By The Associated Press September 12, 2024 at 7:32am
Disgraced ex-movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on additional sex crimes charges in New York ahead of a retrial in his landmark #MeToo case, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing Thursday.
The indictment will remain under seal until Weinstein is arraigned on the new charges, which could happen as early as Sept. 18. Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg disclosed in court that the indictment charges “Mr. Weinstein with additional crimes” and that multiple accusers are prepared to testify against him.
Weinstein, 72, is recovering from Monday’s emergency heart surgery at a Manhattan hospital, which removed fluid on his heart and lungs, and was not at Thursday’s hearing.
Prosecutors retrying Weinstein’s overturned rape conviction disclosed last week that they had begun presenting to a grand jury evidence of up to three additional allegations against Weinstein, dating as far back as the mid-2000s.
They include alleged sexual assaults at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, now known as the Roxy Hotel, at a Lower Manhattan residential building between late 2005 and mid-2006, and at a Tribeca hotel in May 2016.
Because the indictment is under seal, it was not known whether the new charges involved some or all of the additional allegations.
“We don’t know anything,” Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said outside court. “We don’t know what the exact accusations are, the exact locations are, what the timing is.”
In April, New York’s highest court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women and ordered a new trial. Weinstein’s retrial is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
Prosecutors said they would seek to combine any new charges with ones previously brought against Weinstein, so they could be tried together. Weinstein’s lawyers oppose that, arguing that prosecutors were seeking to bolster their original case with additional charges involving other accusers.
Aidala said, Weinstein’s defense team won’t be ready to go to trial in November on the new charges. By law, he said, they’ll have 45 days to file court papers challenging the prosecution’s request to try the original and new indictments at the same time, pushing the fight into the weeks before a possible trial.
Weinstein’s new charges come after prosecutors in Britain announced last week that they would no longer pursue charges of indecent assault against Weinstein.
Weinstein, who co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Also Thursday, Judge Curtis Farber granted a defense request to have the ailing Weinstein remain at Bellevue Hospital indefinitely instead of being moved back to the infirmary ward at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex. Farber also ordered Weinstein’s attending physician at Rikers Island to testify at a closed-door hearing about the ex-studio boss’ health issues.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had signaled for months that new charges were imminent against Weinstein, who was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The Crying Game.”
Weinstein, who had been serving a 23-year sentence in New York when his conviction was quashed, was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape.
His 16-year prison sentence in that case still stands, but his lawyers appealed in June, arguing he did not get a fair trial in Los Angeles. Weinstein has remained in custody in New York’s Rikers Island jail complex while awaiting the retrial.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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