Harvey Weinstein's Rape Conviction Was Overturned Right on Cue

New York's highest court reversed Weinstein's conviction minutes before SCOTUS entertained the argument that Trump, another notorious rapist and power abuser, is immune from criminal prosecution.

I was getting ready to listen to oral arguments in the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity case this morning—a case that could protect Donald Trump from any criminal charges related to his conspiracy to use fraud to overturn the 2020 election—when my phone blinked with a news alert that Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction and 23-year prison sentence in New York had just been overturned.

New York’s Court of Appeals ruled 4-3 that the serial rapist should get a retrial, because the judge in the case had “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.” In other words, it was unfair to Weinstein that other women he’d allegedly raped had been allowed to testify in a trial that wasn’t directly about the crimes against them.

Weinstein is still in jail and trying to appeal his Los Angeles rape conviction, which carries its own 16-year sentence, but is now “cautiously excited,” his spokesperson told Deadline today. His lawyer called the ruling “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”

Judge Madeline Singas, one of the three votes against overturning the Weinstein verdict, wrote in a scathing dissent that the decision perpetuates a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.” You may recall that Bill Cosby, the other most notorious Hollywood abuser of the #MeToo movement, had his 2018 sexual assault conviction vacated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2021, after serving just two years in prison.

In a way, it’s sort of perfect that this Weinstein news reared its ugly head when it did, reminding us never to get our hopes up that the American justice system will do anything in the end but provide cover for wealthy, power-abusing men. Many a think-piece was written at the beginning of the #MeToo movement about the irony of these two accused rapists having such divergent paths—one to the presidency and the other to jail.

“Ironically it was Trump’s win, a victory that seemed to signal it would be another generation before anyone took claims of sexual assault seriously, that’s set the stage for the downfall of Weinstein, and the other media untouchables who’ve gone down since Trump went up,” wrote the Los Angeles Times in 2017.

Fast-forward seven years, and Weinstein is eyeing a way out of prison as Trump’s lawyers argue before SCOTUS that presidents are inherently immune from criminal prosecution. At least four of the justices, but more likely five, appeared sympathetic today to the idea that Trump should either have total immunity from prosecution—or at least enough immunity that it doesn’t affect his chances of winning again in November. "Presidents have to make a lot of tough decisions about enforcing the law, about questions that are unsettled, based on info that's available,” Justice Sam Alito said to DOJ special counsel Jack Smith today. “Are you saying if he makes a mistake, he's subject to the criminal laws like anyone else?" [Yes, asshole.]

Let’s keep in mind that before either attorney even opened his mouth to make an argument, the case appeared to be rigged. Out of the nine justices deciding whether Trump can be prosecuted before the upcoming presidential election, a third were appointed by Trump himself. And the wife of a fourth justice—Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni—was a leading participant in Trump’s plot to overturn the election. (Thomas absolutely should have recused himself from this case due to conflicts of interest and did not, much like he didn’t disclose being bankrolled by a right-wing billionaire who collects Hitler artifacts and has a garden full of dictator statues.)

Who knows—Weinstein may die in prison, and Amy Coney Barrett may surprise us all and rule with the court’s liberals that presidents aren’t kings. But in both these cases, where the evidence against the defendant is so overwhelming as to almost be a joke, the fact that the justice system is even toying with letting these men off the hook sends a shot across the bow at anyone who’d even mildly begin to begun to believe in fairness.