Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on additional sex crime charges ahead of his retrial in New York, Manhattan prosecutors said at a hearing Thursday.
The indictment will remain sealed until Weinstein’s arraignment, scheduled for September 18.
Weinstein, 72, is recovering from emergency heart surgery performed Monday at a Manhattan hospital and was not present at Thursday’s hearing.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office revealed at a recent court hearing that prosecutors had begun presenting to a grand jury evidence of as many as three additional allegations against Weinstein, dating back to the mid-2000s.
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Prosecutors had been seeking to retry Weinstein after his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges was overturned by an appeals court earlier this year. It remains to be seen whether the new charges will be included in the retrial, as prosecutors hope, or whether the court will handle them as a separate case.
The new charges come after prosecutors in Britain announced last week that they would no longer pursue indecent assault charges against Weinstein, who was the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement in 2017 when women began going public with accounts of his behavior.
The 72-year-old co-founder of film and television production company Miramax has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
He is expected to appear again in Manhattan court for a hearing on the case on Sept. 12. His retrial is tentatively scheduled for November.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
