Harvey Weinstein indicted on new charges by New York grand jury

Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul whose alleged sexual misconduct fueled the #MeToo movement, has been indicted on new charges by a New York City grand jury, Manhattan prosecutors announced during a court hearing Thursday.

The new indictment is under seal, prosecutor Nicole Blumberg told Judge Curtis Farber, who has set a trial date for Nov. 12. The district attorney’s office did not provide specifics about the new charges.

“We don’t know anything,” Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said outside court after the hearing. “We don’t know what the exact accusations are, [what] the exact locations are, [what] the exact timing is.”

NBC News was the first to report this month that a grand jury had been convened to hear from women who had come forward with new accusations against Weinstein, 72.

Weinstein did not appear in court Thursday. He is recovering from emergency heart surgery this week. He could be arraigned as early as Wednesday.

In all, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein, an Oscar-winning ex-producer, of sexual assault or harassment. He has repeatedly and vehemently denied the claims, insisting the encounters in question were consensual.

Weinstein was convicted in 2020 of third-degree rape of one woman and first-degree criminal sex act against another woman after a trial in New York, where he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. 

But that conviction was overturned in April after a state appellate court, in a 4-3 decision, determined the judge had erred by allowing women to testify about allegations that were not part of the case.

He has remained in custody at the Rikers Island prison complex waiting retrial, but Farber granted a defense request to let him stay at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan instead of being taken back to the prison’s infirmary ward.

In addition to the New York case, Weinstein was found guilty of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault in a 2022 trial in Los Angeles, where he was sentenced to 16 years. Weinstein’s legal team is appealing that conviction.

In the 1990s and the 2000s, Weinstein and his younger brother, Bob Weinstein, were titans of the movie business, producing seminal independent films like “Pulp Fiction” and distributing the Oscar-winning dramas “The English Patient,” “Shakespeare in Love” and “The King’s Speech.”