The judge in charge of Harvey Weinstein‘s N.Y. rape trial turned down a bid by his lawyers to delay proceedings in wake of the new rape charges he’s facing in L.A. Judge James M. Burke also scolded Weinstein for using his phone in court and threatened to throw him in jail.
He said: “Is this really the way you want to end up in jail for the rest of your life? By texting and violating a court order?”
Donna Rotunno, a defense attorney for Weinstein, suggested that the Los Angeles County District Attorney‘s Office announced the charges on the same day of his criminal trial’s commencement on purpose.
“If anyone believes” the timing was a coincidence, Rotunno said in the courtroom, “I'd like to sell them a bridge.”
The 67-year-old is facing charges that he raped a woman in a Manhattan hotel in 2013 and performed a forcible sex act on another woman in 2006. More than 80 women have accused Weinstein of misconduct.
WHO WOULD DEFEND WEINSTEIN?
Vanity Fair sat down with Weinstein’s lawyer to find out.
For starters, Rotunno has no time for what she calls political correctness.
She also predicts that women will rue the day the #MeToo movement started: “I feel that women may rue the day that all of this started when no one asks them out on a date, and no one holds the door open for them, and no one tells them that they look nice.”