Legal and health problems are mounting for Harvey Weinstein. The New York District Attorney’s Office revealed on Thursday that it has a new sexual offense charge against the former Hollywood producer and convicted rapist. Nicole Blumberg did not reveal the details of the new charges during a court hearing this morning, but assured the judge that there are several victims willing to testify against him. Weinstein did not attend the hearing. He remains hospitalized in the city, where he underwent heart surgery on Monday.
The indictment will remain secret until next Wednesday, September 18. The Associated Press reported last week that prosecutors were adding three new alleged cases of sexual abuse to the new indictment. Two of them occurred in the mid-2000s and the most recent in 2016 in two hotels in the city. The prosecution has been presenting the evidence in its hands to a Grand Jury. “We do not know exactly what these accusations were, where they were or on what dates,” said Arthur Aidala, one of Weinstein’s lawyers.
The former producer underwent emergency surgery on Monday for “various health issues.” Weinstein left Rikers Island prison on Sunday night, where he is serving a 16-year sentence for rape, and was transferred to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. “We can confirm that Mr. Weinstein underwent heart surgery,” confirmed his publicist, Juda Engelmayer, who declined to give further details about the details of the procedure. The outlet Deadline He said that after the procedure, the 72-year-old man’s condition deteriorated and he was in critical condition. He stabilized in the following hours.
The producer of Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction He began to feel chest pains on Sunday. Aidala wrote to the prison officials to speed up the transfer. “He will die if they don’t do something,” the lawyer wrote in an email.
Weinstein returned to Rikers Island in April after a New York appeals court overturned the landmark 2020 conviction of the former Hollywood powerhouse. The state’s highest court ruled that the judge in the case, James Burke, allowed women whose allegations were not part of the prosecution’s case to testify in the trial. In its ruling, the court ordered a new trial.
The tentative date for the new trial has been set for November 12. Weinstein was due to appear before Judge Curtis Farber on Thursday for a pretrial hearing. Farber has allowed the defendant to remain in the hospital to recover indefinitely at the request of the defense. He also ordered the former producer’s doctor to testify confidentially to learn details of the procedure and the patient’s health problems.
In the new trial this fall, the producer will again face charges of having performed oral sex on a television and film production assistant in 2006 and of third-degree rape in an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013.
Last week, the British courts announced that they were dropping charges against Weinstein for a case of sexual harassment of a woman that occurred in London in 1996. The English prosecution considered that there was “no real possibility of achieving a conviction.” The case was opened in 2022, amid the wave of complaints sparked by the #MeToo movement.
The rapist’s deteriorating health had become evident to anyone following his legal proceedings, whether in New York or Los Angeles. Last year, the accused arrived in court assisted by a walker. This later led to a cane and last May, finally, to a wheelchair.
Weinstein was taken to Bellevue Hospital in July for treatment of Covid-related symptoms. Doctors also determined that he was suffering from double pneumonia, diabetes, high blood pressure, fluid in his lungs and back problems. His lawyers tried to use his poor health to delay his 2021 trial in Los Angeles for rape. In February 2023, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison by a California court for raping a Russian citizen seeking a career in film in 2013. The jury, however, acquitted him on another charge and did not reach a conclusion on a further charge after nine days of deliberations.
The fall of Weinstein, a powerful executive who created an independent film empire with Miramax and The Weinstein company, began on October 5, 2017 in the pages of newspapers. It was then that journalists from The New York TimesJodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, published an investigation that had been working for months to break the wall of silence that had surrounded the producer’s abuses for years. The publication became the starting point of #MeToo, a wave of accusations against all men who used positions of power to take advantage of the film and television industry. In five years, #MeToo changed Hollywood forever.
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