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Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala said the jailed ex-movie mogul
will appear in court in person to face his latest legal hurdle
after he was excused from a hearing last week while recovering
from emergency heart surgery.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office disclosed at
the Sept. 12 hearing last week that a grand jury had returned a
new indictment charging Weinstein with previously uncharged
offenses.
The indictment will remain under seal until Weinstein is
arraigned. Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard
evidence of up to three alleged assaults: in the mid-2000s at
the Tribeca Grand Hotel, now known as the Roxy Hotel, and a
Lower Manhattan residential building, and, in May 2016, at a
Tribeca hotel.
At the same time, Weinstein is awaiting retrial in his landmark
#MeToo case after New York’s highest court overturned his 2020
conviction earlier this year.
Weinstein’s retrial is scheduled to begin Nov. 12. Prosecutors
have said they’ll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial,
but Weinstein’s lawyers oppose that, saying it should be a
separate case.
Aidala noted last week that because the indictment remains under
seal, it's not clear whether the new charges involve some or all
of the additional allegations heard by the grand jury.
“We don’t know anything,” he said outside court last week. “We
don’t know what the exact accusations are, the exact locations
are, what the timing is.”
Weinstein has long maintained that any sexual activity was
consensual.
He has been at a Manhattan hospital following emergency surgery
Sept. 9 to drain fluid around his heart and lungs.
A judge ruled last week to allow Weinstein, 72, to remain
indefinitely in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital instead of
being transferred back to the infirmary ward at the city’s
Rikers Island jail complex.
In vacating Weinstein’s conviction and ordering a new trial, New
York’s Court of Appeals ruled in April that the trial judge
unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations from
other women that were not part of the case.
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.”
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