Prosecution Rejects Russell Brand’s Claim He Has Been Abandoned: “You Have A Platform Of Millions”

Editor’s note: This story contains details of alleged sexual offenses that some readers may find distressing.

Russell Brand was told he “has a platform with followers in the millions” and has not been “taken apart by the media” during questioning by the prosecution today at Southwark Crown Court.

Brand was being probed by barrister Riel Karmy-Jones over his attacks on the press after allegations were made in a Channel 4 documentary and in The Times in 2023, which led six women to go to the police with similar allegations about him.

Brand has repeatedly criticized large portions of the media for the way in which he has been portrayed since 2023 and uses his Rumble social media platform to communicate his message.

While Brand earlier told the court “no one will touch me with a bargepole” since the documentary, Karmy-Jones said it is “not the case you have been completely abandoned by everyone,” as she pointed out he was playing a show to a packed house of around 2,000 people in London when the doc came out.

“You have a platform with followers in the millions, don’t you?” she told the court. “This is not a case of ‘Poor Mr Brand’ who’s been taken apart by the media and the social construct.”

At this point in proceedings, the judge told Karmy-Jones to move on with her questioning.

Just before that, when it was put to him that the media had been “very fair” to him by allowing him to respond in detail to the documentary’s allegations before it aired, Brand said he “would reject that quite strongly.”

He vociferously responded “Yes” to the question of whether he “blames” Channel 4’s Dispatches show and the media more broadly for the situation he currently finds himself in.

Brand was told by Karmy-Jones he had been “liberally speaking” about portions of the media and these allegations on his own platform since being charged, but he responded by saying he “has done my very best to respect this judicial process and the integrity of this court.”

Brand was cross-examined by the prosecution after facing questions from his defense lawyer Ian Winter, during which he forcefully denied the charges and said his “entire life has been consumed by these allegations.” Brand faces three charges of rape, three counts of sexual assault and now one of attempted indecent assault, reduced from indecent assault, based on allegations made by six women. Deadline has been reporting daily from a live video feed of the courtroom since the trial began.

Pressed on why it is only recently, and after his police interviews, that he has started recalling details of the three rape allegations, Brand said it has “taken a lot of focus and recollection to do the best I can to participate in this.”

Regarding Complainant 1, who alleges Brand raped her in a hotel room at the fringes of the Labour Party conference in 1999, he rejected the idea that he “stood in between her and the exit” and “pushed her on the bed against her will.”

Instead, he recalled he “asked for more than [C1’s] consent.”

Regarding Complainant 3, who alleges Brand orally raped her in a toilet cubicle at a birthday party, Brand denied “pulling her head down violently onto your penis” as it was put to him by Karmy-Jones.

“You liked ejaculating without a condom, and you ejaculated into her mouth,” questioned Karmy-Jones. “You said, ‘Don’t be a spoilsport, come on?’”

Brand replied “no” loudly to these questions. He acknowledged it was “within the bounds of possibility” that a rapist could hold someone’s head down and perform forced oral sex in such a way.

On Complainant 5, who alleges Brand anally raped her at his flat after they’d had consensual vaginal sex, Brand denied the allegation and said he “did not view [C5] as just a hole,” as C5 had claimed.

He said he could not remember C5 leaving blood and feces on his sheets, as she has alleged. He said “recollections increased” of C5 after he watched police interviews of her accusations and remembered she was the “memorable young woman” who had put her tongue in his anus after a play he performed. This was a few days before the alleged anal rape took place.

Goal To Sleep With 5,000 Women

Karmy-Jones repeatedly brought up Brand’s promiscuity during the era the allegations were alleged to have taken place.

He was questioned about a conversation in the car he had with his old flatmate on the way to the Labour conference in 1999, when he was accused of saying he had a goal to sleep with 5,000 women. “While I don’t remember, it’s entirely possible it’s the kind of banter I would have engaged in when I was 24,” he said.

He was accused of “doing anything” to get women into bed with him but retorted that “the way this has been characterized is so nefarious, unpleasant and ugly that it is difficult to answer in earnest.”

Asked if he had said he would not leave a situation with a woman without a conquest, he said: “That sounds specifically like a riff on a Woody Allen joke when he said the only advice my dad ever gave me on his death bed was ‘always try and f*** the waitress’.”