Weinstein switched legal teams for this retrial, but his new attorneys are echoing their predecessors’ themes
Prosecutors once again portrayed Harvey Weinstein as a one-time Hollywood power player who used his sway as a tool of sexual assault, painting a now-familiar picture on Tuesday at a rape retrial nearly eight years after the former movie tycoon’s arrest.
“This case will come down to power, to control and to manipulation,” said Candace White, a Manhattan assistant district attorney, to jurors as opening statements began in the bellwether #MeToo case, with Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, watching from the audience.
Jacob Kaplan, a lawyer for Weinstein, countered that the case actually “is about consent, about choice and about regret”, echoing the ex-studio head’s longtime defense that his accuser has recast a willing encounter as a crime.
Since Weinstein became a major target of the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct nearly a decade ago, he has been convicted of some sexual assault charges and acquitted of others in trials on two US coasts. But the rape charge involving a 2013 encounter in a Manhattan hotel has lingered, due to an overturned conviction followed by a jury deadlock.
