Harvey Weinstein Charged With New Sex Crimes in California as New York Trial Begins

Harvey Weinstein was charged with sex crimes by California state prosecutors more than two years after accusations that the film producer had preyed on women first spilled into public view.

The charges, announced Monday, come as Weinstein is about to go on trial in New York, charged with rape and predatory sexual assault. They add new peril for the former Hollywood power broker, who faces prison time if convicted in New York and must now confront a new set of charges that could send him to jail in California.

“We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them,” Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a statement.

The charges relate to alleged assaults against two women in 2013, Lacey said. The victims weren’t identified.

Hours before the Los Angeles press conference, Weinstein appeared in state court in New York for a final conference before the start of his long-awaited trial. There, prosecutors said they may seek to call marquee lawyer David Boies as a witness to testify that the former Hollywood mogul hired a private detective firm to investigate his accusers.

Boies, who had long represented Weinstein, can testify about Weinstein’s hiring of Black Cube to investigate women who previously had accused Weinstein of sexual assault, prosecutors said at a hearing on Monday in state court in Manhattan.

They said they wouldn’t summon Boies if the defense allows the jury to be told he hired Black Cube. If not, “then we will be calling David Boies,” Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said in court.

A spokesman for Boies didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

Weinstein, 67, is set to go on trial this month for allegedly raping one woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and performing a forcible sex act on another in 2006 in his apartment in the city. He maintains any sexual activity was consensual and denies wrongdoing.

As Weinstein arrived in court Monday morning for a pretrial hearing, he was surrounded by his lawyers and a security team and met by scores of photographers and television cameras lining the street outside the lower Manhattan courthouse. Hunched over, he moved slowly and with the help of a walker, following recent back surgery, and left court without making any comments.

Outside the courthouse, about 20 women gathered, include the actors Rosanna Arquette and Rose McGowan, who both say they were abused by Weinstein and promised to attend the trial, which could last as long as two months.

“Today is a day for us to honor how far we’ve come and how much we’ve endured,” McGowan said. “We are free. We are beautiful. We are strong. And you will never take that from us.”

During the hearing, Illuzzi told New York State Supreme Court Justice James Burke that after Weinstein hired Black Cube, an employee of the detective agency, misrepresenting his employer, approached a woman to determine what she’d say against him.

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