Comedian and actor Russell Brand played the conspiracy card Friday to suggest he was the victim after United Kingdom authorities charged him with rape and sexual assault.
The MAGA star, 49, said in a video statement from a tropical setting that he was wrongly targeted by U.K. officials as apparently “unprecedented” levels of corruption takes place.
“We’re very fortunate, in a way, to live in a time where there’s so little trust in the British government,” he said. “We’re very fortunate, I suppose, that this is happening at a time where we know that the law has become a kind of weapon to be used against people.”
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He continued, “I’ve always told you guys that when I was young and single, before I had my wife and family... I was a fool, man. I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord. I was a drug addict, a 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 at my eyes.”
Brand faces one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape, and two counts of sexual assault for alleged attacks on four women, London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
Police said their investigation began after Brand’s accusers spoke out in press reports in September 2023, and that they have evidence of crimes as far back as 1999.
Brand previously denied the allegations, calling them “very, very hurtful.” He said Friday he is “incredibly grateful” he will now have a chance to defend himself in court.
Brand, who is English, has become a right-wing influencer in the U.S. since those allegations emerged, and he attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last summer.
Police said Brand is accused of raping a woman near the southern England coast in 1999, and of a trio of incidents in the Westminster area of London. There, police accuse him of indecently assaulting a woman in 2001, orally raping and sexually assaulting another in 2004, and sexually assaulting a fourth “between 2004 and 2005.”
Brand has been ordered to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on May 2.
Brand visited Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, in December to attend a soirée for a conspiratorial nonprofit led by the president’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Then, in February, he returned to Trump’s estate to be awarded a “Global Defender of Freedom” award at a black-tie gala.
Brand was also photographed in February with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who he publicly backed for president prior to Trump’s health and human services secretary dropping out to endorse the Republican ticket.
Even more recently, Brand went on Fox News this week to tell Sean Hannity how he overcame addiction and converted to Christianity.
Brand has been critical of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He called out the politician by name in his statement on Friday.
“I’m speaking particularly for those of you that are watching this in the U.K., how do you feel about your legal system right now?” he said. “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?”
The Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek actor was married to pop star Katy Perry from 2010 to 2012. The celebrity couple tied the knot in India, with Brand gifting Perry a Bengal tiger named Machli.
Their marriage fell apart in 2012, with conflicting schedules among the reasons they offered publicly. Brand recently went into more detail about the split on his podcast and claimed there was no bad blood between the two.
“What can I tell you is, when I was married to Katy Perry, she’s like a—not entirely normal, because she’s an extraordinary, massive star—but she’s not weird or off key,” he said Thursday. “And wasn’t involved in anything nefarious, as far as I could tell.”
He continued, “The reasons that a marriage didn’t work are the normal human reasons marriages don’t work, and I have nothing but respect for her.”
Brand remarried in 2017 to the author and illustrator Laura Gallacher, with whom he has three children.
