Harvey Weinstein charged with further sex crimes ahead of retrial in New York

NEW YORK (AP) — Disgraced former film mogul Harvey Weinstein has been charged with additional sex crimes in New York ahead of a retrial of his landmark #MeToo case, prosecutors in Manhattan said at a court hearing Thursday.

The indictment remains sealed until Weinstein is arraigned on the new charges. The trial is tentatively scheduled for September 18. Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg told the court that the indictment “accuses Mr. Weinstein of additional crimes” and that several accusers are prepared to testify against him.

Weinstein, 72, is recovering from emergency heart surgery performed at a Manhattan hospital on Monday to remove fluid from his heart and lungs. He was not present at Thursday’s hearing.

Prosecutors retrial Weinstein’s overturned rape conviction announced last week that they had begun presenting evidence to a grand jury on up to three additional allegations against Weinstein dating back to the mid-2000s.

These include alleged sexual assaults at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, now known as the Roxy Hotel, and at a residential building in Lower Manhattan between late 2005 and mid-2006, as well as an alleged sexual assault at a Tribeca hotel in May 2016.

Because the indictment is sealed, it was not known whether the new charges included some or all of the additional allegations.

“We don’t know anything,” Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala said in court. “We don’t know the exact allegations, the exact locations, the exact timing of the incidents.”

In April New York State’s highest court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for rape and sexual assault of two women and ordered a retrial. Weinstein’s retrial is tentatively scheduled to begin on November 12.

Prosecutors have said they will seek to combine any new charges with those already filed against Weinstein to try them together. Weinstein’s lawyers oppose this, arguing that prosecutors are trying to bolster their original indictment with additional charges against other accusers.

Aidala said Weinstein’s defense attorneys are not prepared to go to trial on the new charges in November. By law, they have 45 days to file papers challenging prosecutors’ request to try the original and new charges simultaneously, delaying the fight into the weeks before a possible trial.

Weinstein’s new charges come after prosecutors in Britain announced last week that they no longer track Sexual assault charges against Weinstein, the most famous villain of the #MeToo movement in 2017, when women began coming forward with reports of his behavior.

Weinstein, co-founder of the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, has long held the view that all sexual activity is consensual.

Also on Thursday, Judge Curtis Farber granted the defense’s request to keep the ailing Weinstein at Bellevue Hospital indefinitely rather than return him to the infirmary at New York’s Rikers Island prison complex. Farber also ordered Weinstein’s attending physician at Rikers Island to testify in a closed hearing about the former studio boss’s health problems.

Weinstein’s surgery on Monday came after his third visit to Bellevue Hospital to have fluid drained, Farber said. He suffers from several medical conditions that require medication and treatment and cause fluid to build up in his arms, legs, abdomen and around his heart. He needs constant monitoring to make sure the fluid buildup is not fatal, the judge said.

“If Mr. Weinstein dies because no one assumed the authority to prevent Mr. Weinstein’s potential death as a result of this transfer back and forth from one institution to another, that would be a miscarriage of justice, to say the least,” Weinstein’s attorney, Barry Kamins, told Farber. “It would be a judicial travesty.”

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had been hinting for months that new charges were imminent against Weinstein. Weinstein was once one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, producing films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The Crying Game.”

In July, prosecutors told a judge that they were actively pursue Allegations of a rape that took place in Manhattan have expired. They said some potential accusers who were unwilling to come forward during Weinstein’s first New York trial have indicated they are now willing to testify.

In Overturning Weinstein’s convictionThe New York Court of Appeals ruled that trial judge James M. Burke improperly allowed testimony against him based on allegations made by other women who were not part of the case. Burke is no longer a judge.

Prosecutors have said one of the accusers in the case, Jessica Mann, is willing to testify against him again. It is unclear whether the second accuser, Mimi Haley, would attend. Her attorney, Gloria Allred, declined to comment.

The Associated Press does not name people who make allegations of sexual assault unless they agree to have their names used, as Haley and Mann did.

Weinstein, who was serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York at the time of his conviction, was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 from another rape.

His 16-year prison sentence in this case remains, but his lawyers appealed in Juneon the grounds that he had not received a fair trial in Los Angeles. Weinstein has remained in custody at New York’s Rikers Island prison complex while awaiting retrial.

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Associated Press reporter Philip Marcelo contributed to this report.