A judge on Friday approved amendments to Harvey Weinstein’s legal team on charges of rape and sexual assault, allowing the deposed producer to replace his former lawyer with a team of four whose reputation no longer to do.
The former producer went to court in Manhattan, alongside his new lawyers Jose Baez, Ronald Sullivan and Duncan Levin, and his former lawyer Benjamin Brafman, to hear Judge James Burke approve the substitution.
Harvey Weinstein, 66, and Benjamin Brafman, 70, announced last week that they had agreed to end their professional relationship. This decision came one month after they failed to have the charges dismissed.
The trial of Harvey Weinstein is tentatively scheduled for May.
He is accused of raping a woman in 2013 and of having sexually assaulted a different woman in 2006. He denies all allegations of non-consensual sex.
Harvey Weinstein’s other new lawyer, Pamela Robillard Mackey, did not attend Friday’s hearing because she was out of the country.
Jose Baez is undoubtedly the best known name of the four. He made a name for himself when he defended Casey Anthony, a young mother from Florida whose television trial in 2011 ended in an acquittal for the murder of her daughter.
Jose Baez and Ronald Sullivan, a 52-year-old Harvard law professor, successfully defended Aaron Hernandez of the New England Patriots on a charge of murder in 2017. Hernandez, who was in prison at the Following a conviction for murder pronounced in 2015, committed suicide on April 19, 2017.
Pamela Robillard Mackey, who practices in Denver, represented Kobe Bryant when the former basketball star was charged with raping a 19-year-old woman at a Colorado resort in 2003. The charges were dropped when Prosecutors said the accuser did not want to testify.
Duncan Levin is a former high representative of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
Harvey Weinstein unveiled his new legal team on Wednesday.
Actress Rose McGowan, one of the first women to charge Harvey Weinstein with sexual misconduct, criticized Jose Baez and Ronald Sullivan for agreeing to represent the former producer after defending him in a drug case. ‘last year. She called it a “major conflict of interest”.
Both lawyers issued a statement saying that the McGowan case had nothing to do with Harvey Weinstein and that they were sure there was no conflict of interest.