(Headline USA) Former Democrat megadonor and Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex-crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
A new indictment charged the jailed ex-movie mogul with committing a criminal sex act, accusing him of forcing oral sex on a woman at some point between April 29, 2006, and May 6 of that year.
Weinstein has long maintained that he never engaged in any sexual activity that wasn’t consensual.
No details about the new accuser were released.
“Thanks to this survivor who bravely came forward, Harvey Weinstein now stands indicted for an additional alleged violent sexual assault,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. The Democrat added that the investigation continues.
Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala said he had “absolutely no clue” about the accuser’s identity or the specifics of the allegation.
“We have a lot of work to do. We have to find out who that person is. We have to do an investigation,” he said outside court.
Weinstein “never forced himself on anyone,” the attorney said.
The 72-year-old Weinstein, who is recovering from emergency surgery, came to court in a wheelchair, carrying two novels with him. He appeared to watch the proceeding intently.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren’t part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults—two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
It’s not clear whether those include the allegation that underlies the new indictment, nor what the grand jury made of what it heard about any claims beyond the one the indictment describes.
Aidala said Weinstein was “somewhat relieved” to find only one charge on the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state’s highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and criminal sex act charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial.
It has been tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12, though it’s likely to be delayed. Judge Curtis Farber set an Oct. 2 hearing to discuss scheduling.
Aidala said Weinstein wants to go to trial as soon as possible, but his defense team didn’t want to rush its work on addressing the new charge.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge’s term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors want to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein’s lawyers say it should be a separate case. Farber plans to rule Oct. 2 on that issue.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
Weinstein has been at a Manhattan hospital following emergency surgery Sept. 9 to drain fluid around his heart and lungs. He takes as many as 19 different medications for his various health ailments, Aidala said.
A judge agreed last week to let Weinstein remain indefinitely in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital instead of being transferred back to the infirmary ward at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex.
Once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, Weinstein co-founded the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company and produced films such as Shakespeare in Love and The Crying Game.
The #MeToo reckoning came about in 2017 largely as a leftist reaction to the election of Donald Trump, which shocked many Hillary Clinton supporters who believed a damning Access Hollywood tape of Trump allegedly boasting about his consensual sexual dalliances would prove devastating to his campaign.
Instead, many pointed to Clinton’s longtime support of figures like Weinstein and her decision to stand behind her own husband’s multiple affairs, arguing that any indignation on her part was, at best, disingenuous.
The scandal—which Trump maintained was simply “locker room talk” proved to be more of a liability to his political opponent but left Democrats determined to clean house in order to focus on a “get Trump” lawfare strategy, which Bragg was able to fulfill earlier this year in a highly questionable case that took immense liberalities with the rule of law.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
