Harvey Weinstein “Almost Died”, Producer’s Lawyer Says As New Grand Jury Indictment Revealed — Update
UPDATED throughout with attorney comments: Harvey Weinstein has been indicted by a new grand jury on additional charges, prosecutors said in a New York courtroom Thursday.
“We informed the defense just prior to being present in court this morning … the grand jury has indicted Mr. Weinstein,“ Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg said.
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The new indictment follows an appeals court ruling in April that threw out Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for rape and sexual assault, and comes days after Weinstein underwent emergency heart surgery as prosecutors are preparing to retry him.
There are three new sex crime complaints against Weinstein from the winter of 2005-2006, 2006 and 2016, his lawyer, Arthur Aidala, told reporters after Thursday’s hearing, citing information from prosecutors. “We don’t know what the exact accusations are, the exact locations are, the exact timing is,” Aidala said. “But they went out and found human beings who are willing to say Mr. Weinstein did something wrong.”
The new indictment remains sealed for now, Blumberg said in court, and the DA plans to file a motion to consolidate all the charges, past and present, into a new superseding indictment and try them together. Aidala told reporters he will object to that arrangement and seek to have the new accusations tried separately, after a retrial of the overturned case.
There is no arraignment date yet for the new indictment. Weinstein is in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, and Aidala speculated that if Weinstein is well enough to attend the next case hearing, on September 18, to discuss his health issues, prosecutors might unseal the indictment then. Weinstein’s retrial is scheduled to begin on November 12.
Weinstein was not in court on Thursday as he did not receive medical clearance following surgery. Judge Curtis Farber today ordered that Weinstein remain at Bellevue, and not be transferred back to the city’s Rikers Island jail, citing defense concerns about his care at the jail’s medical facilities — a subject of previous hearings in the DA’s revived case.
Aidala told Farber on Thursday that his client “almost died” before he was rushed to the hospital from the jail on Sunday for emergency surgery on his heart and lungs. Earlier this week Deadline reported that the producer emerged from surgery in “very rough shape”. Additionally, Weinstein was said to be in “critical condition”, Deadline was told.
Weinstein was moved out of the hospital’s intensive care unit on Tuesday, Aidala told reporters after a hearing that shed new light on the events surrounding his client’s medical emergency.
Aidala said in court that a Weinstein representative, Craig Rothfeld, called him on Sunday after speaking to the producer by phone from jail and said, “I think Harvey’s going to die.” That news prompted a flurry of emails from Aidala, and when a doctor at Rikers examined Weinstein he immediately arranged to have him sent to the hospital, Aidala said outside court.
Aidala said that when he spoke to Weinstein this week, he told him, “Arthur, I have a shunt in my chest, I have a bag coming out of me” draining blood and fluids. He is also receiving oxygen and his regular medicines, his lawyer said.
Weinstein gained 22 pounds in the two weeks before his surgery, Aidala said, adding that he doesn’t know whether Weinstein will be well enough to appear in person in court next week. He said it’s possible that Weinstein could be re-arraigned at his hospital bedside if prosecutors choose to go that route.
Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison after a jury in Manhattan found the former studio chief guilty in 2020 of raping actress Jessica Mann and sexually assaulting production assistant Miriam Haley. A panel of New York appeals court judges threw out the conviction in April, ruling 4-3 that prosecutors had erred by allowing the testimony of other Weinstein accusers whose claims were not being tried.
Weinstein is using a similar argument to appeal his criminal sexual assault conviction and 16-year prison sentence in a separate case in Los Angeles.
Aidala said that he doesn’t know how many accusers his client will face in a new trial in New York, but it could be as many as five if prosecutors persuade both Mann and Haley to testify again, and if there are three separate accusers in the new indictment.
“We’re going to attempt to push back this new case,” he added, telling reporters that his legal team is prepared for a retrial on the 2020 case, but that it would be unfair to his client to force him to prepare by November 12 for a retrial with new accusers.
“This is a way for them to go around the court of appeals’ ruling and say, well, if we only go to trial with the original two people that’s probably not enough,” Aidala said outside court, giving his own assessment of the prosecutors’ retrial strategy. “But if we can add a couple more and put them all together, now we have four or five people. A jury’s going to say, well, even though the facts aren’t really there he must have done something so let’s convict him.”
A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office declined to comment on the case.
An ailing Weinstein was moved from an upstate prison after the appeals win, and he has shuttled between Rikers, Bellevue and Judge Farber’s courtroom in lower Manhattan several times — arriving to court in a wheelchair — as the DA’s bid for a retrial moves forward.
Aidala has waged a pressure campaign against the DA’s office in public and in court to have his client stay at Bellevue’s prisoner ward for the duration of the legal proceedings against him. Weinstein’s personal physician testified in a closed hearing with Judge Farber about the producer’s health. Aidala said his client also wants to talk to the judge.
“I think he just wants to tell the court how sick he is,” Aidala said, pushing back at suggestions that Weinstein might be overstating his condition to delay his trial or garner sympathy.
“It is a jail hospital setting, so everyone is clear,” Aidala told reporters. “It is part of the Department of Corrections. There are bars, there are corrections officers, there are handcuffs. It’s just that there are also doctors and nurses and medical equipment to take care of someone who’s in their 70s, in very poor health and obviously has been suffering.”
“You don’t go and operate on someone’s heart and someone’s lungs just to see how it goes,” he added, calling this week’s surgery “absolutely necessary.”
Blumberg, the prosecutor, asked the judge to attach a subpoena to her request for the chief doctor at Rikers to testify at next week’s hearing.
Weinstein remains in custody in New York, despite his conviction being overturned, because of the conviction in California. “Had the California case not been happening he’d be home right now and he’d be in a regular hospital,” Aidala said.
More than 80 women working at all levels of the film industry have come forward to accuse Weinstein of rape and assault during and after the height of the MeToo movement that called out exploitive or criminal behavior by powerful men in entertainment, politics and business.
Weinstein reached settlements with dozens of accusers during his movie company’s bankruptcy proceedings. He still faces a handful of lawsuits including one brought last year by actress Julia Ormond under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which extended the statute of limitations for alleged victims of sexual assault to sue. Weinstein has denied wrongdoing in all of the civil and criminal cases against him, and maintained that any sexual encounters were consensual.
Dominic Patten contributed to this report.
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