During the disgraced producer's trial for rape and sexual assault, it is uncovered that he recruited officials at Black Cube to try and halt the damning article becoming public.
- January 31, 2020
AceShowbiz - Harvey Weinstein hired top private detectives in a desperate bid to bury the 2017 New York Times expose outing him as an alleged sexual predator, a court has heard.
The disgraced movie mogul's fall from grace began with the publication of the damning article in October, 2017, when multiple women, including "The Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra, came forward with claims of sexual misconduct and intimidation against Weinstein.
The piece helped to spark the #MeToo movement and has since led authorities to charge the producer with felony counts of rape and sexual assault, for which he is currently standing trial in New York City, and on Thursday (January 30), the jury heard how he recruited officials at Black Cube to try and halt the news becoming public.
Lawyer Dev Sen from Boies Schiller Flexner testified how representatives at his company had helped to connect Weinstein with executives at Black Cube, where many private investigators are former spies from Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, three months before the expose was printed.
In the Boies Schiller Flexner contract signed by Black Cube chiefs, they agreed to "provide intelligence which will help the client's efforts to completely stop the publication of a new negative article in a leading NY newspaper".
The paperwork also revealed Black Cube officials would receive a $300,000 (£229,000) bonus if they were successful in halting the article's publication.
Lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon claimed the contract "shows that the defendant was concerned about an article coming out and he was looking for Annabella Sciorra to be investigated".
Sciorra was among the witnesses called to the stand last week to testify about her alleged rape at the hands of Weinstein in the early 1990s to help prosecutors establish what they claim to be a pattern of bad behaviour.
The 67-year-old faces five charges of sexual assault stemming from allegations by two women, Jessica Mann and Miriam Haleyi, related to incidents in 2006 and 2013.
Weinstein, who faces life behind bars if convicted, maintains that all the sexual encounters were consensual.
The trial continues.
