet Street,” where in an earlier political and technological era Brand had been appointed honorary guest-editor of the New Statesman magazine, the Guardian had featured segments of his early-iteration YouTube interview show “The Trews,” and his exclusive one-on-one sitdown with Labour Leader Ed Miliband was among the most celebrated media events of the 2015 General Election. Left-wing journalist Owen Jones gamely acquired a blurb from Brand for his best-selling book, and used his Guardian perch to argue that the Labour Party must harness Brand’s unparalleled influence with “young voters.”

Times had resolutely changed by around 2022 though, when Helen Lewis of “The Times” cleverly proclaimed that Brand had done a “big Re-Brand” as newly-embraced “conspiracy guru” of the implicitly dangerous Online Right. He’d suspiciously found “refuge” in the wastelands of Rumble, she reported, where he now spends his days Just Asking Questions about Kanye and Hitler, and making direct appeals to disenchanted young men — much like the notorious “Manosphere” influencer Andrew Tate, a leery Lewis warned. (Major red-flag moment.) It was certainly a far cry from the heady days of 2013, when Lewis was gushing on the BBC about how “flawlessly” Brand had monologued at New Statesman editorial meetings, and stimulated its staff to generate an outpour of “beautiful writing.”

By 2023, those same media precincts were behind the death-knell “documentary” treatment of Brand, which featured professional actresses performing the “testimonials” of purported victims, filmed in a vaguely silhouette style — giving the strong impression that these must be the real purported victims, who’d summoned the courage to recite their devastating stories on camera. Which is no doubt what most viewers would’ve absent-mindedly assumed as they plopped down in front of the Telly:

Curious creative choice for a “documentary,” don’t you think? Seems to veer quite far down the path of full-fledged “fictionalization.”

Anyways, none of the “rape” and/or “abuse” claims aired in that “documentary” ended up being converted into criminal charges, despite the journalists who engineered the “documentary” now being showered with such overwrought accolades — like they’ve just scored the scoop of the century, as confirmed by the partial Guilty verdict. Finally these erstwhile Brand-boosters have cast him out for good, and delivered long-overdue “accountability.” Nevermind that their bold, heroic journalism had zero substantive bearing on why Brand is now consigned to a prison cell — except that the public clamor these docu-dummies ginned up was credited for motivating and/or cajoling another wave of purported victims to declare their past interactions with Brand had been criminally sexually violative in some respect.

That would include the 1999 Labour Party rape conference complainant. Whose true identity, by order of the British state, must never be known to another soul. And fear not, for the law will coercively ensure this. That the jury rejected her allegations is deemed wholly irrelevant — she is “automatically entitled to lifelong anonymity,” as a friendly government guidebook reminds us. Her identity-concealment shall continue to be enforced on the ground that she is a “victim,” even though a jury just found that Russell Brand is Not Guilty of victimizing this person. Quite a riddle, no?

Not only are members of the press subject to criminal punishment should they dare to disclose the identity of an individual who was formally adjudicated to not have been victimized, ordinary members of the British public also risk criminal reprisal. Including anyone who might so much as contemplate posting such naughty information on social media, according to the helpful government guidebook reminder.

Well, thankfully, this happens to be the one area where I have zero compunction about heaving myself into an obnoxious outburst of chest-thumping “American exceptionalism” taunts: God Bless the First Amendment! God Bless the USA! Oooga Booga! Jeffrey Epstein!

So: if you happen to know the identity of this 1999 rape complainant, whose allegations were soundly rebuked by a jury of her peers, please pass along that information pronto (via DM, email, Signal, or similar) and I will be eager to publish it as soon as practicable, after of course undertaking all the necessary verification procedures. Gloriously, the 1A bars any prosecution of me for doing this under American law, for I am not a subject of the British Crown. That being said, I would be happy to travel to the United Kingdom even after disseminating this forbidden knowledge, and I would dare any authorities to arrest me for the purportedly unlawful journalistic act, which would clearly be in the public interest. Because it can’t possibly be in any Briton’s rational interest — emphasis on the “rational” here — to cling so madly to a far more fanatical dogma of endless “victim” anonymity than could ever be Constitutionally permissible in the ol’ USA. As I understand it, in theory, even if a complainant provably and conclusively fabricated some allegation of sexual wrongdoing — let’s say with admitted, willful malice! — they are still entitled to this arbitrary lifetime guarantee of permanent government-enforced identity concealment. Never to be relinquished, come hell or high water. What a load of total bollocks! I’d be thrilled to challenge this rubbish by way of a properly sourced and corroborated journalistic intervention, which I would doubly regard as a gesture of goodwill to the beleaguered British people. For whom I have always felt a kind of innate personal kinship. Anytime I’m on the isle of Great Britain, I sometimes feel more “understood” than I do here in America! Something about our naturally compatible senses of dry, slightly morose humor, I reckon.

And as to the overall criminal culpability of Russell Brand? Of course no one can now factually dispute that he has indeed been convicted of rape (one count) and sexual assault (three counts). Those, on paper, are quite serious crimes. Hence why he’s been sent off to big house for ten and a half years, according the sentence imposed yesterday by a wig-wearing jurist in London.

But there are still some things left to be robustly disputed:

1. That the sentence he was given is anything less than completely preposterous — or was decided with the slightest modicum of rational cost-benefit calculation. Nor does it fulfill any of the lofty virtues that people who’re so very enthused about nailing whatever High Profile Baddie they can for Rape Stuff always spout: the various slogans in which words like “Accountability” and “Justice” are prominently featured. Bugger off with that shite, please. That’s right: and stick it up your arse while you’re at it. (Consensually, of course.) Because it really did not take very long at all to find plenty of recent sentences handed down for criminal convictions in England and Wales where the defendant was given SUBSTANTIALLY less prison time for offenses that include VIOLENT HOMICIDE. Or in other words: conduct that is exponentially more grievous than anything Russell Brand has even been un-persuasively alleged to have done:

Also note that the most recent of Brand’s (alleged) sexually improper conduct took place at minimum 17 years ago, and at the high end, 27 years ago. Back when a smartphone was nary a glint in anyone’s eye, Mark Zuckerberg was still sucking his thumbs, and Republicans still pretended to care about Family Values (at least contra Slick Willy.)

Anyway, the one “rape” Brand was actually found “Guilty” of stems from a single alleged incident in 2009, wherein both parties concede that a sequence of consenting sexual activity had been undertaken by mutual agreement. This complainant, who was at all relevant times an adult, acknowledges she attended one of Brand’s comedy shows, accepted an invitation to go backstage, and voluntarily performed oral sex on him alongside another woman whom she did not know. She then provided Brand with her phone number, and accepted his further invitation to come visit his house. She later did travel there, with the express intent of having consensual vaginal intercourse with him. The two went on to have the intended consensual intercourse, she has stipulated.

Sometime thereafter came the purported rape. It was said to have been perpetrated amid their engagement in the otherwise consensual vaginal intercourse, though precisely whether it came “during” or “after” does not quite seem clear — at least according to second-hand media accounts I’ve reviewed. (PLEASE SEND FULL TRANSCRIPT!!!!) Of course, second-hand media accounts should never be taken as unadulterated truth in virtually any context, but with criminal trials most especially. EASY RULE: Always seek out the primary sources whenever humanly possible — transcripts, exhibits, etc. Do not rely on some dopey journo to lazily paraphrase stuff, especially when a flubbed word here or there can make all the legal difference.

With all those heavy limitations in mind, here is an incomplete and watered-down summary of the 2009 purported rape:

Describing the alleged attack, she says Brand anally penetrated her, which she had not consented to, after they had consensual vaginal sex.

Because of her position on the bed, she says, Brand’s action “pushed her face down on to the pillow”.

She says: “I don’t know how long it took for me between it going on and me asking him to stop, I don’t think it was very long.”

She adds she felt like “she couldn’t speak or breathe” and recalls the “amount of pain” she was in.

When she was able to speak, she says she told Brand to stop “a few times quietly and then really loudly”.

He said he wanted her “to feel his cum”, she says, and that’s when she realised he was no longer wearing a condom.

Apologies for getting into the gory details here; if anyone is re-victimized or re-traumatized by reading this Substack, I sorrowfully disavow. But assuming the above synopsis from Sky News is basically accurate, you’ll note the complainant apparently did not claim that she ever verbally refused or withdrew consent before the unwanted anal sex was allegedly commenced by Brand. Or that she made clear to him (orally, physically, or in some other fashion) that she did not consent to him transferring his penile penetration to a secondary orifice, in the midst of what to that point had been a mutually-agreeable round of vaginal intercourse.

So that’s at least worth taking under advisement, if Brand is to be eternally damned as an unrepentant serial rapist, on the basis of this lone conviction for “rape.”

Let’s set that aside for a moment, however.

Assume everything this woman alleges is essentially true.

No, that is definitely not a sensible assumption to ever automatically make about anyone’s interpretation or re-interpretation of disputed events from 17 years ago, particularly with a glaring absence of contemporaneous evidence. There appears to have been witness testimony presented to jurors that may have vaguely connoted some measure of contemporaneousness, but from everything I’ve gleaned, it’s all just various people claiming things in 2026 about what they purportedly said, thought, or did in 2009. Meaning: their re-tooled memories of things from 17 years ago, likely in service of aiding prosecutors. (Do you have crystal clear recall of every conversation you had in 2009 — even the uniquely memorable or unusual ones? I definitely don’t. I guess I can recall some fragments of conversations that have some standout significance, but with nowhere near enough certainty that I’d ever suggest my present-day recollection is reliable enough to toss somebody in prison for a decade.)

“Medical examinations” that this complainant appears to have contemporaneously sought in 2009 have sometimes been ambiguously cited, but this is highly misleading. To illustrate, I’m going to do something I don’t think I’ve ever had the gall to do before, which is copy-and-paste straight from ChatGPT, because frankly I can see no reason to doubt the little summary here is anything but completely accurate:

What the medical documentation did not establish

The available court reporting does not establish that the medical records documented:

• Anal tearing or other objectively identified injuries.

• Findings from a forensic sexual-assault examination.

• Medical findings independently demonstrating that penetration was non-consensual.

Now, I am more than happy to be corrected about the scope and probative value of the available evidentiary record. I’ll even eat my AI-generated hat if so warranted. In the meantime, does anybody out there want to pony up for the £30,000 (or whatever absurd amount) it apparently takes to get the actual trial transcripts from jolly old England? I will gladly review each and every page in hyper-forensic detail, and report back should anything I’ve written in this Substack prove erroneous.

But returning to the rape conviction: again, let’s assume for the sake of argument that what this woman has alleged about the 2009 incident is fundamentally true.

That is: Russell Brand engaged in consensual group sexual activity with the woman in his dressing room after a comedy show, and then invited her to come to his house afterwards. She thereafter arrives as planned, with the intent of engaging in consensual vaginal intercourse. Which they then proceed to engage in. At some point over the course of this consensually-initiated penetrative sexual activity, Brand removes his erect appendage from her vaginal cavity, and inserts it into her anal cavity, which was apparently not something she welcomed or enjoyed. When this penile switch was effectuated, she was at first unable to speak or breathe, but then after an unspecified period of time, began to vocalize her objections — softly at first, and then louder. Nonetheless, Brand continued to press forward, and after an unknown number of additional penetrative thrusts, went on to ejaculate in or around her anal cavity. And so, what began as a mutually consenting act of penetrative intercourse had turned into Brand unilaterally penetrating a separate orifice, in a manner the woman did not appreciate. But as his arousal intensified and he neared climax, Brand either pretended not to apprehend her objectionary cues, or was so steadfast in his determination to achieve ejaculatory resolution that he blocked the cues out, whether consciously or sub-consciously. Either way, Brand effectuated a series of penetrative thrusts into her anal cavity that the complainant did not want or like.

By any reasonable metric, if we take all this to have transpired exactly as the complainant alleges, Brand would clearly be responsible for some measure of an ethical infraction: at minimum, for failing to be sufficiently attentive to the wants, needs, and “signals” of his consensual sexual partner. Which is a duty that ought to have been incumbent on him, at least within reason, given the inherent physical vulnerabilities of any female engaged in penetrative intercourse, as well as the male’s inherent physical role in “dictating” the manner in which such intercourse is (or is not) executed.

It would thus be understandable and even foreseeable for a woman to be upset in the wake of an episode such as the one complainant describes, since she perceived what had begun as mutually consenting penetrative intercourse had turned into Brand, on his own apparent unilateral volition, deciding to penetrate an orifice the complainant had not wanted him to penetrate — and likely had not even realized he had any intent to penetrate. Whatever the source of this sexual disjuncture, it clearly did not unfold in a manner the complainant found agreeable, at which point one could say certain ethical obligations become operative for Brand: namely, he should at minimum apologize, and pledge to cease any further infliction of sexual contact that complainant finds discomfiting. If the negative reaction generated by Brand’s penetrative transition was genuinely unintentional, one would imagine an amicable resolution could be achieved between the two otherwise-consenting adults. On the other hand, if Brand intentionally caused the woman to incur any sort of sexual fright or distress, whether physically or emotionally, and he was consciously pleased that his actions had produced this response, that would suggest some wider troubling pathology on Brand’s part — in which case, he should most certainly cease any engagement in sexual encounters with women at once. Especially those, like the complainant, whom he does not know very well. Because unless he is an outright sadist, he would presumably not have had any conscious desire to generate negative physical or emotional reactions amongst women with whom he has chosen to engage in sexual conduct. If he is an outright sadist, and knowingly sought such a reaction, other remedial interventions would be urgently necessary. He would need not only to make grave amends with this woman in particular — up to and including a host of potential accommodations, concessions, or restitutions that would be dependent on circumstances specific to whatever was going on at the time of the 2009 encounter. He would also be obliged to self-recognize that his own impulses were entirely out of order, and a problem that needs to be addressed forthwith. Both for the sake of the complainant herself, any other potential sexual partners he might have in future, and also his own self-preservation, as the self-destructive tendencies he evidently exhibited could result in something far more catastrophic down the line, should his impulses not be constrained or ameliorated. Whatever the ultimate cause or solution to this apparent problem, by no means should he continue to freely engage in risk-bearing sexual activity with little-known females — i.e. females he is barely acquainted with, except for finding them visually attractive, and whose emotional wants, needs, and preferences he clearly cannot discern with any competence, as evidenced by his failure to do so with complainant. In short: the conduct which brought about this distress-causing outcome for complainant should be halted by Brand, and not resumed until thoroughgoing remedial measures are implemented to ensure no comparable outcome will ever again occur, either with complainant herself or some other female. There may be other reasonable courses of action to achieve the intended corrective or salutary effects, but which I am not able to cognize at the moment, in this admittedly weird and convoluted hypothetical.

But what’s not at all clear is that the most reasonable course of action in the wake of such an episode would’ve been for Brand to immediately surrender himself to police. Because for one thing, as far as I can ascertain, no evidence was ever presented at trial that would’ve indicated his unwelcome and/or unwanted initiation of anally penetrative intercourse was described contemporaneously as “rape,” or assault, or anything even close to that spectrum of criminally prosecutable conduct. If the “crime” was Brand not being attentive enough to the complainant’s emotional and/or physical cues in the midst of the penetrative sexual act, or in the aftermath, that could certainly be described as an ethical failing or fault on Brand’s part, and he could rightly be expected to make some sort of amends for it — as well as to make doubly sure he improves his conduct going forward. And in the meantime, he would be well-advised to cease engaging in any sexual activity at all. But… in no sense would his conduct be most rationally understood as a literal “crime” to be properly redressed by the introduction of punitive state power. As described by the complainant, this would still be a situation most prudently handled, in the best interest of both parties, as a strictly private affair — albeit an unfortunate one, yet nonetheless between two adults who, let us recall, had mutually set out to engage in consensual sex acts together. But to the surprise of one or both parties, complainant became distressed as to how the sexual interaction was proceeding, and felt her lack of willfully-expressed preference for the transition to anal penetration was not sufficiently recognized by the penetrator. Lamentable as this might be — or even to take the most damning interpretation for Brand, however morally condemnable this might be — it nonetheless still seems to fall squarely within the domain of private sexual affairs between adults, in terms of how to best go about addressing its ramifications, again in the best interest of both parties. Something may have gone awry between these two otherwise consenting sexual intercourse participants, and ideally, mutual adult maturity would prevail to resolve any outstanding problems. In fact, this appears to have been precisely the tack that was taken for the next 17 years — until the complainant saw a semi-fictionalized “documentary” on TV or social media, and decided to re-interpret the 2009 episode in an entirely new, derogatory light.

That the complainant apparently viewed or was at least made aware of this “documentary,” which had promulgated all manner of lurid and sexually disturbing claims related to Brand, could have conceivably been quite alarming for complainant, whose past sexual encounter(s) with Brand would’ve been called to front of mind, however long ago the encounters occurred. She could therefore have a newly emboldened impetus to radically re-evaluate those past encounters — and impute them with updated meaning, perhaps in greater harmony with 2026 sexual, legal, and political mores. Whereupon she might feel herself compelled to construct a new interpretation that sets herself out as the straightforward “victim,” and Brand as the straightforward “perpetrator” — perhaps in light of her newfound appreciation for disparate “power dynamics” or similar concepts — whereas at the time, and for many years hence, she had not perceived any need that the encounter(s) be explainable by reference to a neat victim/perpetrator binary. But having now seen Brand on public display in the “documentary” as a malevolent long-term sexual predator, she is imparted with new bases to situate her past experiences within the narrative imparted by this seemingly-credible, authoritative “documentary.” With that also comes a newly salient moral, political, and/or legal imperative to reframe the past experiences. On some level, one can hardly blame the complainant for doing this: she would likely have assumed the allegations broadcast with such apparent journalistic authority had been fully and incontrovertibly “vetted,” obviating any conceivable doubt as to their veracity. Complainant would have been extremely unlikely to anticipate that the allegations would instead be proven to dramatically fail any credible legal threshold, and therefore ought to have been stripped of any presumed credibility. Otherwise, given the gravity of what was alleged in the “documentary” — rape, assault, grooming, etc. — the allegations should’ve been easily convertible into criminal charges. But the opposite happened. Not a single one of the allegations contained in the much-ballyhooed “documentary” were admitted into evidence at trial, and not one of the purported victims featured in the documentary was ever called to testify. (After all, prosecutors couldn’t have commanded testimony from the actresses these “documentarians” curiously chose to procure.)

Why, then, should it be accepted as in any way valid that the entire trajectory of the Russell Brand “rape” saga — whether in terms of how his conduct was perceived by complainants, or by the wider public, or most consequentially for Brand’s own purposes, the extent of his perceived legal exposure — should have hinged so decisively on the emergence of this “documentary,” which did not produce a single criminally actionable claim? Despite alleging, with great fanfare, all manner of sensational sex crimes?

According to the Metropolitan Police, in the aftermath of this earth-shattering semi-fictionalized “documentary” — the reliability of which, it should be underscored, was later resoundingly refuted, whatever pretensions may still be made of its supposedly unimpeachable editorial process — law enforcement officials certainly did not hesitate to spring promptly into action. “Detectives traced and spoke to more than 100 witnesses, took more than 400 witness statements and reviewed over 1,400 documents,” the Metropolitan Police announced after Brand’s mixed verdict came down on November 5, 2026.

Let’s pause and ponder this for a moment:

So the now-discredited propagandocumentary was first aired September 16, 2023. The very next day, the Met were said to have received their first report of a “fresh allegation” against Brand, as the Guardian so excitedly put it — that being a “freshly” alleged instance of sexual assault in Soho, Central London, in 2003. Nothing ever came of this, however — just like dozens and dozens of other “allegations” that were rolled out with such anticipatory glee, and which Met spokespersons declared they were rushing to diligently collect, in their newly embraced role as adjuncts to the Accountability Quest of the documentary-peddlers — to be achieved by whatever means necessary.

Then a week later, on September 25, 2023, the Met put out another PR statement announcing it had officially launched a media-inspired investigation of Brand:

“Following an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Sunday Times, the Met has received a number of allegations of sexual offences in London. We have also received a number of allegations of sexual offences committed elsewhere in the country and will investigate these.”

Sort of strange, wouldn’t you say, that the openly-acknowledged premise for this investigation was not the impartial examination of police-obtained evidence, or the discovery of probable cause, or any other recognizable form of police-initiated “work” — rather, it was lots of people sitting ‘round to watch Telly. That’s what did it.

Formal charges against Brand were eventually unveiled between April 4, 2025 and December 23, 2025. The trial began in London on October 12, 2026. This means prosecutors and police had over three years to pore through a putatively enormous wealth of inculpatory evidence: victims “coming forward” by the boatload to allege egregious conduct by Brand, and bolstering their claims with voluminous reams of “documents.” The way the Met was telling it, to finally put Brand away for good should’ve been an absolute cinch:

“They also established detailed timelines and obtained historical floor plans and photographs of locations linked to the reports, including a former address of Brand and a former workplace. This formed part of an extensive investigation involving hundreds of lines of enquiry… Officers also worked in partnership with the Crown Prosecution Service throughout the investigation and trial, helping to build the strongest case possible to put before the jury.”

So after 3+ years of all this voracious, leave-no-stone-unturned investigative effort, the central charge on which the entire prosecution would eventually be pinned — and which today remains the only “rape” allegation that’s survived an adversarial legal process — is the one 2009 allegation of purported anal rape, amid what the complainant has otherwise conceded was a sequence of consensual sexual activity she carried out mutually with Brand, most notably including the consensual vaginal intercourse. This is the best government investigators had to show for their intensive multi-year undertaking — which they knew would transfix the entire country, and indeed much of the world, so they had every reason to be extra zealous about ensuring the indubitable strength of the evidence they’d ultimately put forward.

Then… after “more than 100 witnesses” and “more than 400 witness statements,” over the course of more than three years, and such overwhelming evidence presumably there to be found of Brand’s serial rape and predation — given the massive scale of the crime spree he’s now said to have gotten away with for so many years — the most these prosecutors and police could come up with was the single anal rape claim from 2009 — the rape that allegedly commenced when Brand removed his appendage from a particular consensual orifice, and then inserted it into another, allegedly without the complainant’s express legally-mandated consent, based on a re-interpretation of this unwelcome penile transition 17 years later, after the complainant apparently viewed a TV slopumentary, even as she continued to lack any contemporaneous evidence from 2009 characterizing the sexual contact with Brand as rape, assault, etc. Indeed, the complainant made no report whatsoever until 2023, just like her fellow (jury-rejected) complainant from the 1999 Labour Party conference, but she still moved to recast her long-past sexual encounter as a new memory of a memory of a memory — in keeping with the theme of the fictionalized “doc” — which for its own part was eventually proved to contain no criminally actionable allegations of anything.

C’mon… really? This is what the best and the brightest prosecutors, police, and journalists in the United Kingdom could collectively conjure to show Brand is not just a bit of a dodgy bloke, which everyone already knew — but a menacing serial rapist? An acute danger to society, such that he needs to be locked up for the next decade plus, lest he be allowed to commit further acts of consensual-vaginal-intercourse-with-brief-anal-rape-interlude?

Barring any stunning evidentiary revelations not currently known to me, but which may theoretically exist in the full case records I’d love for someone to ply me with — this whole thing is just crackers. Or to put it less cheekily: it’s a wretched affront to all good sense, an appalling perversion of the legal system, a scandalous mis-deployment of finite public resources, an especially odious performance by journalists, and so much more. Hideous job all around to everyone who had any sort of hand in bringing about this farce.

And for anyone who might be wondering: no, I have no particular affinity for Russell Brand. I met him briefly in person once in Washington, DC, when he was holding court at the Rumble-hosted Trump 2.0 inauguration party. I believe I had previously been on his show a grand total of once, sometime in early-to-mid 2023 (found it) mainly to talk about Russia/Ukraine stuff, if memory serves. I recall him ending the interview somewhat abruptly after I’d gone on what might’ve been a slightly-too-long soliloquy; I was surprised he did not really engage in any of the back-and-forth banter I’d assumed he would. I don’t think I was ever invited on again.

His whole routine about becoming the Rumble-branded, Algorithm-brained, Florida-based warrior for Christ was so painfully “cringe,” it was hard to even take seriously. Baptized in the River Thames? Doing weird imitations of American Evangelical prayer rallies with Jordan Peterson and other such characters? Giving thanks to the Lord above for bequeathing us with his only begotten son, our one true Lord and Savior, Donald J. Trump?

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

At the same time, I guess you’d still have to grant that he’s at least always been a reasonably interesting chap. Even if I would never voluntarily sit through one of his online Bible lectures. Maybe around 2021 or so, a onetime fan of his in England, who happens to be an attractive young female, told me he was endearingly kind and genuine toward her on his recent revival-type tour, and not in any sexually suggestive way whatsoever. I’ll say he can also be scarily articulate at times — almost otherworldly so — when he launches into one of those wild stream-of-consciousness monologues. His viral confrontation with “Paxo” back in the day is still one for the ages. I have never seen “Get Him to the Greek,” but I recall learning from Matt Stoller just before Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the movie was directed by Stoller’s brother. Which was a mildly interesting random fact to learn, I guess.

Other than that — why would I give a shit about Brand’s personal and/or political appeal right now? He’s currently incarcerated on totally ludicrous grounds. Everything else can be put emphatically to the side so long as that’s the case, as far as I’m concerned.

The reason he’s been ludicrously locked up is self-evident: ideologically-fueled decisions by a confluence of state/private actors that it was well past time to “send a message,” come what may, and the “message” would be to nail him for some creatively expanded conception of sex crime. Actual evidence turns out to be laughably weak? No problem: Russell Brand was already found guilty of a greater karmic sin, and it was only a matter of time before he was made to pay the price. Now he’s in the slammer, much to the excitement of sadistic loons on social media — a striking cross-section of whom are not at all shy about hoping he be brutally raped by whoever the British equivalent of “Bubba” might be. (Sir Rapes-a-Lot?) Weird how so many women (and plenty of men too) are so quick to wish rape upon their perceived adversaries, all in the name of supposedly avenging the purported “survivors” of unpunished rape rampages.

To call this affair “shambolic” would not even begin to capture the depths of the iniquity. “Shambles” is way too dainty a word in this context, even though the British love to use that one — typically as applied to some event or events about which there is some aspect that is at least darkly amusing. Unfortunately, I can see no comic relief here.

FYI, to My Fellow Americans: don’t even think about acting all smug and superior as you chide the dreadful follies of the British legal system. And follies there are many, no question. But there are also some ways in which it’s actually superior to the US system. And yeah, some ways in which it’s definitely worse. As ever, it depends on the particular circumstances of a particular situation: just like most things in this rotten, pathetic existence we’re all saddled with. I wrote last month that never again would any self-respecting American have the nerve to lambast another developed country’s legal system if they had the misfortune of sitting through the Alexander Brothers “sex trafficking” sentencing I went to a few weeks ago. I doubt the London courthouse was permitted to transform into the equivalent of the bleachers at Yankee Stadium yesterday, which is what Judge Psycho did at that circus of a hearing, as usual on behalf of “survivors” and their passionate fans, who were free to hoot and holler to their heart’s content without judicial restriction.

On that theme, I would be inclined to view the current legal travesty in England as akin to a longstanding trend that’s also readily observable here: “trafficking” statutes increasingly leveraged as all-purpose morality enforcement laws, with thoroughly unconcealed ideological objectives — such as “believing survivors,” depreciating widely-accepted safeguards around burden of proof and so forth to malign certain unpopular figures as irredeemably depraved sex criminals, etc. Throw in drastically re-defining and/or radically distending such ever-fluid constructs as trafficking / rape / sexual assault / grooming / pedophilia / survivor / victim / trauma / harm / [fill in the blank] to encompass a vastly expanded range of potentially chargeable conduct, such that when prosecutors and their political kin feel so moved, they can more frictionlessly go after their targets for generalized moral effrontery, under the putative auspices of straight criminal law. And have no illusions about it: the rest of society will absolutely take a nice beatdown from all this, foremost by the steady corrosion of civil liberties — done for some supposed higher virtue, it’ll be insisted, like finally doling out humiliating punishment to the Worst Sexual Bad Guys. Upon hearing this rationale, around 95% of the population will either tacitly accept or openly cheer. So yeah, go ahead — give those who vaguely offend our inchoate moral sensibilities what we all know they have coming. Give it to ‘em good and hard. Even if the imposition of cathartic “accountability” comes with a steaming hot side of non-consensual penetration: thrusting right into our collective brains. If you still even got a brain after reading all this.

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NOTE FROM MT: I have no idea how you could possibly stand to consume more MT “content” in the unlikely event that you actually slogged through this entire Substack, but for the true maniacs out there, here’s a video I recorded yesterday on (yeah) Russell Brand and related issues.