MOGUL TO FACE ASSAULT CHARGES IN L.A.
Harvey Weinstein will be tried on allegations that he attacked five women.
Harvey Weinstein was transported to Los Angeles on Tuesday and could make his first court appearance this week to answer charges that he sexually assaulted five women in Southern California from 2004 to 2013.
Weinstein, whose extradition from New York was ordered by a judge last month, could appear in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom as early as Wednesday, according to his defense attorney Mark Werksman.
A spokesman for the district attorney’s office could not immediately confirm or deny details about Weinstein’s extradition.
The 69-year-old former entertainment mogul has been charged with multiple counts of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation involving aspiring actresses and models inside hotels in West L.A. and Beverly Hills.
He has denied all wrongdoing.
Weinstein is serving a 23year prison sentence in the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, N.Y., after a Manhattan jury convicted him in February 2020 of rape and committing a criminal sex act.
His attorneys had tried to fight his extradition to California, citing Weinstein’s poor health and the fact that he had emergency eye surgeries scheduled in New York.
Werksman had submitted court filings in Los Angeles to stop the extradition, but a hearing was never scheduled.
Under California law, Weinstein’s trial on sexual assault charges in the state must happen within 120 days of his extradition, meaning court proceedings must begin by mid-November.
In April, Weinstein was indicted by a Los Angeles grand jury on four counts of forcible rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, two counts of sexual battery and one count of sexual penetration by force.
All five women accusing Weinstein of assault testified at the hearings, but transcripts of those proceedings remain under seal.
Lauren Young, the only accuser whose identity has been made public in the Los Angeles case, has alleged Weinstein lured her into his room after a meeting at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills in 2013, where the mogul allegedly grabbed her breast and masturbated before she fled.
She testified against him in the Manhattan trial.
An Italian model who described an assault by Weinstein to The Times in a 2017 interview was also among the victims in the Los Angeles case, though she has yet to identify herself publicly.
The Times, as a rule, does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault unless they have chosen to come forward publicly or been identified in court.