Harvey Weinstein ‘secretly charged by LA grand jury on rape charge’

According to a report, Harvey Weinstein was secretly charged with rape charges by a grand jury in Los Angeles.

The indictment comes a few weeks ago “and looks a lot like a criminal indictment filed in January 2020 by former DA Jackie Lacey,” Fox News reported.

This is likely to facilitate the delivery of the disgraced film mogul from New York, where he has already served a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault.

Weinstein is facing 11 charges in California, including rape and sexual battery that involved five incidents between 2004 and 2013.

If convicted, the former Hollywood producer will face up to 140 years in prison.

Fox reports that the sealed indictment, along with the arrest warrant for Weinstein, is expected to be released Monday afternoon after an extradition hearing in Erie, New York.

The Los Angeles DA office did not respond to inquiries by Fox regarding the charge.

An attorney for two of Weinstein’s five defendants in the LA case declined to comment.

The LA case against Weinstein, 69, was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, but the DA’s office apparently did not want to wait any longer to continue.

Weinstein is currently serving his sentence in the Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo, a prison with maximum security. Through his lawyer, he denied all charges against him.

‘These are outdated, unfounded, unsupported, unbelievable allegations that arose during the hysteria of the #MeToo movement, and we are confident that Mr. Weinstein will be acquitted because there is no credible evidence against him. He is innocent, ‘said lawyer Mark Werksman.

At the hearing on Monday, Weinstein’s lawyers are expected to request a delay in the extradition because his poor health is reportedly at risk from the pandemic.

If the expected request is denied, Weinstein could be extradited to Los Angeles within thirty days.

Experts said a indictment could help prosecutors streamline lawsuits by being tried directly.

If the extradition had been made solely on the basis of a criminal charge, a pre-trial would have been necessary.

“This process will eliminate the need for a pre-trial, which is a minor case, as we saw in the PB case: there was the trial before the trial,” said Troy Slaten, a criminal defense attorney. , told Fox News, citing the 1994-5 PB. Simpson murder trial.

Gloria Allred, who represents two of Weinstein’s five defendants, said she was hopeful he would appear in court on the West Coast soon.

“It seems to me that Mr. Weinstein does not want to move to Los Angeles to face charges, but justice is delayed, justice is denied, ‘said the leading women’s lawyer.

Allred represents Mimi Haleyi, one of the women accused by Weinstein more than a year ago at his trial in New York.

In the LA case, she defends an unnamed woman, as well as model and actress Lauren Young, who emerged as a witness in Weinstein’s criminal trial in New York.

Young testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in Beverly Hills.

She said she was trapped in a bathroom with the producer who allegedly touched her while she was masturbating.

LA prosecutors allege that Weinstein raped another woman in a hotel in Beverly Hills on February 18, 2013 – just a day before the alleged attack on Young.

The three other women involved in the LA case were also allegedly assaulted in Beverly Hills hotels.

Regardless of the outcome of the LA case, Weinstein will have to return to New York to serve the remainder of his 23-year sentence.

Earlier this month, Weinstein appealed his conviction for rape and sex crimes, claiming he did not receive a fair trial and that the incidents were “unquestionably unanimous” and that many of the women who testified during his trial were just thinking ‘disgusting’.

On April 5, his attorneys filed a 166-page appeal in Manhattan alleging that the judge allowed too much evidence about Weinstein’s reputation and character.

Weinstein was convicted in February last year of one count of criminal sexual assault and one count of third-degree rape. He was acquitted of three other charges. He was sentenced on March 11.

“Simply put, the prosecutor tried Weinstein’s character, not his behavior,” his lawyers said Monday in their appeal.

‘With a year behind us and emotions have dropped, the transcript of the case we have always believed confirms: that Mr. “Weinstein did not get a fair trial … We are confident that the appeals department will rectify these errors and send them to bring another case before another judge,” they said.

They say the jury ignored the facts of the case and instead focused on Weinstein’s created public persona, and that the incidents were ‘indisputably’ consensual.