‘Miss You, Big Guy’: Harvey Weinstein’s Third Rape Trial Gets Underway With Lurid Accustations Against the Once-Mighty Producer

Is the third time the charm? The third rape trial against the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein heard opening arguments at a Manhattan court on Tuesday. Prosecutors told the jury the defendant raped former aspiring actress Jessica Mann at a Midtown Manhattan hotel in 2013. The defense attorney argued that emails sent by the accuser to their client would reveal a “caring and close relationship” between the two. “Miss you, big guy,” Ms. Mann wrote to Weinstein in one email, his defense attorney Jacob Kaplan said on Tuesday. He cited other emails, where Ms. Mann said that she loved the producer, and that she was “happy to see his smile.” Weinstein, who is 74 years old and suffers from numerous illnesses, such as a heart failure and diabetes, sat in his wheelchair at the defense table. He looked so pale that it seemed he had been powdered down for a role set in the Elizabethan era. Mr. Kaplan insisted from the lectern that because of Ms. Mann’s affectionate emails, “this case will be her word against her own word.” For a third time, Weinstein is facing the same third-degree-rape charge at the same Manhattan criminal court. The movie mogul, who once produced Oscar-winning movies, now appears to be producing trials. Jessica Mann arrives for the first retrial of former film producer Harvey Weinstein at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 21, 2025 in New York City. Pamela Smith-Pool/Getty ImagesIn 2020, Weinstein was charged with five sexual offenses. The jury acquitted him of three, including the most serious ones, first degree rape and predatory sexual assault, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. But Weinstein was found guilty of third-degree-rape, relating to Jessica Mann, and of a criminal sexual act, relating to the former production assistant Miriam Haley. The judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison. In 2024, New York’s Court of Appeals overturned those convictions and ordered a new trial. The court found that the trial judge had wrongly admitted testimony based on vivid, decades-old allegations from women – including “Sopranos” star Annabella Sciorra – who were not part of the indictment. Weinstein remained incarcerated because he had also been found guilty in California for sex crimes and sentenced there to 16 years behind bars. He was transported from an Upstate prison to Rikers Island, where he is still being held today. The second trial began exactly one year ago, in April 2025 as the Sun reported. Ms. Mann and Ms. Haley, who both testified again, were joined by a third accuser, the former Polish model Kaja Sokola, who alleged Weinstein had forcibly performed oral sex on her at a Manhattan hotel in 2006. The jury acquitted Weinstein of Ms. Sokola’s allegation, but found him guilty (again) of the charge brought by Ms. Haley, who claimed he performed unwanted oral sex on her at his Soho apartment in 2006. However, the jury could not agree on a verdict on Ms. Mann’s rape charge. After five days of contentious deliberations, the judge declared a mistrial on the count. Weinstein refused to plead guilty. Since the onset of his trial-saga, he has held that all sexual encounters were consensual and he is not guilty of any sex crimes. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office could have dropped the case but decided to try the charge again in what now looks like a battle for moral victory rather than a quest to punish a sex offender. Rape in the third-degree is a class E non-violent felony and carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Even if found guilty, Weinstein, who has been behind bars since 2020, would have already served his time. On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg attended the opening argument of his Assistant District Attorney, Candance White. Sitting in the second row, he watched Ms. White addressed the jury, composed of seven men and five women. “This case will come down to power,” Ms. White said, describing Weinstein as the most powerful “movie executive of his generation.” “It was his world and everyone else was just living in it,” she went on. Besides his influence in Hollywood, Weinstein, she said, had “deep ties to politics.” He was friendly with President Clinton as photographs, showing them smiling together, would later confirm. Weinstein refused to take no for an answer, Ms. White said, and Ms. Mann’s “wishes were irrelevant to him.” Ms. White portrayed Weinstein as a successful film producer, who traveled the world on private jets, frequented red carpets events, and held meetings in hotel rooms. Meanwhile, the alleged victim, Ms. Mann was “working three jobs” when she met him, and came from “a small rural town in Washington state… known more for dairy farming than for opportunity.” Raised in a pentecostal evangelistic church, Ms. Mann was taught from an early age that “women are subservient to men,” the prosecutor told the jury. When Ms. Mann was still a minor, she was sexually abused by a member of the church. She confessed the abuse to her stepfather, but he put the blame on her, saying no one in the community would believe her, if she spoke up. After experiencing more abuse from a boyfriend, she hopped on a plane to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Her father, who paid for the one-way-ticket, told her his help would end there. “She was emotionally underdeveloped… No self esteem… She was lost,” Ms. White said. In 2013, Ms. Mann, who was 27 years old at the time, 33 years younger than Weinstein, met the producer at a film party. He pursued her right away, inviting her to Oscar parties, buying her books about acting, and soon making sexual advances. One time, the prosecutor said, he sexually assaulted her, other times, they had “consensual sexual encounters” with “consensual oral sex.” The alleged incident occurred six weeks after their initial meeting. Ms. Mann had flown to New York to visit two friends. They had stayed out late and partied on St. Patrick’s day, when Weinstein showed up in the lobby of their hotel, the DoubleTree hotel, in the morning. “There he was standing in the lobby checking into a room,” the prosecutor said. Ms. Mann allegedly caused a scene, refusing to follow Weinstein to a room. “He grabbed her by the arm,” the prosecutor went on, and was “angry,” telling her not “to embarrass him in front of other people.” The defense attorney described the scene quite differently. He told the jury that Ms. Mann didn’t want her friends to know that “she was having sex with Harvey Weinstein…She didn’t want people to know that she slept her way to Hollywood.” Over the course of their on-and-off again relationship that lasted four more years, the defense attorney argued, Ms. Mann wanted to keep their relationship a secret. He said she wanted to hide the fact that she was sleeping with a married man. Because Weinstein, at the time, was married to the English fashion designer and actress, Georgina Chapman, with whom he shares two children. Ms. White disagreed. She said Ms. Mann was afraid of Weinstein. “He held all the power… She was just a nobody.” Reluctantly, she followed him up to the room he had booked at the DoubleTree hotel, and repeatedly told him “no,” when moments later, he “thrust himself into her vagaina and raped her,” Ms. White said. It was the first time, the prosecutor clarified, they had sexual intercourse.“Regretting does not remove the voluntary aspect,” the defense attorney fired back. “Regretting does not remove consent.” Mr. Kaplan portrayed Ms. Mann as “a strong and capable woman,” with an “ability to make free choices.” “Sometimes we make good choices, sometimes we make bad choices,” the defense attorney philosophized, doubling down that Ms. Mann made the choice to sexually engage with Weinstein not just at the Double Tree hotel but “over and over again over the course of the years.” Ms. Mann is expected to testify during the trial, which will last about four weeks.

‘Miss You, Big Guy’: Harvey Weinstein’s Third Rape Trial Gets Underway With Lurid Accustations Against the Once-Mighty Producer

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