On hot-button issues like sexual assault allegations, conservatives have long rightfully stressed the importance of due process and the presumption of innocence. Yet a jury of his peers just found the British actor turned online commentator Russell Brand guilty of heinous sexual offenses — so why are major figures in right-wing media still defending him?
After considering testimony from dozens of witnesses, photographic and location-verifying evidence, and Brand’s extensive defense, a jury found him guilty of raping a fan in 2009 and 3 other charges from the mid-2000s. That same jury acquitted Brand of several other rape and assault charges for which it deemed there to be insufficient evidence. He’s now been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison.
The context here is that Brand is a self-professed former drug addict and sexual degenerate, who has acknowledged having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old as a man in his 30s and, in text messages with other female accusers (not in this criminal case), directly apologized for violating their consent.
So, a deeply morally suspect individual who, sure, at times expressed right-wing opinions, was afforded due process of law and then found guilty of heinous offenses. You’d think the response among self-styled conservatives would be denunciation. At least as far as some major right-wing media stars are concerned, you would be wrong.
Daily Wire star Matt Walsh claimed that Brand was “railroaded by a kangaroo court” and that “the whole point of this trial was for the establishment to get revenge on Russell Brand.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. incorrectly claimed that the convictions dated back to 1999 and suggested that he was only convicted for “finding god” and “see[ing] some aspects of conservative life.”
For her part, podcast and YouTube star Megyn Kelly suggested that the incidents Brand was convicted over weren’t very serious, downplaying it all as him simply having “grabbed a boob” and “had backdoor sex with a lady who licked his backdoor.” She went on to suggest that the trial was a “political witch hunt.”
But, as the judge in the case explained, the 2009 rape accusation was actually graphic and horrible, with his accuser claiming that while she consented to vaginal sex with Brand, he went on to flip her over, remove the condom he was wearing, and then painfully anally penetrate her and ignore her repeated requests for him to stop. He then left her in a soiled bed stained with blood, semen, and feces and told her to “clean up her mess.”
Sorry, but that is not just “grabbing boob” or “backdoor play.” That is rape. And just relating to this specific charge, the prosecution brought forward testimony from 24 witnesses corroborating different aspects of the charge. These included former managers, colleagues, friends, ex-boyfriends, and family members who, as Sky News reports, remember being told about the incident or related details at the time — many years before Brand’s political evolution.
It may be true that Brand’s controversial right-wing rebrand or (deeply suspect) claim to have discovered Christ played a role in the media scrutiny that led to these women coming forward. But a “political witch hunt” cannot go back in time and plant corroborating memories from the early 2000s in the minds of dozens of witnesses under oath. And, while politics should never motivate a criminal prosecution, that’s still not an excuse to let someone off the hook if they actually did the thing they’re accused of, which this jury says Brand did. (There’s no evidence of ideological bias inside the jury.)
CORNELL GANG RAPE ALLEGATIONS TRIGGER POLITICAL FIRESTORM
Another common defense of Brand, brought up by the likes of Kelly and Trump Jr., is that the United Kingdom overlooked or failed to prosecute horrifying crimes inflicted on the British population via “grooming gangs” because the perpetrators were disproportionately of Pakistani heritage. That is a real scandal, which has led to a reckoning in the United Kingdom. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and the failure to properly prosecute some criminals isn’t a good reason to let another criminal off the hook.
Everything about the political media ecosystem incentivizes commentators to constantly one-up each other with their edgy takes and contrarian opinions. But in a better time, downplaying crimes against women, denying the fruits of due process, and carrying water for an ideologically sympathetic sex criminal would still be a bridge too far.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
