Weinstein accuser grilled over emails as testimony ends

The accuser in Harvey Weinstein’s rape retrial has wrapped up five days of alarming and often tearful testimony in which defense attorneys challenged her credibility and the timeline of the allegations.

“I’m not doing very well right now, so I’m really trying to remember,” defense attorney Jessica Mann said as she continued to examine her communications and trysts with the former Hollywood movie mogul after the alleged 2013 rape.

He added: “I feel like I’ve said too much and I’m trying to get over it.”

But Mann continued to answer questions for hours, at times appearing exhausted or demanding questions to be repeated.

On Friday, Weinstein’s lawyer, Teny Geragos, walked him back through various friendly and complimentary emails he sent to or about Weinstein over the years.

In a May 2013 text, he told a friend: “I love the Harvey we know. I feel some sense of protection.”

Mann told jurors that he helped her get ahead in the film industry and that “there was a time when I felt like she was protecting me.”

Mann often said he was unable to remember various events and details, especially dates, through testimony focusing on events 13 years ago.

When the interrogation ended, prosecutor Nicole Blumberg tried to prove that Mann accurately remembered the alleged rape.

“As you sit here today, are these details clear in your mind?” Blumberg asked.

“I remember,” Mann said, and was told there were no further questions. He left the room crying.

Mann, 40, and Weinstein, 73, are in the midst of a third trial on accusations that he forced himself on her in a New York hotel room. Weinstein’s lawyers say everything that happened between the pair was consensual and part of a four-year, affectionate relationship.

He was first convicted in 2020, but an appeals court overturned that verdict, and jurors at a retrial last year stopped considering the rape charge after the foreman refused to participate further. This left the case unsolved and led to a retrial.

Weinstein was a successful filmmaker until allegations against him sparked the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct in 2017. He said he “misbehaved but never attacked anyone.”

She and Mann met in early 2013, when he was a studio boss and she was a 27-year-old hairdresser and actor trying to establish a film career. She testified that she soon began to make progress, and although she was surprised, she decided to pursue a relationship with Weinstein, who was married at the time.

She alleges that he trapped her in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013, angrily ordered her to undress when he came upon her, ignored her objections, and raped her.

Weinstein’s lawyers obtained a thoughtful note he wrote to himself two days later. In it, she talked about her emotional attachment to a man she did not name and her conflicting feelings about their non-exclusive relationship, asking herself: “Do I love him or the idea of ​​him?”

The note, which was not mentioned in Weinstein’s previous hearings, does not mention any sexual assault allegations.

When asked Friday why that didn’t happen, Mann paused and said: “I don’t need to write that down.”

Her relationship with Weinstein continued on and off for years afterward.

Mann stated that he loved “a part of himself” and “always tried to see the good in him,” but he was wary of standing up to a well-connected man who was flexing his power.

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