HARV’S E-WAIL!
Lawyer: Missives will prove he’s innocent
Harvey Weinstein’s legal team will seek to get his rape charges tossed on grounds that the grand jury was not told about emails from his 2013 accuser, which they say would have cleared the disgraced Hollywood heavyweight.
His attorney is expected to attach 40 electronic missives — correspondence between the woman and Weinstein — to a motion to dismiss, which is due to be filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday.
Weinstein’s lawyer Ben Brafman says the accuser had a decade-long consensual relationship with the disgraced ex-Hollywood heavyweight.
Before he could use the emails as exhibits in a public filing, Brafman had to get permission from a bankruptcy judge in Delaware who is overseeing the dismantling of the Weinstein Co.
In a recording of a teleconference held Thursday, he described how the woman was in regular communication with Weinstein for “almost four years.”
“They are endearing, intimate, present, friendly, flattering, emails between her and Mr. Weinstein,” the lawyer said to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath.
“To be candid with you, your honor, I think if the grand jury had these emails available they would not have indicted Mr. Weinstein,” he added. Brafman said there would be a “prosecutorial misconduct” claim pending, suggesting he would argue that the Manhattan district attorney’s office had an obligation to disclose exculpatory material to the panel. Prosecutors and defense attorneys often disagree on the what constitutes legally exculpatory material and whether it needs to be disclosed. The DA’s office went to a grand jury twice in Weinstein’s case — first getting an indictment against Weinstein in a 2004 attack against college student and aspiring actress Lucia Evans, who accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex, and another in favor of the 2013 accuser, never identified publicly, who said he raped her more than five years ago at a Doubletree Hotel on Lexington Ave.
Weinstein later pleaded not guilty to a superseding indictment that brought charges in connection with an allegation that he performed unwanted oral sex on production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006.
Weinstein is charged with predatory sexual assault, criminal sex act and rape in Manhattan Supreme Court for the alleged attacks against the three women.
It was not clear Thursday what else Weinstein’s team might seek in pretrial filings.