Actress Takes a Beating From Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyers Over Secret ‘Love Note’: It’s Latest Example of Why This Rape Case Is So Hard To Prove

There is a simple reason why a Manhattan jury is facing – for the third time in six years – the tricky question of whether or not the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein raped a former aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, at a Midtown Manhattan hotel in 2013: The case is complicated. On Wednesday, an assistant district attorney, Nicole Blumberg, asked her key witness, Ms. Mann, a final question before she ended her direct examination: “Why are you here?” “Because I won’t give up,” Ms. Mann answered firmly and resolutely, and the honesty was palpable in the courtroom. Weinstein, however, sitting in a wheelchair at his defense table, appears to be just as resolute about proving his innocence. In 2020, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office first brought the charge against him, alleging he raped Ms. Mann at a DoubleTree Hotel on March 18, 2013, both as a first-degree and as a third-degree charge. The jury convicted him only on the third-degree count. In 2024, the New York Court of Appeals overturned the conviction based on procedural mistakes, reasoning the trial judge had wrongly allowed testimony by women whose accusations were not part of the indictment. Former Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Supreme Court during his retrial on April 30, 2026 in New York City. Steven Hirsch – Pool/Getty ImagesThen in 2025, Ms. Mann’s rape charge was heard again for a second time at the same lower Manhattan courthouse. The jury could not agree on a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial. Weinstein, who remains in jail due to sex crime convictions in New York and Los Angeles involving other women, refused to take a plea deal. And Ms. Mann and the prosecutors wanted to bring the charge yet again. On Thursday, Ms. Mann, now testifying for a third time, was confronted with a never before seen love note which, as the Sun reported, she had written to herself in her cellphone two days after the alleged rape occured. This note, which was retrieved when Ms. Mann handed over five of her cellphones to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office back in 2018, had for some reason not been included in the evidence presented at the 2020 and 2025 trials. But Weinstein brought on a new team of attorneys for this trial – Marc Agnifilo, Jacob Kaplan and Teny Geragos. And they dug through the messages on the old phones and found the note. When the prosecutor asked her witness, on direct, why she had given her office the five cellphones, Ms. Mann replied, “Because I knew how complex this was going to be, and I have been very transparent about everything.” The love note details Ms. Mann’s feelings for someone that the judge ruled was clearly Weinstein. “Loving someone and desiring the dynamic of love—giving to one another—is what I desire in life, to live with, to have as a partnership. And I want that person to love me back,” the note read. The judge, who had previously questioned the witness about whether she dated anyone else at the time of the alleged rape, also found that the note referred to her feelings of being in a relationship with a “a married man.” Weinstein was married at the time to the English fashion designer and actress Georgina Chapman, with whom he shares two children. Ms. Mann met Weinstein at a party in Los Angeles in 2013, when she was a 27-year-old aspiring actress, trying to make it in Hollywood, and the producer was an established, Oscar-winning movie maestro and 60. He began to pursue her, she said, admitting that there had been consensual sexual encounters, none of which, however, included penetration. Not until March 18, 2013 at the DoubleTree Hotel in New York. Ms. Mann had come to New York for a short vacation with two friends. Weinstein, who resided in the city, had bullied her, she testified, to follow him into a room he had booked at the hotel. Former Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Supreme Court during his retrial on April 30, 2026 in New York City. Steven Hirsch – Pool/Getty ImagesShe testified that she did not want to have sex with him. But he trapped her in the room, shutting the door when she tried to open it and leave. He finally pinned her down on the bed. “It’s like I passed out,” Ms. Mann told the prosecutor. “That’s why I don’t remember anything. I couldn’t breathe, he’s so heavy. His full weightand everything was on me.” Weinstein at the time, she said, weighed about 300 pounds and measured 6 feet tall, while she weighed 110 at a height of 5 feet and 4 inches. She explicitly told the prosecutor she did not consent to the sexual act, nor to the oral sex that followed. After Weinstein was “done,” she said, she ran into the bathroom. “I remember I was trying to rinse my mouth out and at some point he called my name… I went out there and he wanted to talk to me,” the witness recalled. “And he was laying on the bed and just looked relaxed and he said… ‘I just find you so attractive.’” Ms. Mann remembered that Weinstein also asked her if she was ok, and if the two of them were “still friends” and that she could be “his wing girl.”“You can (be) the girl that brings me other girls,” she recalled him telling her. “I was just horrified and I was just trying to survive the moment and I just couldn’t think. It felt like being drunk, like I was just some woozy and disoriented.” Two days later, the jury learned on Thursday, she wrote the note to herself, stating she wanted “that person” to love her. The defense attorney asked Ms. Mann to describe what she loved about Weinstein. “It was the validation,” Ms. Mann replied. “Like he is proud of me.” When Ms. Geragos pressed and asked Ms. Mann to list some of the “human moments” they had shared, there was a long silence. Finally, Ms. Mann answered, “Well, when we would talk a lot about kinky-dirty stuff and like what do you want to do to people. Anyways, (for) some reason it felt like he wanted me to slap him. And so I slapped him.” She said the slapping “upset him,” and the the next day he told her, “Jess,that’s not you.” The confused defense attorney pointed out that slapping someone was hardly a sign of “validation’ much less a “human moment.” “It was when he said, ‘Jess, that’s not you,’” Ms. Mann clarified. Ms. Mann also agreed to participate in a threesome with the Italian actress Emanuela Postacchini, she said, as the Sun also reported. But she couldn’t actually go through with the threesome and broke down in the bathroom, crying. She wrote a blog post, a fictional narrative about her threesome experience, which was read in court. Ms. Mann testified that the “blog is not a record of what happened.” But when the defense brought up the blog post on Thursday, the Sun witnessed one of the jurors roll her eyes, and another juror appeared to be smiling. The judge ended the trial proceedings about 45 minutes early on Thursday, because Ms. Mann said she felt light headed, and tired. The judge encouraged her to get a good night’s sleep.Her cross-examination will resume on Friday.

Actress Takes a Beating From Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyers Over Secret ‘Love Note’: It’s Latest Example of Why This Rape Case Is So Hard To Prove

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