Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been moved to a New York prison hospital with multiple ailments including Covid-19 and double pneumonia.
Juda Engelmayer, Weinstein’s publicist, said that the 72-year-old had recently tested positive for the virus. He added that his client already has diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis and fluid on his heart and lungs.
Weinstein was jailed for 23 years in New York in 2020 for the rape and sexual assault of a former assistant and an actress. The city’s appeals court threw out the conviction in April, finding Weinstein did not get a fair trial.
But the film mogul remains in prison in New York while he awaits a retrial later this year. He was also sentenced to 16 years in prison in a separate rape trial in California, which he is appealing against.
New York City Correction Department records showed on Thursday that Weinstein was at the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward, where he has been multiple times since his conviction.
CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, said that he underwent a heart procedure at Bellevue to open a blocked artery shortly after his conviction.
He was again taken to the hospital in April. Arthur Aidala, his lawyer, said at the time that Weinstein was “used to drinking champagne and eating caviar and now he’s at the commissary paying for potato chips and M&Ms”.
“Mentally, he’s fine. He’s sharp as a tack. But physically, he’s been breaking down for years.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has recently said it intends to charge Weinstein for “additional violent sexual assaults” over those he was tried for, after more women agreed to give evidence.
The conviction of the Miramax co-founder was a milestone for the #MeToo movement, in which women accused hundreds of men in entertainment, media, politics and other fields of sexual misconduct. (BBC)
