‘They’re All Women Who Wanted To Cut the Line’: Weinstein’s Defense Slams His Accusers as ‘Women With Broken Dreams’ as Rape Retrial Nears Its Close

Closing arguments began on Tuesday in the retrial of a disgraced movie producer, Harvey Weinstein. The prosecution will finish its summation on Wednesday, and then the jury will start to deliberate. A verdict could come as early as this week.“If there’s a doubt about his life, their case — you’ve got to throw it out. You’ve got to throw it out. Because that’s how justice tastes,” a defense attorney, Arthur Aidala, told the jury on Tuesday in a fiery closing statement, during which he made an analogy to his late grandmother’s Sunday pasta sauce. First Mr. Aidala, a proud Italian American, explained the difference between sauce and gravy, saying that when meat is added to the tomato sauce, it’s called gravy. He then asked the jury to imagine his grandmother sipping on a glass of red wine as she is preparing the gravy, and accidentally breaking the glass and perhaps dropping a shard into the sauce. Would she serve the gravy to the family, if there was even the slightest chance of a piece of glass being inside it? Of course not. In the same spirit, the defense attorney asked the jury members to consider reasonable doubt, and if they had any, even the smallest bit, they should disregard the entire case. “Those pieces of glass from my grandmother’s sauce, they’re all over,” Mr. Aidala later concluded after he had spoken for about three hours. The prosecution’s case “fails the New York City common sense test.” Witness Jessica Mann, center, arrives at Manhattan criminal court for Harvey Weinstein’s retrial, May 22, 2025. Spencer Platt/Getty Images“They’re all women with broken dreams.” Mr. Aidala said, referring to the alleged victims. “They’re all women who wanted to cut the line,” he added, insinuating that the three women, who brought sexual offense charges against his client, had consented to the sexual encounters because they were hoping the film producer would help propel their careers in the entertainment industry. Mr. Weinstein, 73, an Oscar-winning producer behind iconic films like “Pulp Fiction” and “The English Patient,” is on trial again after New York’s highest court, the court of appeals, vacated his 2020 conviction and ordered a new trial last year.In February 2020, a Manhattan jury had found Mr. Weinstein guilty of committing third-degree rape against an aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, in 2013 and a first-degree criminal sexual act of forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant, Miriam Haley, in 2006. The New York supreme court judge who presided over the case, James Burke, sentenced Mr. Weinstein to 23 years in prison. Four years later, while Mr. Weinstein was incarcerated in upstate New York and in rapidly declining health, the higher court threw out the guilty verdict because it found that Judge Burke had wrongly permitted damaging testimony from women whose allegations had not been part of the case. One of those women, a “Sopranos” star, Annabella Sciorra, gave devastating testimony that may have clinched the prosecution’s case, telling the jury that the defendant barged into her apartment one night in the early 1990s, chased her around, pinned her to her bed, and raped her. An assistant Manhattan district attorney, Nicole Blumberg, left, arrives at Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault re-trial at Manhattan criminal court on May 13, 2025. Bing Guan-Pool/Getty Images“The court compounded that error when it ruled that the defendant, who had no criminal history, could be cross examined about those allegations as well as numerous allegations of misconduct that portrayed the defendant in a highly prejudicial light,” the decision of the 4-3 ruling by the Court of Appeals stated. The film mogul remained incarcerated because he was also serving time for another conviction in California, where he was found guilty of rape, oral copulation, and other sexual misconduct charges, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. His attorneys have appealed that verdict as well, and have argued that the sentence needs to be adjusted because the vacated New York conviction was factored into Mr. Weinstein’s punishment by the California judge. Mr. Weinstein faces the two previous charges by Ms. Mann and Ms. Haley, plus a new charge that he committed a criminal sexual act on Kaja Sokola, who is originally from Poland and came to New York to pursue her modeling career. He did not testify in his own defense. The defense argued that Mr. Weinstein’s accusers lied because they did not achieve the success they hoped to get from him by trading sexual favors for Hollywood roles “when he was at the top.” Mr. Aidala described the accusers as having “buyer’s remorse.” Harvey Weinstein appears for his retrial at Manhattan criminal court on May 30, 2025. Curtis Means – Pool/Getty ImagesMs. Mann, the defense attorney said, wished to be an actress but had no talent, because, he argued, she had no schooling, Ms. Haley failed to produce her own television show, and Ms. Sokola also failed to become an actress. “They’re pissed off,” Mr. Aidala said, referring to the alleged victims, “because this transactional relationship was supposed to pay off,” and when it didn’t, the women, the defense argued, went for money. In 2023, Ms. Sokola received around $3 million when she settled the civil lawsuit she filed against Mr. Weinstein, his brother Robert Weinstein, who co-founded their film production company Miramax in 1979, and Disney, who owned Miramax in 2002, when the alleged sexual assault (which was not charged in the criminal case) occured.Ms. Sokola had previously received around half a million from a Weinstein company bankruptcy-proceeding settlement fund that had paid out numerous other women, who had come forward with accusations. Both Ms. Haley and Ms. Mann were part of yet another fund, a victim-compensation fund that came out of a settlement reached after a class-action lawsuit filed by numerous women accused the movie producer of being a serial sexual harasser and abuser. “I know it’s gonna sound crazy, but he is the one who’s being abused, he is the one who’s getting used.” Mr. Aidala said of his client, adding that the women were in fact “using him.” “They’re using their youth, their beauty, their charm, their charisma, to get stuff from him.” The defense attorney fumed. Earlier in the day, he had climbed onto the witness stand and mocked some of the witnesses, sparking laughter among some of the jurors. An assistant district attorney, Nicole Blumberg, who is prosecuting the case on behalf of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who attended the prosecution’s summation in the afternoon, told the jury that the “only people getting abused in this trial are Kaja Sokola, Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann… To suggest otherwise is offensive.” Ms. Blumberg also said that Mr. Aidala’s grandmother’s pasta sauce did not matter here, but the evidence did.“It’s not a comedy show,” Ms. Blumberg said and, agreeing with the defense, she argued that the alleged victims “all had dreams in the defendant’s world, the entertainment industry.” But, the prosecutor said, Mr. Weinstein betrayed them. Kaja Sokola, an alleged victim of Harvey Weinstein, arrives at his rape and sexual assault re-trial at Manhattan criminal court on May 14, 2025. John Angelillo-Pool/Getty Images“He never had any interest in their careers, he had an interest in their bodies, and he was gonna touch their bodies, whether they wanted to or not. He didn’t care what they wanted, he cared what he wanted. … If they said no, he’d take them anyway.” Ms. Blumberg rejected the defense’s claim that Mr. Weinstein was only on trial because he is famous. “It’s not because he is Harvey Weinstein… It’s because he raped three people.” The prosecutor argued. “Harvey Weinstein was a titan in the entertainment industry… He had enormous power and control in the entertainment industry… He decided who was in and who was out… He had multiple homes… He stayed at the fanciest hotels… He took private planes… He had a personal driver…” Then the prosecution showed the jury a photograph of Mr. Weinstein facing the press at the film festival in Cannes, standing on the red carpet, followed by a picture of him standing beside President Bill Clinton. “It’s not the person who you see today in a wheelchair,” she said, referring to Mr. Weinstein, who is wheelchair bound. “It’s that man.” She pointed at the photographs. “He carefully selected people who he could emotionally and physically overpower… This was not a courting game as Mr. Aidala wants you to believe… This was never about fooling around it was about rape.” The prosecution, which started in the late afternoon, will resume its closing argument on Wednesday morning. Then the judge will charge the jury and the jury will begin to deliberate. Mr. Weinstein faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.

‘They’re All Women Who Wanted To Cut the Line’: Weinstein’s Defense Slams His Accusers as ‘Women With Broken Dreams’ as Rape Retrial Nears Its Close

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