12:42 PM PDT 5/24/2018
by
Patrick Shanley
,
Gregg Kilday
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office and the NYPD have been investigating allegations of sexual assault on the part of the former mogul.
Harvey Weinstein is expected to surrender to authorities on Friday, following a probe into allegations of sexual misconduct by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and the NYPD, according to reports in The New York Times and the New York Daily News, which The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Benjamin Brafman, an attorney for Weinstein, declined to comment on the reports.
The NYPD’s Special Victims Division and the Manhattan D.A.’s office have been conducting investigations of Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults. Additionally, federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who were already investigating possible fraud charges involving Weinstein’s amfAR fund-raising acitivities, have also launched their own sex-crime investigation, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Weinstein is expected to be charge with assaulting Lucia Evans, who has told investigators that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004, sources told the Daily News. The NYPD is believed to be investigating a rape allegation by Paz de la Huerta, who has charged that Weinstein forced himself on her in her Tribeca apartment in 2010. Weinstein has denied any allegations of nonconsensual sex.
The latest development in the Weinstein saga comes months after an Oct. 5 New York Times article by investigative reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey detailing sexual harassment claims against the mogul spanning decades, including accounts from such actresses as Ashley Judd. The paper also reported, citing two unnamed sources, that “Weinstein has reached at least eight settlements with women.” Further accounts of Weinstein’s alleged predatory ways, including a rape allegation, came out in Ronan Farrow’s Oct. 10 New Yorker report.
Weinstein’s initial response to the Times report included a rambling statement saying that “I came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.” Additionally, he said he would be taking a leave of absence from his company in order to direct his attention to campaigning against the National Rifle Association and President Donald Trump. (Following the Times report, many prominent Democratic politicians, to whom Weinstein had donated over the years, gave his contributions away to charity.)
Three days later, the Weinstein Co. board ousted Weinstein. He also has been expelled from several groups, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Since then, Weinstein, whose primary residence is in New York City, has spent much of his time in Arizona, where he had been reportedly receiving treatment for sex addiction.
The Los Angeles Police Department has also opened its own investigation of Weinstein and has submitted three cases of alleged sexual abuse to the L.A. Country District Attorney’s office.
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