Can a private eye dubbed The Mistress Whisperer help Weinstein pull off the greatest court shock since OJ?
As shamed mogul fights back and one of his chief accusers is herself accused of sexual misconduct . . .
HiS Name may be toxic in Hollywood these days, but nothing, it seems, can keep Harvey Weinstein away from the movies.
thinly disguised in sunglasses, baseball cap and scruffy black t-shirt, the disgraced film producer recently became something of a fixture at a local cinema near his home in Westport, Connecticut.
He was taking his two youngest children — india Pearl, seven, and Dashiell, five — on successive days to see animated family film transylvania Hotel 3: Summer Vacation and action blockbuster Mission: impossible — Fallout, but his appearance caused a predictable stir among those who recognised him.
Photographs appeared online which, i am told, didn’t endear Weinstein to the children’s mother, his estranged wife, British fashion designer Georgina Chapman, 42.
Mission: impossible seems a reasonably apt description of the challenge facing the once feted producer of Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction.
Accused by more than 80 women, including the film stars Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to rape, he is determined not only to win in court but also to ‘clear’ his name and return to making movies.
Such an achievement seems insanely optimistic for a 66-year-old man whose name is rarely mentioned in print now without the word ‘monstrous’ beside it.
Weinstein faces spending the rest of his life behind bars if he is found guilty of charges in New York relating to three women who have accused him of rape and sexual assault. the alleged offences took places in 2004, 2006 and 2013. Weinstein denies ever having non-consensual sex and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Police in London and LA are also investigating alleged offences. Weinstein has been released on $1 million (£778,000) bail and is confined to New York and neighbouring Connecticut where, until recently, he owned homes. He has to wear a chunky ankle bracelet to monitor his movements.
those involved with him now believe he has changed, that ongoing therapy has made him take a long hard look at himself. the thuggish bully who, on one occasion, allegedly tried to throttle a film studio executive has become ‘ more introspective and less abrasive’, a source told me.
But that’s not to say the man who once ruled Hollywood with a will of steel and a ferocious temper is going around making daisy chains. Weinstein is on the attack and has taken a prominent role in putting together his legal defence and ensuring his lawyers have every jot of information that could be of use.
He’s fighting to win the case with all the single-minded dedication he once put into getting his films nominated for Oscars. At vast expense, he is paying for at least a dozen lawyers to work on his case.
Weinstein has also hired Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and the former defence lawyer for O. J. Simpson, as a consultant. Weinstein is principally resting his hopes of avoiding prison on Ben Brafman, a former Manhattan prosecutor regarded as one of the sharpest trial lawyers in the city.
Brafman is employing Herman Weisberg, a former police officer turned private eye who was seen at Weinstein’s side as he arrived at a New York court in May.
Called the ‘Mistress Whisperer’ in recognition of his famed ability to persuade scorned mistresses to stop threatening to expose rich philandering men, he — along with Weinstein himself and Brafman — has received death threats after agreeing to work for the director. WeiNSteiN
notoriously used private detectives once before, a murky israeli firm called Black Cube (which has since apologised for its involvement with him) in the days shortly before he was engulfed in scandal.
its staff, former Mossad agents, reportedly tried to gather information on women who claimed to be victims of Weinstein and allegedly tricked them into revealing how willing they were to go to the media with their stories.
the idea that Weinstein would resort to such tactics now is horrific, and Weisberg insists that is not the way he operates.
‘My job as an investigator is to establish the facts and determine the truth and provide that to counsel so they can effectively defend their clients,’ he said.
Brafman is similarly careful to explain what he is doing for his toxic client. ‘i am not defending behaviour,’ he said. ‘i am defending specific allegations of criminal conduct. there’s a big difference.’
even so, Brafman — dubbed the ‘ last of the big- time defence attorneys’ — has become famous for getting celebrities off the hook.
He defended Michael Jackson (on child molestation charges), rapper Jay-Z (who even celebrated him in a song after he received three years probation for the stabbing of a record mogul) and ex-international Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexually assaulting a New York hotel employee in 2011. the charges were later dropped.
Brafman says they will put up an aggressive defence to the charges against Weinstein that will go well beyond relying on his rote denials.
He has described the defence team assembling ‘overwhelming evidence’ from emails and witness accounts to refute the allegations from his three accusers. in particular, he has highlighted some 400 previously overlooked emails between Weinstein and one of his accusers that go on for four years after the alleged rape.
the wily Brafman adds an important qualifier to his claim that he will demolish the accusers in cross-examination: it will require a jury who ‘are not consumed by the movement that seems to have overtaken this case’.
He is talking, of course, about #Metoo, the anti- sexual harassment and assault movement which Weinstein almost single-handedly inspired. it has seen hundreds of women accusing successful men in business, entertainment and politics of sexual misconduct.
Happily for the Weinstein team, the movement suffered a severe blow to its credibility this week when it emerged that Asia Argento, one of its leaders and one of Weinstein’s most vociferous accusers, turned out to have feet of clay.
the italian actress provided some of the most disturbing allegations in 2017. She famously called the Cannes Film Festival his ‘ hunting ground’ and described his attack on her in a hotel when she was 21 as ‘a big fat man wanting to eat you. it’s a scary fairy tale.’
She was praised for her bravery for going public. However, she has now been accused of quietly paying off a young male actor during the same period who accused her of sexual misconduct, a claim she denies.
Providing a taste of what he might say in court, Brafman condemned her ‘stunning level of hypocrisy’.
the actress reportedly paid Jimmy Bennett $380,000 (£296,000) after he threatened to expose her for allegedly seducing him in a California hotel when he was 17 — underage in California law — and she was 37.
Argento initially denied she ever had sex with Bennett. then when a photo emerged of them lying in bed apparently topless, together with compromising text messages between the actress and a friend, she admitted they had slept together but has allegedly claimed that ‘the horny kid jumped me’ and denies sexual misconduct.
She said Bennett, facing ‘ severe economic problems’, had initially approached her boyfriend, U. S. celebrity tV chef and author Anthony Bourdain, an ardent supporter of #Metoo.
Bourdain, who died in June, had wanted to settle the matter privately, she claimed.
For his part, Bennett says he too had tried to handle the matter privately but that, when Argento publicly accused Weinstein of rape, his ‘trauma resurfaced as she came out as a victim herself’. His demand
for money was an attempt to ‘seek justice’ without the affair becoming public, which he wanted to avoid because of the stigma attached to men being assaulted by women.
Brafman contrasted the tawdry revelations with what he said had been argento’s four- year ‘consenting’ relationship with his client, both of them adults.
He added: ‘The sheer duplicity of her conduct is extraordinary and should demonstrate to everyone how poorly the allegations against Mr Weinstein were actually vetted and accordingly, cause all of us to pause and allow due process to prevail, not condemnation by fundamental dishonesty.’
He predicted that other Weinstein accusers, including women who are suing him in the civil courts, will also suffer blows to their credibility.
‘We’re seeing email traffic between him and these women at the time they claim they were assaulted which is substantially inconsistent with that type of relationship and more consistent with a friendly, respectful relationship,’ he told me.
argento wasn’t the only #MeToo Movement firebrand who has emerged badly from the scandal this week.
actress rose McGowan, who also claims Weinstein raped her, was left looking more than a little hypocritical when she urged people to wait to learn all the facts before condemning argento. This is the same rose McGowan who condemned as ‘moral cowards’ anyone who didn’t immediately believe women alleging male sexual misconduct.
according to Brafman, his client has been developing film scripts as a producer. Others insist that despite opportunities offered by film companies in the Far east and europe, Weinstein is not doing anything. However, he has been working diligently on his legal case, commuting to Brafman’s Manhattan office from his Westport home.
One of the team confirmed that, while continuing therapy has effected a positive ‘metamorphosis’ in Weinstein’s ugly personality, his mood can still swing wildly.
‘ He’s lost everything: work, reputation, family, wealth and he feels he has been betrayed by a lot of people,’ he said. ‘But he is standing his ground.’
The Connecticut home where he’s been living quietly is no longer his. Weinstein recently sold the estate on long Island Sound to a neighbour for $ 16 million (£12.4 million) — one of three multimillion-dollar Westport properties he has flogged off to pay for mountainous legal fees.
as part of the deal, he was allowed to stay there until next spring. Given that Weinstein had only one property in new York and that is now in the hands of his estranged wife, he owns no permanent residence.
‘at the moment, I’m not sure he wants one because his permanent residence might be government property for a while,’ said a source, alluding to a possible prison sentence. Insiders say he has some money coming from an insurance policy he took out when the Weinstein Company was a going concern, but he otherwise has no income other than what he can get from selling his possessions. His friends have deserted him too, at least the ones who have a reputation to worry about. Weinstein has said he’s ‘ heartbroken’ about the lack of support from Hollywood given he was once its ‘kingmaker’. His friends in Democrat politics, notably Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have also melted away. Hard as it is to believe of a married man, his accusers say, whose aggressive pursuit of women became part of his daily routine, Weinstein is genuinely concerned for the effect his infamy has had on his family. He has expressed hope of one day reconciling with Georgina Chapman — ‘because he loves his family more than anything’ — but there is no sign of it happening. His family life appears limited to spending time with India Pearl and Dashiell as he no longer has a close relationship with his three children by a previous marriage. last year, Chapman announced she was divorcing him. With no custody settlement yet in place, he sees the younger children by ‘ friendly agreement’ with Chapman, who is living in a townhouse in new York with them. Weinstein and Chapman, cofounder of the Marchesa label, met at a party in london in 2004 and married in 2007. SHe
remains adamant that throughout their marriage, she was never suspicious. In a recent Vogue interview, she admitted she didn’t leave her house for five months after the allegations about Weinstein were made public.
‘[Harvey] wants his children to think he’s a good person,’ said an insider. ‘ His biggest concern is how it looks with his family.’
Weinstein’s case returns to court in September, but it is to discuss technical matters and he is not expected to attend. More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed against him if the present accusers are vanquished.
a U. S. judge has ruled that British actress Kadian noble can sue him for ‘sex trafficking’ after allegedly inviting her to a hotel room in France and sexually assaulting her.
The novel decision could prompt other lawsuits. This week a German actress — using a pseudonym — sued him in California claiming he raped her at Cannes in 2006. Meanwhile, Weinstein and his lawyers have made it clear that a central argument in their case will demonstrate that his alleged victims had simply been playing the Hollywood casting couch game. In other words, they’d been prepared to trade sex for career advancement, but hadn’t liked it.
It might be sleazy, they argue, but it isn’t rape. Such a line may be effective in court, but it will hardly endear Weinstein to the hapless family he says that he adores so much.