Bid to extradite Harvey Weinstein to California fought by NYC prosecutors
NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein appeared in a Queens courtroom Thursday morning as prosecutors fought an extradition request to send him back to California following the stunning overturning of his New York rape and sex assault conviction.
California authorities have requested that New York City law enforcement officials bring the disgraced media mogul, 72, back to the West Coast, where he is facing additional sex abuse charges.
“With the New York case against Weinstein overturned, he’s technically now a fugitive from the state of California,” a law enforcement source said.
New York is fighting the extradition request since the disgraced Miramax founder is expected to be retried on the rape case as soon as the fall.
Weinstein was wheeled into the courtroom more than an hour after he was scheduled to appear. Wearing a suit and tie, he crouched in a wheelchair. His skin looked pale as he gazed furtively around the courtroom.
Weinstein himself refused to be extradited, lawyers said, and he did not speak beyond answering yes and no questions.
As he left the courtroom, he locked eyes with Craig Rothfeld, one of his attorneys, seated in the front row, and waved a hand in the air as though gesturing for something.
“You’ll have it tomorrow,” Rothfeld told him. “It was a mix up. You’ll have it tomorrow.”
A governor’s warrant must be sought for Weinstein’s release to California. He was ordered held without bail on the basis of the fugitive warrant and is scheduled to appear in court again Aug. 7.
“They are not in a position to extradite Weinstein right now because they have not done what they needed to do,” Diana Fabi Samson, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, said outside court.
Fabi Samson said she also wanted to clarify some of the legal language.
“He’s not a fugitive in the colloquial sense of the word — that’s just the language they use,” she said. “Our main concern is that Mr. Weinstein is here in New York so that we can prepare for the trial.”
Rothfeld, meanwhile, addressed issues surrounding Weinstein’s health and incarceration settings.
“There’s been false narratives about what that room is like,” Rothfeld said, referencing how and where Weinstein has been housed since his arrest given his “serious health issues.”
“Since the day he was incarcerated he has been in a hospital-like setting,” Rothfeld said.
Fabi Samson spoke to Weinstein’s health briefly as well.
“He is holding up as well as he can be under the circumstances of being incarcerated and having the health issues,” she said.
The decision to retry Weinstein was announced earlier this month at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing attended by the movie producer and Jessica Mann, one of two women who he was found guilty of attacking more than four years ago.
A state Supreme Court jury determined Weinstein was guilty of criminal sexual act in the first-degree and third-degree rape in 2020, finding he forcibly performed oral sex on Miriam Haley in 2006 and committed third-degree rape in an incident with Mann in 2013.
He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, which he was serving at the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y. — where he returned after facing another trial in California that resulted in his December 2022 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges and a 16-year sentence.
The stunning April 25 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals overturning Weinstein’s New York conviction found the trial court judge, James Burke, shouldn’t have permitted testimony by three women about uncharged allegations of sexual violence.
The extradition hearing could have taken place anywhere in New York City, a source said. While Weinstein was convicted in Manhattan, a Queens court was selected because of its proximity to Rikers Island, where Weinstein is currently incarcerated as he awaits his new trial, the source said.
