HARV BOILED
Weinstein dumped by female adviser, hit with more sordid claims
Two key members of Harvey Weinstein’s legal team — feminist lawyer Lisa Bloom and longtime Democratic operative Lanny Davis — jump eds pip Saturday as the sexual-harassment scandal around the movie mogul continued to mushroom. “Morning Joe’s” Mika Brzezinski said she wants out of her book deal with Weinstein’s company unless he quits — and she urged other entertainers to shun the creep.
Hurricane Harvey strengthened to a Category 5 scandal on Saturday as movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s closest advisers and colleagues jumped ship, public outrage swelled and new allegations crashed around the accused serial sex harasser.
Lisa Bloom, a crusading feminist lawyer who had been advising Weinstein, 65, announced she was stepping down hours after MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski publicly said she would not go forward with a three-book deal she recently signed with the mogul’s company “unless Harvey resigns.”
In another blow, Lanny Davis, a lawyer and longtime Democratic Party operative, resigned Saturday from the elite legal team that Weinstein had assembled to advise him during the burgeoning crisis over accusations that he has been mistreating actresses and female employees for three decades.
Even President Trump cast a no-confidence vote Saturday.
“I’ve known Harvey Weinstein for a long time — I’m not at all surprised,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn before hopping aboard Marine One en route to a GOP fund-raiser in South Carolina.
Meanwhile, two more high-profile politicians — Sens. Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren — joined a parade of Democratic lawmakers who vowed to forward the thousands of dollars they received in Weinstein campaign donations over the years to women’s charities.
Three executives have announced their resignations from the Weinstein Company board.
Last week, The New York Times reported numerous accusations of Weinstein sexually harassing women who worked for him, including actresses Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd. The report said Weinstein’s companies paid out thousands of dollars to at least eight women to buy their silence.
Weinstein, a married father of five, released a statement Thursday expressing “regret [for] what happened.” He said he was seek- ing therapy and taking a leave of absence from his company.
But he later told Page Six that he was taking legal action against the Times, citing its “reckless reporting,” even as lurid details of his alleged conduct continued to emerge.
Lauren Sivan, a former news anchor, told the Huffington Post on Friday that Weinstein trapped her in an empty restaurant and tried to kiss her. She said that when she refused, Weinstein masturbated in front of her.
The alleged incident occurred in 2007, the same year Weinstein, a Hollywood powerhouse whose fabled Oscar-night parties have drawn dozens of stars, married his second wife, fashion designer Georgina Chapman, 41.
That same year, he also traveled to the English countryside to visit the set of “Brideshead Revisited,” an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel about sexual mores and a golden age of aristocracy on the eve of World War II. Miramax, his first company, which he started with his brother, Bob, in 1979, was in negotiations to distribute the film in North America.
During a break in the filming, the brash Hollywood powerbroker behind such blockbusters as “The English Patient” and “The Crying Game,” walked over to Hayley Atwell, a then-24-yearold British-American actress who was playing Julia Flyte in the movie. Weinstein started flirting with the actress, who was clearly nervous, starring in one of her first major roles.
At lunch, Weinstein sat with the cast and crew, and told Atwell to watch what she was eating, explaining that he had just come from watching that morning’s filming and he didn’t like what he saw, a film-industry source told The Post
“You look like a fat pig on screen,” said Weinstein, who had just come from watching the dailies. “Stop eating so much.”
When Atwell told her Oscarwinning co-star Emma Thompson that the Miramax head ordered her to go on a diet, Thompson flipped. She took Weinstein aside and threatened to quit if he forced Atwell or any other woman on set to go on a diet.
“Emma called Harvey out for