(New York) Harvey Weinstein is expected to appear in court in Manhattan on Wednesday on a new indictment charging him with three additional sex crimes, his lawyer said.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said the imprisoned former movie mogul would appear in court in person to face his latest legal hurdle after being excused from a hearing last week while he recovered from emergency heart surgery.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office revealed at a September 12 hearing last week that a grand jury had returned a new indictment charging Weinstein with crimes he had not previously been charged with.
The indictment will remain sealed until Weinstein is arraigned. Prosecutors said the grand jury heard evidence of three alleged assaults: in the mid-2000s at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, now known as the Roxy Hotel, and at a Lower Manhattan apartment building, and in May 2016 at a Tribeca hotel.
At the same time, Weinstein is awaiting a new trial 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 on November 12. Prosecutors have said they will seek to incorporate the new charges into the new trial, but Weinstein’s lawyers oppose that, saying it should be a separate case.
Mr. Aidala noted last week that because the indictment remains under seal, it is unclear whether the new charges address all or some 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 charges are, the exact locations, the timing.”
Weinstein has long maintained that all sex is consensual.
He was hospitalized in Manhattan after emergency surgery on September 9 to drain fluid around his heart and lungs.
Last week, a judge ruled to allow Weinstein, 72, to remain indefinitely in the detention ward at Bellevue Hospital instead of being transferred to the infirmary at the Rikers Island jail complex.
In overturning Weinstein’s conviction and ordering a new trial, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in April that the trial judge had improperly allowed testimony against him based on allegations from other women who were not involved in 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 and Juliet And The Cry of Tears.