Emily Armstrong’s tepid response to backlash seems designed to protect Scientology Tony Ortega Sep 08, 2024

[Karen#1]

On Friday, we recounted our reporting regarding Emily Armstrong, the Dead Sara singer who has now been announced as a new addition to Linkin Park as the band returns from a seven-year hiatus following the death of Chester Bennington.
We pointed out that we had first mentioned her name when we interviewed Mars Volta singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala in 2018 about the harassment that he and his wife Chrissie Carnell-Bixler were going through after Chrissie and two other women had come forward to the LAPD with allegations about being sexually attacked by Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson.
Cedric and Chrissie had both been involved in Scientology themselves, and Cedric told us that when he was going through the Purification Rundown, Scientology’s quack sauna-and-vitamins “detox” program, another musician doing it at the same time was Armstrong. And the two of them appeared in a photo at the 2013 annual gala at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre.


Then, we mentioned Armstrong again in 2020, after Masterson had finally been charged by the District Attorney’s Office and was facing arraignment.
Of course, in 2020 any court hearing was a challenge because of the pandemic protocols in place. And here’s what we said about that day four years ago, when Danny showed up in person to face a judge for the first time…

We had expected that the arraignment would be a very quick affair. Masterson would answer a few questions, plead not guilty to the charges, and the whole thing would be over in minutes. Instead, it took hours. Why? Because Masterson showed up with a large entourage.
That threw the court, which was practicing social distancing methods, into a quandary, and what should have taken a few minutes instead took a couple of hours. Masterson was ultimately able to bring in only six people from his posse, and he chose his sister Alanna, brothers Will and Jordan, brother-in-law Billy Baldwin, producer Paige Dorian, and another woman we weren’t able to identify.
Left on the outside were several of Masterson’s longtime friends, which included fellow Scientologist Emily Armstrong, lead singer of Dead Sara.

So Armstrong had showed up with Masterson that day in what the victims told us was a classic attempt to pack the courtroom and intimidate them. (The three victims were there with Leah Remini and her assistant Valerie Haney.)
Armstrong did not get inside the hearing, but she had demonstrated her support to a man who was facing a potential life sentence for raping multiple women. (Three years later, last September 7, Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life after being convicted on two of the three counts of forcible rape he’d been charged with. He’s currently in state prison.)
On Friday afternoon, Armstrong confirmed that she had showed up at that 2020 Masterson arraignment in a story post at her Instagram account (although she did not mention Masterson by name).
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Emily Armstrong’s tepid response to backlash seems designed to protect Scientology

On Friday, we recounted our reporting regarding Emily Armstrong, the Dead Sara singer who has now been announced as a new addition to Linkin Park as the band returns from a seven-year hiatus following the death of Chester Bennington.

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