Harvey Weinstein brazenly made a shameless comment to an officer at the lower Manhattan criminal courthouse when he was first tried for rape and sexual assault, prosecutors claimed Tuesday as the disgraced film producer’s third New York trial got underway.
Assistant District Attorney Candace White told Justice Curtis Farber that one of the officers present for Weinstein’s landmark 2020 trial had recently informed the office about an outrageous comment the thrice-convicted Miramax founder made years ago.
“If you had seen these girls, you would have done the exact same thing,” Weinstein allegedly said.
Prosecutors want jurors to hear about the potentially damning nugget if Weinstein chooses to take the stand at his retrial. The defense team, now led by celebrity defense attorney Marc Agnifilo, vehemently opposed it.
In addition to the staff of 100 Centre St., the fallen filmmaker’s notorious reputation was also fresh in the minds of scores of New Yorkers on Tuesday as he went back on trial on Manhattan Supreme Court, six years after the allegations that catalyzed the #MeToo movement first made it before a jury.
More than half of roughly 140 people called in for jury duty before 1 p.m. put their hands up to say they could not weigh the case against the former titan of Tinseltown, with the majority indicating they couldn’t be impartial because of media coverage and the nature of the allegations. No jurors had been seated by the end of the day.
In his third New York prosecution, Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to third-degree rape stemming from an alleged assault on hair stylist and once-aspiring actor Jessica Mann.
He was found guilty of the alleged attack at his 2020 trial — in addition to sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, a former TV production assistant — but New York’s Court of Appeals threw out the convictions in 2024 based on the testimony about assaults he wasn’t charged with, spurring the yearslong, still ongoing legal saga.
When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg retried the case last year, jurors again convicted Weinstein of the attack on Haley, but they could not agree on Mann. Bragg’s office said it would retry the case once more after Mann said she was willing to testify a third time.
Amid his legal battles in New York, the fallen Hollywood titan was also tried and convicted of rape and sexual assault in Los Angeles, Calif., in 2022. That resulted in a 16-year prison sentence, which he is slated to continue serving no matter how his New York matter is resolved. He is appealing his West Coast conviction and the guilty findings from last year’s trial.
During her testimony at both of Weinstein’s Manhattan trials, Mann said she spent years engaged in a toxic dynamic with the once prolific producer after moving to LA at 27 years old from the Washington state dairy farm where she was raised as an evangelical.
Mann was forthcoming with both juries about the complex nature of an on-again, off-again relationship she had with Weinstein and unsettling incidents, including massages, that she consented to. The former aspiring actor maintained that at least two incidents — including a violent attack at The DoubleTree Hotel on March 18, 2013, which is central to the case on trial — did not include her consent.
In a statement to the Daily News last year, Mann said she would take the stand as many times as necessary to hold Weinstein accountable.
“I will never give up on myself and making sure my voice – and the truth – is heard,” she said after the 2024 case ended in a partial mistrial.
Weinstein’s precipitous downfall came after the New Yorker and The New York Times published explosive investigative reporting in late 2017 accusing him of habitually preying on women from his powerful perch in Hollywood and blacklisting those who rejected him. The global reckoning with workplace sexual harassment that followed left virtually no corner of the entertainment industry or media organization untouched.
In his heyday, the fallen Hollywood kingmaker produced dozens of Academy Award-winning films, including “Shakespeare in Love,” “The English Patient,” and “Chicago,” and regularly held fundraisers for Democrats and liberal causes like criminal justice reform.
Since being extradited to New York, the ailing Weinstein has split his time between Rikers Island — which he’s called “a stain on this city” — and Bellevue Hospital, having undergone major heart surgery last year.
Jury selection continues Wednesday.