Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
A new indictment charged the jailed ex-movie mogul with committing a criminal sex act, accusing him of forcing oral sex on a woman at some point between April 29, 2006, and May 6 of that year.
Weinstein has long maintained that he never engaged in any sexual activity that wasn't consensual.
No details about the accuser involved in the new charge were released.
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“Thanks to this survivor who bravely came forward, Harvey Weinstein now stands indicted for an additional alleged violent sexual assault,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. The Democrat added that the investigation continues.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren’t part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said, but it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
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While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state’s highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and criminal sex act charges involving two women. The Court of Appeals ordered a new trial that is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12, though it's likely to be delayed.
“Obviously, Mr. Weinstein wants to go to trial as soon as humanly possible,” defense lawyer Arthur Aidala said.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors want to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein’s lawyers say it should be a separate case. Judge Curtis Farber said Wednesday he'd rule early next month on that issue.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
The 72-year-old Weinstein, who came to court in a wheelchair, has been at a Manhattan hospital following emergency surgery Sept. 9 to drain fluid around his heart and lungs.
A judge agreed last week to let Weinstein remain indefinitely in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital instead of being transferred back to the infirmary ward at New York's Rikers Island jail complex.
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.”
