First son Donald Trump Jr. has taken up the cause of Russell Brand, insisting the British comedian’s 10-year, six-month prison sentence for rape and sexual assault has less to do with his crimes than his recent turn to God and the right.
Brand, 51, was sentenced Monday at London’s Southwark Crown Court. A jury had convicted him Nov. 5 of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others.
President Trump’s eldest son, 48, made the case for Brand on Monday’s edition of “Triggered,” Don Jr.’s Rumble show, during which he called Brand the victim of a political prosecution.
“A two-tier justice system is not just an American problem,” the first son said. “Across the Atlantic, Britain handed down a sentence today which unfortunately makes the point clearer than ever.”
The phrase “two-tier” has been a rallying cry of the British right since the 2024 riots that followed deadly stabbings in Southport, England, when critics accused then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government of coming down harder on mostly white rioters than it had on other demonstrators.
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to calling Starmer “Two-Tier Keir.”
On Monday, Trump Jr. claimed that Brand was convicted “with no forensic evidence, no DNA, no police report from the time,” but only on the strength of witness accounts “now decades old, dating back to 1999.”
The crimes Brand was found guilty of took place between 2004 and 2009. Jurors acquitted him of three other counts, two of them rape.
Trump Jr. also asked why no one had spoken up sooner.
“So when he was, like, married to Katy Perry [and] he’s one of the most famous actors in the world, no one seemed to have a problem,” he said.
Brand married Perry in 2010 â a year after the last of the offenses that placed him behind bars.
The allegations first surfaced in 2023 following a joint investigation by The Times UK, The Sunday Times and broadcaster Channel 4. By then, Brand had rebranded himself as an anti-establishment podcaster and he was baptized a Christian the following year.
“He finds God, I guess, changes his ways, sees some aspects of conservative life, and talks about them, and now he’s going to spend 10-and-a-half years in prison for rape when no one had a problem with it in the prior 27 years,” said Don Jr.
“This raises what I think are some pretty obvious questions about why his sentence was more severe than, I don’t know, sentences handed to Muslim grooming gangs across the UK,â he went on. âEvery week we did a story about some kid getting raped … but â ‘Oh, they just let him off with a slap on the wrist. We told him not to do it again.’ Russell gets to spend 10-and-a-half years in prison.”
Judge Joel Bennathan, in his sentencing remarks, tied the crimes to Brand’s rise to fame.
“About 20 years ago, Russell Brand, you were becoming famous,” Bennathan said Monday. “You were clever â and in many people’s eyes, funny and charismatic. You had also become a sexual predator.”
Trump Jr. isn’t alone in defending the comedian â former Fox News host Megyn Kelly called the sentence “an outrage” and “a political witch hunt,” while Musk dismissed it on X as “unjust.”
