Rosanna Arquette thinks Harvey Weinstein may be connected to sex assault claims against Asia Argento being made public

Rosanna Arquette has suspicions surrounding the sexual assault allegations that have been made against Asia Argento.

As news broke that Argento paid former child star Jimmy Bennett $380,000 to settle a sexual assault claim he made against the actress stemming from a 2013 incident, Arquette took to Twitter to defend Argento. The women were both among the first to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct, appearing in Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker piece in October 2017, and Arquette publicly speculated in a series of now-deleted tweets whether the disgraced producer had anything to do with the allegations against Argento being made public in Monday’s New York Times exposé.

In a statement on Tuesday, Argento denied having sexual contact with Bennett, but claimed that her boyfriend, the late Anthony Bourdain, made a deal to pay off Bennett on the condition that he no longer contact Argento.

After posting “The monster is at it again,” using a nickname for Weinstein, who Arquette said once propositioned her at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the early ’90s, she also wrote, “Stop until you hear all the facts this a set up” and “extortion is a problem.” The first tweet remains, but the others have since been deleted.

Still, Arquette continued to put her skepticism on display. “The timing of the story is suspect,” she wrote in another post. In that tweet, she also reminded her followers that wounds “run deep” for survivors of rape, and at the end of the day, “Asia was still raped by Harvey Weinstein.” Weinstein, who is facing rape charges in New York, has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex against him.

She also commented on #MeToo movement founder Tarana Burke’s viral thread on the topic.

Arquette then posted (twice) about how she stands with victims of sexual assault.

She also urged others to “wait to hear the whole story.”

On Tuesday, she clarified her comments in a longer post shared by her brother David Arquette.

Arquette isn’t the first Weinstein accuser to suggest that the disgraced producer may be pulling strings behind the scenes. When Rose McGowan, who also accused Weinstein of rape, was arrested for cocaine possession, she suggested that Weinstein somehow had the drugs planted in her bag. Farrow also wrote about Weinstein’s “army of spies” in another piece for the New Yorker. Sources claimed that the movie exec allegedly hired investigators, including former Israeli Mossad agents, in an attempt to stop accusers from going public with sexual misconduct claims against him. Weinstein also allegedly worked with American Media editor Dylan Howard to undermine accusers.

Argento and Arquette had a power brunch last year along with fellow Weinstein accuser Annabella Sciorra and investigative reporter Farrow, who broke the story about Weinstein’s alleged misconduct:

Argento, who claimed Weinstein raped her but that they later had consensual sex, has been one of the most prominent voices of the #MeToo movement, delivering a fiery speech at the Cannes Film Festival in May. For that reason, the exposé claiming she sexually assaulted Bennett as a minor is especially shocking. So is the fact that she made a private settlement with him after Weinstein’s history of doing that with accusers had been widely criticized.

On Monday, Weinstein slammed Argento over the Bennett allegations and pay-off in a statement released by his attorney, Benjamin Brafman.

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