The far-left Nation is accusing the establishment media of ignoring the myriad of flaws and contradictions in the criminal case against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
In a superb and worthwhile piece of reporting titled Why Harvey Weinstein Might Walk, reporter JoAnn Wypijewski not only lays out the weakness of the prosecution case, but how the establishment media ignore those weaknesses.
According to Wypijewski, there are a number of people, including her, who after watching the entire trial, believe the jury — which has been deliberating for three days — will either come back with an acquittal or hung. If the jury hangs, Weinstein walks, unless the state decides to try again.
I don’t think anyone is prepared for this,” a feminist activist in the public line outside Room 1530 of New York State Supreme Court said during a break in testimony late in Harvey Weinstein’s trial for rape and sexual assault. ‘This” meant the possibility of acquittal or a hung jury.
… Unintentionally, we were thinking like jurors charged to decide if the state was meeting its burden of proof. We had doubts. Our conversation echoed those I’d had before and those I’d have in the coming days with others on the public line, backed against a wall, waiting for scarce seats in a large courtroom already filled with guests and more than 100 credentialed reporters.
Those reporters betrayed no curiosity about the public observers’ assessment of events, at least not that I witnessed across the many days I attended. On elevators and in the restroom, their banter stopped abruptly when they noticed us. For the most part, their dispatches parroted the prosecution’s narrative. The public line was scrappy and searching. By the summation phase, a young woman who days earlier had argued away the contradictions in prosecution witness testimony had decided, “It is a very weak case.” News accounts I’ve seen have emphasized only strength. They did not acknowledge defense attorney Donna Rotunno’s closing as a methodical review of evidence, which raised a mountain of doubt, or describe Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon’s as a digressive appeal to emotion, which repeatedly declared Weinstein a “predatory monster” but otherwise sowed confusion. Instead, the media largely characterized the defense argument as an attack on women and sidestepped the vital matter of whether the prosecution had proved its case.
To be fair to the media, because I have been following the coverage, I actually do have the impression the prosecution case is flawed, just not as weak as what Wypijewski lays out — which if true, screams for Weinstein’s acquittal based on reasonable doubt. Here are just a few of the bullet points:
- Both primary accusers gave accounts that were emotive but were also undercut, sometimes seriously, by other witness testimony or evidence. Haley’s has undergone renovation over various tellings. A calendar she kept is scrawled with the words “I love, I love, I love NY. I love, I love, I love stuff” surrounded by doodled hearts on the week of her alleged forcible oral sex.
- Later entries related to Weinstein she obliterated, and some of her other testimony, including the bleak characterization of an encounter previously described as consensual, invited skepticism when juxtaposed with e-mails saying “lots of love” or “totally bummed to have missed you.”
- Jessica Mann, who spent the longest time on the stand, testified that she lied to the defendant, to her friends, her boyfriend, her mother, her psychic, her life coach over the years when in e-mails or recorded phone calls she said Weinstein “validated” her, “understands” her, was “nothing but good” to her, made her “feel so fabulous and beautiful[.]”
- [S]he slept on the floor of that friend’s closet when she chose to stay an extra night in New York after the alleged vaginal rape so that she could go to a screening and celebrate Weinstein’s birthday the next day.
- What rang false was the prosecution’s gothic language and theory of the case set beside the breezily ordinary language of witnesses’ e-mails to Weinstein—asking how he is, what’s his schedule, when is he in LA or London, can he meet her mom; reminiscing about their first meetings (when he was allegedly inappropriate or violent); asking for help with parking tickets, for job leads and party invitations; updating him on a family member, on feelings, work, a break-up with a boyfriend, her new phone number, her friends’ numbers where she can also be reached; making jokes; mugging for the camera, “Hi, from Berlin!”
There’s no question Harvey Weinstein is a monster, a loathsome human being to deal with in any capacity. That reputation was firmly in place decades prior to the #MeToo movement. There also doesn’t seem to be any doubt Weinstein abuses his power to keep his casting couch busy, and while exploiting needy and beautiful young women in this way is disgusting behavior, it’s not criminal. And that’s all that matters.
As much as I despise Weinstein and everything he stands for (and have for decades), that has no bearing on the criminal charges against him, which is why I haven’t been writing about the case — I just don’t know what to think about it… Because I went so hard after Roman Polanski some ten years ago when it looked like he might finally face justice for raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl back in the 70s, everyone thinks I’m a hard ass when it comes to this stuff, but that’s not true at all.
Polanski admitted to the rape and then fled justice before paying for his unspeakable crime. He’s an admitted child rapist and a fugitive. He’s guilty. Period. If I’m a hard ass about anything, it’s the presumption of innocence and the rights of the accused. I’m the guy who defended Woody Allen and Bryan Singer. I’m the guy who would rather see a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man put in prison. And when I see how despised Weinstein is and how trendy #MeToo is, when I realize what a feather Weinstein’s conviction will put in the cap of the prosecutors, what I see is a case ripe for abuse.
Simply put, Weinstein is the perfect scapegoat.
What’s more, even before reading the Nation piece, two things concerned me greatly about this case. The first is the judge allowing actress Anabella Sciorra to testify that Weinstein raped her back in 1993. My heart breaks for her, no question, and the thought of Weinstein brutalizing anyone, much less someone as frail and beautiful as Sciorra — well, it fires off every reflex that makes a man want to protect a woman. But it’s irrelevant to whether or not Weinstein is guilty of the crimes he’s currently accused of, and it’s highly prejudicial. The good news for Weinstein is that this will make a guilty verdict easy to appeal.
Secondly, there’s the jurist the judge refuses to dismiss, the one whose debut novel comes out this summer about young women dealing with “predatory older men.” Twice Weinstein’s lawyers have tried to have this juror removed, but the judge refuses. You don’t have to be a genius to see how a conviction will juice book sales, especially if this juror goes out on a media tour hosted by fawning interviewers.
Which brings me back to the media coverage…
The media are so corrupt today, such a mindless cult of left-wing liars, you can no longer trust anything they report. And it is perfectly in keeping with their cult-like behavior that they would join a witch hunt against Weinstein, which means not reporting on the overall weakness of the case for fear of facing disapproval within the cult.
This might sound contradictory after NBC News worked so hard to protect Weinstein, but when NBC was covering for Weinstein, that’s what the cult wanted — to protect a powerful Democrat, a rainmaker in both the culture and when it came to political donations. #MeToo changed all that, and now the same cult that protected him from scandal wans his head on a pole.
If the case is as weak as the Nation reports, which is even weaker than I suspected, and Weinstein is acquitted, the corrupt media will have once again sowed anger and division by way of its perverted brand of “journalism,” a brand that no longer has anything to do with the facts and everything to do with a political agenda.
My guess is that the media are eager, even desperate to spark outrage over a potential Weinstein acquittal, which is why they’re covering up the weakness of the case. If the public is unaware of these weaknesses, an acquittal will look unjust. So out will come the pussy hats, and all that ginned up rage will somehow be aimed at Trump.
As we saw with the Russia Collusion Hoax, Trayvon Martin, The KKKids from KKKovington, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” Brett Kavanaugh, etc. ad nauseam, the fake news media’s cause is more important than the truth.
I take no pleasure in defending Harvey Weinstein, but this case is also another example of the wisdom of a jury process that chooses everyday citizens over elites and “professionals.” The potential ringer aside, there are 11 other jurors who will have to live forever with this one decision, and that is exactly who you want on a jury.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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