A day after her emotionally charged testimony that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein raped her in 2005, Jennifer Siebel Newsom confronted an aggressive interrogation Tuesday over dozens of pleasant emails she exchanged with him within the years afterward.
Weinstein legal professional Mark Werksman sought to forged doubt on Siebel Newsom’s credibility by questioning her assertion that, after the rape, it was bizarre and scary to run into her assailant sometimes at movie trade occasions.
“I simply don’t bear in mind any of this — sorry,” Siebel Newsom advised a Los Angeles jury as Werksman requested her to evaluate every of her emails, together with some asking to satisfy Weinstein for espresso or lunch to speak about movie initiatives.
As soon as one among Hollywood’s strongest producers, Weinstein is on trial in L.A. County Superior Courtroom for the alleged rape or sexual assault of Siebel Newsom and three different girls in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.
Extra fees stemming from Weinstein’s alleged rape of a fifth girl had been dismissed Tuesday after prosecutors advised Choose Lisa Lench they didn’t plan to maneuver ahead with these counts.
The girl lives exterior america and can’t be compelled by subpoena to testify, based on folks acquainted with the matter. Prosecutors haven’t talked about her on the trial.
Siebel Newsom, who sobbed on the witness stand for hours Monday as she disclosed particulars of the alleged rape, testified in a packed courtroom beneath tight safety once more Tuesday, this time principally beneath cross-examination. Her husband, Gov. Gavin Newsom, spent each days in a personal space down the corridor.
Siebel Newsom spent a lot of the day keeping off Werksman, who’d steered in his opening assertion final month that, if she had not forged herself as a sufferer she can be “simply one other bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get forward in Hollywood.”
“What you’re doing at the moment is precisely what he did to me,” Siebel Newsom mentioned throughout one spherical of Werksman’s rapid-fire questioning.
“Your vitality is simply so intense,” she advised him throughout one other.
The rape occurred in Weinstein’s suite on the Peninsula resort in Beverly Hills in September 2005, a few weeks after she met him on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, Siebel Newsom mentioned.
On the time, she was an aspiring actor and filmmaker attempting to interrupt into the higher tiers of the enterprise, and he or she mentioned she’d gone to the resort to talk with him about her aspirations on a number of initiatives.
Werksman confronted Siebel Newsom with emails exhibiting that, beginning about 9 months after the alleged rape, she started sending Weinstein emails searching for to satisfy with him once more.
“Are you free for espresso or lunch this coming Monday or Tues,” she wrote to Weinstein in September 2006, saying she was sorry they’d missed one another that 12 months on the subsequent Toronto pageant.
Werksman requested why she was searching for “to see your rapist as quickly as you would.”
“It was simply enterprise,” she mentioned. “I used to be in all probability simply attempting to get recommendation.”
Werksman additionally inquired a few Might 2007 e mail change by which she sought to satisfy Weinstein in the course of the Cannes Movie Competition in France.
“You really sought out his firm at Cannes, true?” Werksman requested.
“I assume I did,” she replied.
Siebel Newsom described her emails as “networking,” telling the jury, “I used to be simply hustling.”
“You had been hustling with a person you declare violently raped you?” Werksman requested.
The decide sustained a prosecutor’s objection, and Siebel Newsom didn’t reply.
Siebel Newsom, who reported the assault to police in April 2020, testified that she despatched out a whole lot of 1000’s of emails and didn’t recall those Werksman confirmed her.
Werksman additionally sought to emphasise discrepancies between Siebel Newsom’s testimony on the trial and the three earlier statements she made to police, prosecutors and a grand jury. He zeroed in on her confusion over the time of evening when she left the Peninsula resort and the small print of Weinstein’s bodily contact along with her within the resort room.
Her legal professional, Elizabeth Fegan, issued a press release saying Siebel Newsom “felt an obligation to herself, her household and most necessary, to the ladies who got here ahead in addition to the ladies unable to talk out publicly.”
“All through her testimony she demonstrated great energy and resolve in telling her fact and stood quick as Weinstein’s protection staff ruthlessly tried to discredit her,” Fegan mentioned.
Siebel Newsom ended her testimony with a dramatic exit, after renewed questioning from a prosecutor. Deputy Dist. Atty. Marlene Martinez once more requested Siebel Newsom about probably the most specific descriptions she had given the day earlier than of the alleged rape.
Responding to last questions on whether or not she had consented to 2 particular intercourse acts with Weinstein, Siebel Newsom twice shrieked, “No!” then left the courtroom wanting extremely distraught.
Instances workers author James Queally contributed to this report.
