Russell Brand, a Hollywood actor turned independent commentator, broke with his generally left-wing fold to call the allegations that former President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia a “Democratic conspiracy.”
Brand, who hails from the United Kingdom, posted a video to his YouTube channel on Sept. 23 reacting to commentary about the latest grand jury indictment in special counsel John Durham’s inquiry into the origins and conduct of the Russia investigation.
“I find myself in awe, gobsmacked, flabbergasted, and startled by these revelations that Russiagate was a Democratic conspiracy,” Brand said.
Brand said widespread acceptance of allegations of a secret electronic channel between Trump’s company and Russia’s Alfa Bank late in the 2016 campaign among the media does not indicate a society with a healthy relationship to the truth. Brand was specifically reacting to and referencing a blog post written by journalist Glenn Greenwald.
The indictment returned by a grand jury this month accuses Michael Sussmann, a former attorney from law firm Perkins Coie, of falsely telling the FBI’s top lawyer that he was not representing any clients when acting on behalf of a technology executive and Hillary Clinton’s campaign during a September 2016 meeting in which he shared a tip about the alleged Alfa Bank-Trump connection.
Sussmann pleaded not guilty to a charge of lying to the FBI on Friday, with lawyers insisting he never said he didn’t have clients and represented only the technology executive at the meeting five years ago.
The FBI investigated findings brought forth by a small group of computer scientists connecting the business empire of Trump to the Kremlin-linked bank in Moscow, but it could not find evidence to support them, the Justice Department’s inspector general reported in late 2019 . Alfa Bank also denied the claims .
Ending a high-profile investigation in the first half of 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team was unable to find a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s victorious campaign and Russia, but the notion of there being coordination with the Kremlin has never really faded . Now, roughly 2 1/2 years later, Durham is wrapping up a criminal inquiry into the origins and conduct of the Russia investigation.
“I remember it was seen as a defining issue. … It was in a way being discussed as if it was just an absolute fact,” Brand said. “To discover that it was propaganda, a construct, a confection by the Democratic Party, who of course are now in government, is kind of beyond disappointing because you begin to question and query what other things may not be true. Once you recognize that people create certain truths in order to meet certain ends and aims, the idea that you might be able to trust their integrity obviously dissolves.”
“This in itself is a big enough issue to cause concern, but what else is implied?” he added. “I suppose what I think is, it suggests to me — it suggests that everything is a kind of construct. All of the information that’s peddled and rendered is unreliable. The primary function is to create a state where people do not query or question and go along with edicts and ideas that are convenient to the powerful, and truth is just lost and just irrelevant for expedience.”
Brand, who said he is not a Trump supporter, concluded that both parties “are of no value to ordinary folk like you and me and never will be until the relationship between government, media, Big Tech, Big Business are properly investigated, until there is some real regulation, until there is commitment to authenticity, truth, open-mindedness.”
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