SHOCKING: Ahead of NY Retrial, Harvey Weinstein Slapped with MORE Sex Crime Charges!

Infamous film tycoon Harvey Weinstein has been hit with fresh sex crimes charges in the lead-up to his retrial in New York, according to Manhattan prosecutors who announced the news at a court hearing on Thursday.

The charges will stay undisclosed until Weinstein’s official arraignment on these new accusations, which is slated for September 18.

Weinstein, aged 72, was absent from the hearing on Thursday as he was recuperating from an emergency medical procedure at a hospital in Manhattan. The surgery was performed on Monday to extract fluid from around his heart and lungs.

Last week, the prosecutors who are set to retry Weinstein for his overturned rape conviction revealed that they had begun presenting to a grand jury evidence of up to three new accusations against Weinstein, which date back to the mid-2000s.

These new accusations include alleged sexual assaults that took place at the Tribeca Grand Hotel (now known as the Roxy Hotel), and in a residential building in Lower Manhattan between late 2005 and mid-2006, as well as an alleged sexual assault at a hotel in Tribeca in May 2016.

Since the indictment remains confidential, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the new charges were connected to some or all of the newly presented accusations.

Prosecutors had been pushing to retry Weinstein after his 2020 conviction for rape and sexual assault charges was overturned by New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. The court ordered a new trial earlier this year.

It is currently uncertain whether the new charges will be incorporated into the retrial, as is the hope of the prosecutors, or if they will be dealt with in a separate trial by the court.

The latest charges follow an announcement from prosecutors in Britain last week, stating they would no longer pursue charges of indecent assault against Weinstein. Weinstein was dubbed the main antagonist of the #MeToo movement in 2017 when women started publicly sharing their stories of his misconduct.

Weinstein, who was a co-founder of the film and television production company Miramax, has consistently argued that any sexual activity was consensual.

At the hearing on Thursday, Judge Curtis Farber decided that owing to Weinstein’s health issues, he will be permitted to stay at Bellevue Hospital indefinitely instead of being transferred back to the city’s Rikers Island jail complex.

For several months, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had been hinting at new charges against Weinstein. Weinstein was previously one of the most influential figures in Hollywood, having produced films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The Crying Game.”

In July, prosecutors informed a judge that they were actively investigating allegations of rape that occurred in Manhattan within the statute of limitations.

They stated that some potential accusers who were not ready to step forward during Weinstein’s first New York trial had indicated that they are now willing to testify.

Weinstein’s 2020 conviction was overthrown in April by New York’s highest court after it was determined that the trial judge unjustly permitted testimony against him based on accusations from other women that were not part of the case.

Prosecutors have indicated that one of the accusers from that case, Jessica Mann, is ready to testify against him again. It’s yet to be seen if the second accuser, Mimi Haley, will participate. Haley’s attorney, Gloria Allred, declined to comment.

As a policy, The Times typically does not reveal the identities of individuals alleging sexual assault unless they give their consent to be named, as Haley and Mann have done.

Weinstein, who was serving a 23-year sentence in New York when his conviction was overturned, was found guilty in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape.

His 16-year sentence in that case still stands, but his lawyers lodged an appeal in June, arguing that he was not granted a fair trial in Los Angeles. Weinstein has remained in custody in New York while awaiting the retrial.

Reported by Sisak for the Associated Press.