Fallen Hollywood kingpin Harvey Weinstein was rushed to a hospital for emergency heart surgery in New York, where the 72-year-old former producer is being held pending a retrial in November on rape and sexual assault charges, ABC News reported Monday.
“Mr. Weinstein was rushed to Bellevue Hospital last night due to numerous medical symptoms,” his communications officials said in a statement obtained by the network, who “confirmed a heart procedure and surgery,” but did not elaborate.
The former American producer had already been hospitalized at the end of April in New York, just after the resounding cancellation of a first conviction in 2020 for rape.
His representatives stressed that their client was suffering from “a plethora of significant health problems that require medical monitoring” while the septuagenarian is incarcerated in the notorious Rikers Island prison in New York.
Convicted and charged in multiple proceedings
He is due to attend a new procedural hearing in a city court on Thursday after the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office presented new evidence of sexual assaults in the 2000s to a grand jury — citizens who participate in the investigative phase with the prosecutor — in early September.
Mr. Weinstein could thus be charged again at the end of the week.
At a hearing in July in New York, during which he appeared physically diminished and pushed in a wheelchair, a new trial was set for November 12.
Harvey Weinstein had benefited at the end of April from a ruling by a New York appeals court overturning his 2020 conviction for the 2013 rape of an actress, Jessica Mann, and the 2006 sexual assault of a production assistant, Mimi Haleyi.
A turnaround seen as an affront and a step backwards for the #MeToo movement, launched with the Weinstein affair, against sexual and sexist violence against women.
The revelations in 2017 about the sexual assaults of the former boss of Miramax had triggered a global shockwave and freed the voices of many victims.
More than 80 women have accused him of harassment, sexual assault or rape, including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd.
Harvey Weinstein has always maintained that sex was consensual.
Despite the overturning of the New York verdict, he is being held pending a 2023 conviction in Los Angeles to 16 years in prison for other rape and sexual assault charges.