National News
NEW YORK (AP) — Imprisoned former film mogul Harvey Weinstein underwent emergency heart surgery at a New York hospital on Monday, his representatives said.
Weinstein, 72, was transferred from the Rikers Island prison complex to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan late Sunday “due to his serious health condition,” said his publicist Juda Engelmayer and prison consultant Craig Rothfeld.
“We can confirm that Mr. Weinstein had a heart procedure and surgery today,” they said, declining to comment further on his condition.
News of Weinstein’s hospitalization was first reported by ABC News.
Weinstein has been in inpatient treatment at Bellevue Hospital since getting back from federal prison to Rikers Island in April after an appeals court overturned his 2020 rape and sexual assault convictions and ordered a retrial.
In July, he was hospitalized for treatment of varied health issues, including COVID-19 and pneumonia in each lungs, his representatives said.
The state appeals court found that the judge within the 2020 trial had wrongly allowed testimony from women whose allegations against Weinstein weren’t a part of the case.
Last week, prosecutors announced that they had taken steps to potentially charge him with up to 3 more counts of sexual assault.
They said that they had begun presenting evidence to a grand jury on up to 3 previously uncharged allegations against Weinstein – two sexual assaults within the mid-2000s and one other sexual assault in 2016.
A vote on a possible recent indictment is anticipated soon.
At the identical time, British prosecutors said last week they’d drop two sexual assault charges against Weinstein in 2022 because there was “no longer a realistic prospect of a conviction.”
He has denied raping or sexually assaulting anyone. He stays in custody in New York while awaiting a retrial in Manhattan tentatively scheduled to start on November 12. He is scheduled to return to court for a preliminary hearing on September 12.
Weinstein became essentially the most well-known villain of the #MeToo movement, which emerged in 2017 when women began coming forward with accounts of his behavior.
In the unique trial, Weinstein was found guilty of forcing oral sex on a television and film production assistant in 2006 and raping an aspiring actor in 2013. Those charges shall be a part of his retrial. Weinstein's acquittals on charges of sexual assault and first-degree rape stand.
After the retrial, Weinstein will begin serving a 16-year prison sentence in California for an additional rape conviction in Los Angeles, authorities said. Weinstein was sentenced in Los Angeles in 2022.
Weinstein, co-founder of the film studios Miramax and The Weinstein Company, was once one of the powerful men in Hollywood and produced Oscar-winning movies similar to “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love.”
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