Rfk Jr. Ally Russell Brand Found Guilty Of Rape And Sexual Assault

Actor Russell Brand, a leading figure in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement, was found guilty Thursday in the United Kingdom of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others between 2004 and 2009.

Brand was arrested after the verdict was announced and is facing years in prison, according to the British Press Association, a national news agency. He will be sentenced on Monday, U.K. prosecutors said in a statement.

“Russell Brand was predatory and used his celebrity status to commit sexual crimes,” said David Roberts, senior crown prosecutor in the London Rape and Serious Sexual Assault Unit, in the statement.

Brand has maintained his innocence, saying that all his sexual encounters were consensual. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The leader of Kennedy’s MAHA movement, Tony Lyons, has stood by Brand. Lyons, a longtime Kennedy friend and book publisher, went to London last month to attend the opening of the trial and had Brand on his weekly call with MAHA supporters as it got underway. “He’s been falsely accused, he’s been vilified, persecuted, deplatformed, demonetized, censored, prosecuted,” Lyons said in introducing Brand, who has been a regular speaker on the weekly MAHA call for the past year.

Lyons did not respond to a request for comment.

Kennedy and the White House also continued to embrace Brand even as his trial neared. In late September, Brand moderated a discussion at a MAHA Summit in Washington, asking questions of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz and his deputy, Dan Brillman. They then posed for a photo with Kennedy.

The health secretary closed the summit with a session with Vice President JD Vance.

Brand was acquitted of two other rape charges and an attempted indecent assault, Reuters reported. The Metropolitan Police in London are looking into two other accusations of rape.

Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the verdict.

Brand was a star of several comedy hits including Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Bedtime Stories and has voiced the role of the mad scientist Dr. Nefario in the animated Despicable Me films.

He now hosts the ‘Stay Free’ podcast on livestreaming platform Rumble, where he criticizes the media and presents alternative narratives, among others.

Brand has been a longtime MAHA supporter because, like many others in the movement, he rejected mandatory Covid-19 vaccination and lockdowns during the pandemic. Like Kennedy, Brand often rallies against the pharmaceutical industry, which he’s accused of prioritizing profits over people’s health, and against bureaucrats he thinks aren’t protecting the public. He often praises Kennedy’s effort to remove artificial dyes and other chemicals from food.

Brand endorsed Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 2024, just weeks before the now-health secretary dropped out and threw his support behind Donald Trump. A few days after being sworn in, Kennedy posted to X a picture of himself with Brand and a shirtless Oz, while the health secretary was holding a lizard.

In a video he posted to X addressing the initial charges last year, Brand said that while he was “a drug addict, sex addict, and an imbecile” in his youth, he was never a rapist. “I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes,” he added.