Harvey Weinstein defense urges acquittal as rape retrial nears a close

NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein’s defense urged jurors Tuesday to put an end to a #MeToo-era rape case that has gone to trial three times, arguing that the former Hollywood honcho should be acquitted.

“It’s just not true,” lawyer Marc Agnifilo said as closing arguments began in the retrial of an allegation that Weinstein raped hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann in a New York hotel in 2013. “She has taken on a false narrative about all of this.”

Prosecutors will get their turn later Tuesday to make their case to the jury, which will have to sift through the complexities of a yearslong relationship between Weinstein and Mann.

They met in early 2013, when she was trying to make it big in Hollywood. She testified that she anticipated a professional connection, was taken aback when he started making sexual advances but decided to have a relationship with the then-married, Oscar-winning producer.

A few weeks later, according to Mann, Weinstein abruptly took a room at a hotel where she and a friend were staying. When she accompanied Weinstein upstairs to tell him she didn’t want a sexual interlude, she testified, he trapped her in the room, grabbed her arms, insisted she undress, went into the bathroom for a time, and then raped her.

“He just treated me like he owned me,” she testified last month.

Weinstein didn’t testify, but his defense contends the encounter was consensual and part of a caring relationship that Mann fostered and leaned on until Weinstein’s #MeToo downfall in 2017, when news reports about allegations against him propelled a global campaign against sexual assault and sexual harassment. He has said he behaved “wrongly” but never assaulted anyone.

He was convicted in 2020 of raping Mann, got the conviction overturned, then saw a jury deadlock on it at a retrial last year.

In summations Tuesday, Agnifilo suggested that parts of Mann’s account were ill-supported and implausible, and he underscored the warm email exchanges and continued get-togethers she had with Weinstein before and after the alleged rape.

“Throughout the four years, she is going to Harvey Weinstein for things that she needs, and Harvey Weinstein is doing the best that he can,” by supporting her acting ambitions and giving her emotional support, Agnifilo said. “They are emotionally close. She relies on him. He is a very important person in her life, and she lets him know that.”

Whatever the outcome of the trial, the former movie producer and studio boss still will stand convicted of other sex crimes in New York and California, though he is appealing those convictions.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.