Harvey Weinstein’s Rape Trial Lawyer Derides Jennifer Siebel Newsom For “Theatrical, Overly Dramatized Performance” In Closing Argument; Case Goes To Jury Tomorrow

deadline.com:

“Regret is not the same thing as rape, and it’s important we make that distinction in this courtroom,” Harvey Weinstein’s defense attorney Alan Jackson said Thursday of Jennifer Siebel Newsom during his closing argument in the much-accused Weinstein’s Los Angeles sex crime trial.

Calling Weinstein’s alleged 2005 assault of Newsom in Beverly Hills’ Peninsula Hotel “consensual, transactional sex” between an ambitious filmmaker-actress and a powerful producer, Jackson further mocked Newsom, aka Jane Doe #4, in language that seemed to intentionally alienate any notion of empathy, saying, “Jane Doe #4 cannot square in her mind the idea that she’s a successful, well educated, well-bred refined woman who had consensual sex with Harvey Weinstein in exchange for opportunity and access.” First revealing a long-ago encounter with Weinstein just days after the New York Times dropped its detailed exposé about the Oscar winner in late 2017, Newsom, who did not marry then-San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom until 2008, has always maintained that she was attacked against her will by the producer 17 years ago. “I could tell he just needed, he was so determined, just so scary, just all about him and his pleasure, his need for satisfaction, so I just did it to make it stop,” she said in emotional testimony November 14.

Coming near the end of Jackson’s piercing closing argument today, that potentially pivotal testimony was slashed at over and over by the attorney in an effort to raise reasonable doubt for his client in the L.A.

criminal trial. With Weinstein not taking the stand, Newsom’s testimony was seen by both prosecution and the defense as one of the most important of the trial, if not the most important, sources say.