Harvey Weinstein NYC Rape Trial Jury Seated With Female Majority; Opening Statements Wednesday
Harvey Weinstein's latest New York rape trial will see opening statement tomorrow now a jury has finally been chosen.
With the last alternate picked Tuesday after over a week of selection of literally hundreds of people, the much accused Pulp Fiction producer will plead his fate to a panel of seven women and five men as well as five alternates.
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Now placed in under guard in hospital, as opposed to the harsh Rikers Island, for the remainder of the nearly two-month long trial, the often ailing 72-year-old Weinstein's retrial comes from his 23-year sentence from a 2020 rape conviction, which was tossed out in 2024. There is also now one additional count of Criminal Sexual Act in the First Degree, which was added to the indictment last September.
If found guilty again, under a new judge, Weinstein will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Today, Weinstein's reps charcterized the selection of a jury and the trial about to begin as a new era for their client.
'It was a rigorous and at times grueling process, but we believe the jury selected is one that can assess the facts with clarity and impartiality,' Juda Engelmayer told Deadline just after the jury was seated. 'We are hopeful that this time, the legal process will rise above noise and narrative, and allow Harvey Weinstein the fair trial he's long been denied. He deserves the chance to clear his name and preserve a legacy that has been overshadowed by deeply flawed and misleading accusations.'
All of the jurors are native New Yorkers with the exception of three. One, the foreman, is gentleman who was born in the Dominican Republic and came to NYC in 1996. There is another male from the Dominican Republic, who has been living in New York since 2000, and there is also a man who moved from the state of Georgia to New York in 2013.
As he has in every one of the dozens and dozens of accusations against him since 2017 and the New York Times expose of his decades of misconduct and alleged assaults, Weinstein has said in this matter that he is innocent, that the interactions were all consensual and he is being stitched up.
In a surprise to many and a sign of the waning #MeToo movement, a 4-3 panel of New York appeals court judges a year ago dismissed the 2020 conviction on the grounds prosecutors had misstepped by allowing the testimony of other Weinstein accusers whose claims were not being tried. Still, the one time mogul stayed incarcerated during the lead up to this trial because of his 2022 conviction in Los Angeles on sex crimes and sentencing to 16 years, which is now also under appeal.
Throughout the entire pre-retrial process, Weinstein's health and conditions at Rikers have been constant concerns
In January the ex-producer implored the judge now overseeing the NYC case, Curtis Farber, to move the trial up. 'I'm asking you, and begging you,' Weinstein said. 'Every week counts. I'm holding on because I want justice for myself. I want this to be over.' Weinstein representatives claimed he nearly died while in custody at the jail he called a 'hellhole.'
The trial date didn't change, but Judge Farber is allowing the wheelchair bound Weinstein to remain in custody at Bellevue Hospital for the duration of the trial instead of having to return to Rikers every evening.
In court, Weinstein will face two of the same accusers whose testimony paved the way for his conviction before it was thrown out on appeal: Jessica Mann and Mimi Haley. For the retrial, the Manhattan District Attorney has added a new charge based on the claim of an unnamed woman who is expected to testify that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2006.
Other Weinstein accusers who testified in the first trial as supporting prosecution witnesses, but without charges attached to their accusations, will not return to the stand this time around. That un-charged testimony was the basis of the appeals court decision throwing out Weinstein's conviction.
In other court matters, Weinstein is suing his brother and ex-business partner Bob Weinstein and former COO David Glasser over an old $45 million loan that was supposed to save the now shuttered The Weinstein Company in 2016. As well, Weinstein has an ongoing $5 million suit against New York over 'deplorable' conditions at Rikers.
Out in LA, Weinstein had a rare court win of sorts in February when a Jane Doe whose 2013 rape claims against the producer contributed to his L.A. criminal conviction dropped her civil case. Just weeks before the matter was to go to trial on March 24, Doe's lawyers asked L.A. Superior Court Judge Elaine W. Mandel on February 4 to dismiss the sexual battery, false imprisonment, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress case without prejudice.
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Newsweek
43 minutes ago
- Newsweek
The Growing Threat of Political Violence From the Left
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. At a recent protest in Midtown Manhattan—one of many against Donald Trump's administration—a pair of masked women stood quietly outside the stone lions that loom over the New York Public Library, a life-sized cutout of Luigi Mangione propped between them. No one seemed to mind. As chants against authoritarianism echoed down Fifth Avenue and homemade signs called for due process and migrant rights, Mangione's effigy stood unchallenged—just another figure in one particular demonstration's crowded landscape. Mangione, 26, who is charged with shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a targeted attack last December, remains something of an enigma more than six months since he was arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with Thompson's murder. His political views — or what are known of them — are contradictory if not incoherent. He was the highly educated scion of a well-off Baltimore family who had no obvious beef with the capitalist system of which he benefited. Mangione wrote about his chronic back injury, but he was never insured by UnitedHealth. None of that has stopped a left-wing activist movement from embracing him and coopting his image as a vigilante fighting against the perceived wrongs of the American healthcare system. In today's fractured political climate, such selective silence is becoming increasingly common. The cutout of Luigi Mangione spotted at a recent anti-ICE protest in Manhattan. The cutout of Luigi Mangione spotted at a recent anti-ICE protest in Manhattan. Newsweek 'Assassination Culture' While right-wing extremism is regularly dissected and denounced in mainstream media, conservatives have long complained that political violence from the left regularly receives less scrutiny—or is reframed entirely to dismiss the perpetrators' progressive views. This perceived imbalance has fueled a growing belief, often discussed on conservative subreddits, in right-leaning Substacks, and on X, that left-wing violence is minimized or rationalized, while right-wing violence is amplified and condemned. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a nonpartisan organization that studies the spread of hate, manipulation, and extremism across digital platforms, has raised these concerns recently. Based at Rutgers University, the group uses machine learning and data analytics to identify emerging threats and ideological patterns online. "We're witnessing the alarming rise of what the NCRI calls an 'assassination culture,'" said Max Horder of the NCRI, in an interview with Newsweek. "Violence targeting figures like Donald Trump or Elon Musk has gone beyond normalization—it's being sanctified as resistance by parts of the political left." New Yorkers gathered outside the Tesla dealership in the Meat Packing district in Manhattan to protest against Elon Musk and his actions with DOGE, 3/29/25. New Yorkers gathered outside the Tesla dealership in the Meat Packing district in Manhattan to protest against Elon Musk and his actions with DOGE, 3/29/25. Andrea Renault/STAR MAX/IPx That once-theoretical threat turned very real last July in Butler, Penn., when Donald Trump was nearly killed in the middle of a campaign rally by a lone gunman perched on a nearby rooftop. The near miss shocked the country, but polling showed sharp partisan divides even in the case of the near assassination of a presidential candidate. A YouGov survey conducted shortly after found that 54 percent of U.S. adults said Trump deserved sympathy. Among Democrats, only 31 percent agreed, while 60 percent said he did not. In contrast, 83 percent of Republicans expressed sympathy for the then-candidate, reflecting how politics shapes responses to violence. Two months later, another attempt on Trump's life took place at his Florida golf club. A poll of 1,000 registered voters by Scott Rasmussen's Napolitan News Institute found that 17 percent said it would have been better for the country if Trump had died. Among Democrats, the number was 28 percent. "For decades, we've assumed that calls for political violence come from the far right—and often, they have. What we never expected was the enormous growth in similar calls coming from the mainstream left," Horder said. Both of the men who police say came close to killing Trump last summer also shared something in common with Mangione: political worldviews that ranged from almost completely unclear to contradictory. Thomas Crooks, 20, who was shot dead by Secret Service snipers moments after his bullet grazed Trump's ear in Butler, left virtually no online footprint. He was a registered Republican who donated to Democrats on the day of Joe Biden's inauguration. Ryan Routh, 59, who is accused of lying in wait for Trump in the bushes as he played a round of golf, was a self-proclaimed Trump voter who had grown disillusioned over the war in Ukraine. He also expressed support for Bernie Sanders. Ryan Wesley Routh (left), the gunman involved in the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club, and Thomas Matthew Crooks (right), the gunman in the July 2024... Ryan Wesley Routh (left), the gunman involved in the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club, and Thomas Matthew Crooks (right), the gunman in the July 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania shooting during a Trump rally. More Getty Images / X 'Corridor to Violence' The NCRI rose to prominence in recent years due to its prescient early warnings about far-right radicalization, including the growth of the QAnon conspiracy theory and the risk of political violence leading up to the certification of the election on January 6, 2021. Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of the NCRI, recalled in an interview with Newsweek: "They weren't an accident. They didn't come out of nowhere. They were inevitable." Now, the group is raising similar concerns—this time about rhetoric emerging from the opposite end of the political spectrum. "These aren't fringe beliefs anymore," the group warns. "They're creeping into the mainstream of activist discourse." A recent survey conducted by the NCRI found that nearly one-third of respondents expressed some level of justification for acts of lethal political violence, with significantly higher support among those identifying as left-of-center. Fixty-six percent of those respondents said murdering Donald Trump would be at least somewhat justified, while 50 percent said the same about Elon Musk. The poll also found that 40 percent of all respondents believed it was at least somewhat acceptable to destroy a Tesla dealership in protest of Musk's partnership with Trump, with support rising to nearly 60 percent among those who identified as left-of-center. NCRI's analysis, based on troves of social media data, reveals how fringe internet culture has helped build what the group calls "permission structures" for violence. These are social environments—online or offline—where violent acts are no longer condemned but tacitly accepted, if not outright encouraged. "It's not just about who pulls the trigger," said Finkelstein. "It's about who stays silent, who reposts a meme, who says nothing when someone jokes about killing a billionaire. That's how the corridor to violence gets built." The imagery and meme-ification of Luigi Mangione is one such example. Mangione, currently jailed pending his capital murder trial, has become an anti-hero in niche online communities. His likeness is shared alongside memes depicting Nintendo's Luigi character as a stylized assassin—ironic, cartoonish, but deadly serious. "It looks like a joke," Horder said, linking Mangione's online fame to a pattern of other real-world incidents, including the recent firebombing of elderly Jewish protesters in Boulder, Colo., allegedly by an Egyptian national angry about the war in Gaza. "But it's not. It's a method of radicalization wrapped in humor." A member of the Seattle Fire Department inspects a burned Tesla Cybertruck at a Tesla lot in Seattle, Monday, March 10, 2025. A member of the Seattle Fire Department inspects a burned Tesla Cybertruck at a Tesla lot in Seattle, Monday, March 10, 2025. Lindsey Wasson/AP Photo "They were acting within a worldview that told them these killings would be celebrated. And online, they were." Gaza Conflict and Domestic Spillover Just days before the antisemitic attack in Boulder, two Israeli embassy staffers were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., in a targeted attack that resembled the style of the ambush on Thompson. According to law enforcement, the suspected gunman, Elias Rodriguez, stalked the two young diplomats after they departed an event. Upon arrest, told officers, "I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza." "This targeting and outright murder of two people is very much an escalation from traditional left-aligned protest tactics," said Katherine Keneally, director of threat analysis at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that monitors extremism and terrorism, to NPR. "Trends are changing." An FBI team is investigating an attack on demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, at the scene on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, 2025. An FBI team is investigating an attack on demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, at the scene on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, 2025. ELI IMADALI/AFP via Getty Images Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking hundreds more captive, at least five deaths in the U.S. have been linked to the Palestine conflict. Experts told NPR that the war between Israel and Hamas has changed the tone of some left-wing protests, making the red lines less clear. On college campuses across the U.S., protests against Israel have waxed and waned. Some activists have been criticized for spreading messages seen as antisemitic or outright supportive of militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. "Left-wing extremism is often overlooked, in part because the worst state abuses and non-state violence associated with proponents of communist and socialist ideologies happened several decades ago," said Jakob Guhl, director of policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. "Some actors on the broader far left continue to carry out or support acts of political violence and terrorism," he added. Rodriguez, who is accused of killing the young Israeli diplomats, shared social media posts praising Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah—evidence, researchers say, of a growing wave of pro-Hamas or pro-terrorist sentiment among a small but outspoken group of Gaza-focused activists. According to reports, Rodriguez also spoke admiringly of Mangione in posts unearthed by law enforcement. Seth Jones, director of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the execution of the diplomats "an anomaly"—a rare instance of deadly far-left violence tied to antisemitism. "Typically, attacks against synagogues or Jewish individuals have come from the violent far right," he told NPR. "The escalation is striking," said Colin Clarke of the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy. "Since October 7th, we've seen an uptick in far-left extremism surrounding Gaza. It's not just pro-Palestinian rhetoric anymore—some of it is explicitly pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah." Pro-Palestinian activist protest outside Columbia University in New York City on April 20, 2024. A rabbi associated with Columbia University sent a message out Sunday morning recommending that Jewish students go home amid rise in... Pro-Palestinian activist protest outside Columbia University in New York City on April 20, 2024. A rabbi associated with Columbia University sent a message out Sunday morning recommending that Jewish students go home amid rise in "extreme antisemitism." More LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images However, Keneally, the extremism monitor, said that even as left-wing violence rises, far-right violence—especially from white supremacists—remains the deadliest and most consistent domestic threat, according to federal assessments. "What the research has shown is that when it comes to – and I don't think there's any other more direct way to say it than the death count – incidents that are typically affiliated with issues or ideologies that might fit in a more far-right bucket have been more lethal," she told NPR. Guhl also said he would not to conflate radical but peaceful protest movements on university campuses or civil disobedience tactics with far-left groups that promote political violence. "The term 'left-wing extremism' should not be overused to delegitimize social movements that aim to fundamentally challenge the status quo while still believing in universal human rights rather than the abolition of democracy," he said. An Asymmetry Amplified The trends flagged by researchers—online radicalization, meme culture, and the normalization of violence as a means to justify a political end—are increasingly shaping public discourse well beyond the digital sphere. Peter Turchin, a University of Connecticut professor and leading theorist of structural-demographic cycles, sees the current moment as part of a predictable historical pattern. "In 2010, I predicted a period of political instability beginning in the 2020s," Turchin told Newsweek. "And nearly every warning sign—popular immiseration, elite overproduction, eroding state capacity—has only intensified." While political violence has increased across ideological lines, Turchin said that public perception and media coverage remain uneven. A protester holds a Mexican flag and mask of Donald Trump while standing in front of vandalized a Waymo car during a protest against immigration raids on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. A protester holds a Mexican flag and mask of Donald Trump while standing in front of vandalized a Waymo car during a protest against immigration raids on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California."Right-wing violence is emphasized by mainstream media because it's perceived as an existential threat to the ruling regime," he said. "Whereas left-wing violence is often seen as less threatening—sometimes even as a counterweight to the right." According to Turchin, this perception gap is no accident. "Narratives around political violence are shaped not just by the acts themselves, but by the stories that elites—and counter-elites—build around them," he said. Both he and Horder agreed that instances of political violence, wherever they come from, perpetuate a cycle in which each side accuses the other of hypocrisy while excusing the bad actors on their own extremes. Recent events have borne this out. The unrest and riots that have spread across parts of Los Angeles this week—triggered by federal immigration raids—has reignited debate about protest tactics and when and how the federal government should involve itself when its presence is not requested by local officials. Meanwhile, videos of self-driving cars aflame and masked rioters throwing rocks at federal agents ricocheted across social media. "If we didn't do the job, that place would be burning down," Trump said about his decision to activate the Guard. "I feel we had no choice. I don't want to see what's happened so many times in this country." Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California's highest-profile elected officials who are both progressive Democrats, condemned the president for inflaming the simmering unrest, though they were more muted about calling out some of the acts of violence caught on camera. "People talk about radicalization like it's something that happens in dark corners of the internet," said Horder from NCIR. "But it's happening on the streets now too, in broad daylight, sometimes behind banners of justice."
4 hours ago
Weinstein jury deliberations scrutinize one accuser's account
NEW YORK -- Jurors in Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes retrial are drilling down on one of the three charges against him: a rape accusation from a woman who also said she had a consensual relationship with him. The seven female and five male jurors are poised to start their fifth day of deliberations Wednesday by re-hearing Jessica Mann's testimony that he raped her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013. Mann's accusation was an apparent focus of Tuesday's deliberations, and the jury ended the day by asking to be re-read her testimony about what happened between her and Weinstein at the hotel. The group also indicated it wants to continue privately reviewing her emails with Weinstein and some 2017 medical records concerning her reaction to news accounts of other women's allegations against him. The former Hollywood powerbroker, 73, has pleaded not guilty to raping Mann and to forcing oral sex on two other women, Mimi Haley and Kaja Sokola. The Oscar-winning producer maintains that he never sexually assaulted or raped anyone, and his lawyers portrayed his accusers as opportunists who accepted his advances because they wanted a leg up in the entertainment world. While all three women stayed in contact with Weinstein despite what they say were assaults, Mann had a particularly complex history with him. During days on the witness stand, she testified that they had a consensual relationship that exploded into rape, yet continued afterward. Weinstein was one of the movie industry's most powerful figures until a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him became public in 2017, fueling the #MeToo movement and eventually leading to criminal charges. He originally was convicted in 2020 of raping Mann and forcing oral sex on Haley. Sokola's allegation was added last year, after New York state's highest court overturned the 2020 conviction and sent the case back for retrial. Meanwhile, Weinstein is appealing a 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles. After a couple of days of apparent interpersonal friction, the retrial jury worked through Tuesday with no further complaints. The Associated Press generally does not identify people without their permission if they say they have been sexually assaulted. Sokola, Mann and Haley have agreed to be named.
New York Times
4 hours ago
- New York Times
In Small-Town Germany, a Reporter Sees the Bigger Picture
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. As a reporter on the Obituaries desk at The New York Times, I write about the lives of famous — and not so famous — people who have left their mark on history. I also speak German, which is why I found myself spending the month of May in Berlin, filling in for a colleague. Before I left, I worked with a tutor to polish my conversational skills. I asked her if she had any fun ideas for articles I could pursue. 'Well, you know,' she said, 'the city of Bielefeld? Everyone says it doesn't exist.' About 300,000 people live in Bielefeld, but I'll admit that I was only vaguely aware it existed. To Germans, Bielefeld is the equivalent of, say, Scranton or Cedar Rapids — cities where the best you can say about them may be that you can't think of anything bad to say. For much the same reason that Scranton was the setting for 'The Office,' Bielefeld had become the butt of a joke. Like many jokes these days, it started online, though this one began back in 1993. It came in the form of a goofy conspiracy theory: that the existence of Bielefeld is a sham, and anyone who says otherwise is in on the plot. Over time, the town became a byword for boring. Songs were written about its utter blandness, including one performed by a talking slice of bread named Bernd — this is Germany, after all. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
