New York grand jury slaps Harvey Weinstein with new criminal charges, prosecutors say

MANHATTAN (CN) — Harvey Weinstein is facing additional criminal charges in Manhattan after a grand jury returned another indictment against the disgraced Hollywood film producer, New York prosecutors announced Thursday.

“The grand jury has indicted Mr. Weinstein,” prosecutor Nicole Blumberg told a New York judge during a status conference in Manhattan criminal court. “We have not unsealed the actual indictment, so we are not going to discuss the specifics. But at this point we wanted to relay to the court … that he has been indicted.”

For now, the details of the indictment remain unclear. Prosecutors didn’t divulge on Thursday how many charges Weinstein is facing, nor the nature of those charges.

Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala of New York-based Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, speculated that they would be on par with the other sex crimes his client has faced in the past, telling reporters outside of the courthouse that he believed the charges to be “serious felonies.”

Aidala said the indictment contains three “incidents,” likely those of sexual misconduct, dating back nearly two decades: one between 2005 and 2006, one in 2006 and one in 2016.

“We are ready to defend whatever comes our way,” Aidala said. “It’s just a little odd for us to be so in the dark at this point that we really don’t even know what is coming our way with any degree of specificity.”

The new indictment comes ahead of Weinstein’s highly anticipated retrial for sex crimes he was convicted on in 2020, which were tossed earlier this year by the New York Court of Appeals due to prejudicial trial testimony.

Prosecutors said Thursday that they intend to roll the charges from the new indictment into the retrial. Weinstein’s attorneys want two separate trials so they can have more time to prepare for the new indictment.

Weinstein’s poor health is complicating matters. The 72-year-old did not attend Thursday’s hearing, which is why his indictment remains under seal.

Instead, Weinstein is recovering from emergency heart surgery at a Manhattan medical center. He was rushed from Rikers Island to Bellevue Hospital earlier this week to address a dangerous level of fluid buildup in his heart and lungs, according to Aidala.

“He almost died,” Aidala told New York Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber on Thursday.

Aidala continued that Weinstein’s surgeons placed an “apparatus” that is “draining fluids from his body.”

“He’s not well,” Aidala said to reporters. “I know lawyers sometimes are known for exaggeration. I can’t exaggerate a heart operation. I can’t exaggerate a lung operation. He was in the intensive care unit, I believe, until yesterday.”

Aidala hopes that Farber agrees to keep Weinstein at Bellevue Hospital until his retrial, rather than returning him to Rikers Island. Farber is overseeing ongoing proceedings to determine whether or not that’s necessary, but he ruled Thursday that he’ll keep him there for at least the next week.

The retrial is tentatively slated for November, but Farber expressed some skepticism about the date given the new details about Weinstein’s health. Another status conference is slated for Wednesday, but Aidala didn’t know if Weinstein would be well enough to attend.

Despite his tossed New York conviction, Weinstein remains behind bars, serving the 16-year sentence imposed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge for raping an Italian model in 2013.

More than 80 women have come forward with accusations of Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, which sparked the global #MeToo movement that sought to hold powerful men accountable for a culture of gender discrimination, misogyny and rampant sexual misconduct.

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