NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein 's assistants kept a list of female “friends of Harvey” to invite to events and sometimes considered them a special category for guest lists, an ex-aide testified Thursday at the former movie mogul's sex crimes retrial.
“A ‘friend of Harvey’ was a woman that he’d meet at events or parties or festivals or — somewhere,” said Elizabeth Perz. She worked for his production company from 2011 to 2015, initially as one of his executive assistants.
The then-married Weinstein asked his assistants to invite these women to events, Perz said. It was such common practice that Weinstein's subordinates had a shorthand: “Might as well add a FOH column,” Perz advised colleagues by email as they discussed the attendee list for some 2013 awards-season events.
Jurors were shown a roster of well over a dozen names, which Perz said was kept in the office at Weinstein’s company. The names were broken down by geography, such as “LA Friends” or “Cannes/Etc/all invites."
One “LA Friends” entry was Jessica Mann, one of the three women whose allegations are at the heart of the retrial.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty. The once-powerful studio boss, who became a prime target of the #MeToo movement's campaign against sexual misconduct, maintains that he's never had sexual encounters that weren't consensual.
During the last five years, he was convicted of various sex crimes in both New York and California. But he's on trial again because an appeals court found that his New York trial was tainted by prejudicial testimony and overturned that conviction. He's charged with raping Mann in 2013 and forcing oral sex on two other women, separately, in 2006.
Mann, who was a hairstylist and aspiring actor when she met Weinstein in the early 2010s, is expected to testify in the coming days or week. The other accusers, Miriam Haley and Kaja Sokola, already have taken the stand.
At Weinstein's 2020 trial, Mann painted a complex and emotional picture of a yearslong relationship that began consensually but became “degrading” and volatile and eventually exploded into rape. Still, she kept seeing him and sending warm messages because she wanted him to believe she "wasn’t a threat,” she testified.
Weinstein's lawyers at the time argued that Mann willingly had a sexual liaison with him to serve her acting ambitions. At one point during his defense's questioning in 2020, she began sobbing so forcefully that court ended early that day.
At the retrial on Thursday, jurors saw messages that Perz had sent to Mann about some Oscars-related parties in 2013.
“Harvey would like to extend an invitation to you” and a friend, Perz wrote.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people who alleged they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified, which Sokola, Haley and Mann have done.
Jennifer Peltz, The Associated Press
