Disgraced Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein has been rushed to a New York City hospital to undergo treatment for a variety of ailments including coronavirus, fluid on his heart and lungs along with high blood pressure, his representatives confirmed Thursday.
The 72-year-old, who is awaiting trial in New York on rape and sexual assault charges, was moved from the city’s Rikers Island jail complex to a locked ward at Bellevue Hospital late Thursday for emergency treatment.
The other conditions he was to be treated for included diabetes, spinal stenosis, and assorted pneumonia symptoms, according to a statement released by Weinstein’s publicist that attributed the health information to Craig Rothfeld, Weinstein’s prison consultant.
“We continue to express our gratitude to the officers, doctors and nurses” in the city’s corrections and public hospital systems “who saw to it that Mr. Weinstein was immediately transferred to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward,” said the publicist, Juda Engelmayer, according to AP.
Weinstein was convicted in New York in 2020 of the rape and sexual assault of actress Jessica Mann and of forcibly performing oral sex on a production assistant, as Breitbart News reported.
A New York appeals court overturned his conviction in April in a reversal in one of the defining cases of the #MeToo movement.
The court ruled that the trial judge had erred by allowing testimony from accusers who Weinstein was not formally charged with assaulting.
Judge Curtis Farber, at a brief hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Friday, set a tentative start date of November 12 for Weinstein’s retrial.
The judge said more details for the trial would be discussed at a hearing on September 12.
Although Weinstein’s New York conviction was overturned, he has remained behind bars because of a conviction for rape in California for which he received a sentence of 16 years.