Harvey Weinstein defense lawyer mocks accusers, calls them 'grifters' in closing arguments

Yahoo

2 days ago

Harvey Weinstein's defense lawyer slammed the disgraced mogul's sex assault accusers as 'grifters,' mimicked one breaking down in tears, climbed into the witness box to do an impression of another and used his personal sex life as a frame of reference during animated closing arguments Tuesday,
Arthur Aidala told the Manhattan jury that it was, in fact, the notorious movie producer who was was victimized and manipulated by the three women accusing him of sexual assault.
'They're using their youth, their beauty, their charm, their charisma to get stuff from him,' Aidala, Weinstein's lead defense attorney, said. 'I know it's gonna sound crazy, but he's the one who's being abused. He's the one who's getting used.'
At one point, Aidala even went into a spiel about his sex life in his own marriage — 'I'm gonna get in so much trouble. Come on, come on. I can't believe I'm talking about this in court…. I give her a hug, and I give her a kiss, and she may not be enthusiastic, but she says, 'OK, fine.''
Aidala was trying to portray the relationships between Weinstein and his three accusers — former TV production assistant Miriam Haley, model Kaja Sokola and one-time actress Jessica Mann — as courtship rituals that led to 'transactional,' consensual sexual encounters.
'Everybody knew what was going on,' he said. 'Everybody was playing the courting game.'
Haley, who has also gone by the name Mimi Haleyi, accuses Weinstein of forcibly performing oral sex on her in July 2006, and testified about a second, unwanted sexual encounter at the Tribeca Grand Hotel two weeks later.
Sokola testified that when she was a 16-year-old model, Weinstein rubbed her vagina under her pants and underwear in 2002, and that in 2006, he forcibly performed oral sex on her at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, while her sister waited at a restaurant table downstairs. Mann said Weinstein raped her in Midtown's DoubleTree Hotel in March 2013, but maintained a complicated 'relationship' with the then-remarried movie mogul.
'They're all women with broken dreams. They're all women who wanted to cut the line,' Aidala said. 'You need to look at the length that this office went to to get those women here.'
Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office flew across the country and the world to prep the witnesses for their testimony, even though two of them, Haley and Mann, had testified against Weinstein five years ago.
'They needed to get the poster boy, the original sinner for the MeToo movement,' Aidala said. 'They tried to do it five years ago, and there was a redo, and they're trying to do it again.'
Mann and Haley testified at Weinstein's 2020 Manhattan Supreme Court trial, which ended in a guilty verdict and a 23-year prison term. But last year the state's highest court overturned the jury's guilty verdict in that case, with the judicial panel ruling 4-3 that the trial court judge shouldn't have allowed testimony of 'uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.'
Weinstein, 73, is being retried on allegations of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. The new trial is widely thought as a litmus test for the staying power of the MeToo movement, which started shortly after news reports in October 2017 laid bare the open secret of Weinstein's serial sexual harassment.
Aidala tore into each of the three accusers, likening the government's case to an anecdote about how his grandmother broke a wine glass while making sauce for the family, then threw the sauce away rather than risk serving glass for dinner.
'Are you worried about whether there's a piece of glass in the sauce about Jessica Mann,' he asked. 'Are you worried whether there's a piece of glass in the sauce about Mimi or Kaja?'
He described Haley's high-flying life, meeting Hollywood power brokers and music superstars as the close friend and personal assistant of the late 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' producer Michael White, who had become ill and closed up his production business.
'She's trying to tell you that she's got this tough life, whatever. She's literally traveling the world,' Aidala scoffed. 'Harvey was the eligible bachelor to fill the world of Michael White, who was on his way out. He was single. He was on the market.'
Aidala mocked Haley's breakdown on the stand during defense lawyer Jennifer Bonjean's cross-examination, saying that she cried because she got caught in a lie.
He also stomped into the witness box in an impersonation of Haley's friend and ex-roommate Elizabeth Entin — who testified against the mogul in 2020 — drawing laughs from several jurors as he posed as Entin and declared, accusingly, 'Yes, Mr. Harvey Weinstein!'
Aidala described Sokola as a 'troubled woman' whose 'lust for fame is just palpable' and who came forward to Rolling Stone magazine so she could be named Weinstein's youngest victim.
'That's what this is all about for her,' he said. 'This is about her being relevant. This is about her being known.'
As for Mann, Aidala zeroed in on how she testified about seeing an erectile dysfunction needle in the trash after being raped. That injection takes between 5 to 20 minutes to kick in, though, Aidala noted.
'You know Jessica's lying,' he said. 'You can use your own judgment. When Jessica Mann says he was gone for not very long at all. Does 'Not very long at all' mean 15 to 20 minutes? It doesn't. It just doesn't.'
Prosecutors will begin their closing argument later Monday afternoon.