Weinstein legal professionals say prosecutors don't have a case

Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer told jurors Thursday that prosecutors in the rape case against him were acting like moviemakers, conjuring up a global “where women had no free will.”

“In the choice universe that prosecutors have designed for you, Harvey Weinstein is a monster,” lawyer Donna Rotunno said in her closing argument. But, she said, he’s an innocent man counting on jurors never to be swayed by a “sinister tale.”

Rotunno argued that prosecutors had to make a damning story about the once-powerful movie producer because they don’t have the data to prove the charges.

“The irony is they are the producers plus they are writing the script,” Rotunno said, urging the jury never to buy into “the story they spun where women had no free will.”

“Of their universe, women aren't in charge of the parties they attend, the men they flirt with, the choices they make to further their own careers, the accommodation invitations, the seats they accept, the jobs they might need help obtain,” or the messages they send, Rotunno said.

Witnesses testified these were seeking a consultant relationship with Weinstein, the producer of Oscar-winning movies such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The King’s Speech.” Rotunno dismissed that as an expedient excuse.

“If indeed they label it what it turned out, we wouldn’t be here,” she told the jury of seven men and five ladies in a case seen as a watershed for the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct.

“He was the possible of a cause and a movement,” Rotunno said, asking jurors to ignore “outside forces” and weigh the truth.

“This is not a popularity contest,” she said.

Weinstein is charged with raping a female in a Manhattan accommodation in 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on a different woman, Mimi Haleyi, in 2006. Other accusers testified within a prosecution effort to show he used the same tactics to victimize a lot of women over the years.

The Associated Press includes a policy of not publishing the names of those who allege sexual assault without their consent. It really is withholding name of the rape accuser because it isn’t clear if she wishes to be found out publicly.

Weinstein, 67, didn't testify. He has maintained any sexual encounters were consensual.

He said he “loved” Rotunno’s closing remarks as he left court Thursday.

“I made ‘The King’s Speech.’ It turned out the Queen’s speech,” Weinstein quipped.

The jury is scheduled to hear prosecutors’ closing argument Friday. Deliberations are anticipated to begin in a few days.

In often emotional testimony, Weinstein’s accusers said he lured them to hotels in NY and LA on the pretense of promoting their careers and then sexually assaulted them. The defense countered by confronting some accusers with warm emails and other communications with Weinstein that continued for months and even years following the alleged attacks.

The rape accuser wrote to him following a alleged assault to accept party invitations, give him her new telephone numbers and even express gratitude. One message read: “Personally i think so fabulous and beautiful, many thanks for everything.”

Another read: “Miss you, big guy.”

“Not words you tell your rapist,” Rotunno told jurors Thursday. She portrayed the accuser as a manipulator who met Weinstein as an aspiring actress, “would do anything she had a need to do to have the career she wanted to have” and wasn’t forced to have sexual encounters with him.

The girl testified last month that she kept touching Weinstein and sent him flattering messages because “his ego was so fragile” and it seemed safer to her “to be thought to be innocent and naive.”

Rotunno also used emails to question the credibility of Haleyi, who said Weinstein sexually assaulted her after getting her employment as a production assistant on TV’s “Project Runway.” His attorney pointed to an email the next year where Haleyi asked Weinstein how he was doing and signed off with “a lot of love.”

“This is where you must say, ‘Wait about a minute - do I've doubt about the story she’s telling?’ How will you not?” Rotunno asked jurors.

Haleyi, during testimony last month, explained her interactions with Weinstein by saying she no longer feared him after “he basically had taken what he wanted” and “wasn’t pursuing me for the reason that manner” any longer.

As for the other four women who testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted them, Rotunno said their accounts were irrelevant and unpersuasive. She suggested among those accusers, actress Annabella Sciorra, concocted an allegation to get #MeToo attention and revive her career.

Sciorra, best known on her behalf work in TV’s “The Sopranos,” testified that Weinstein forced his way into her apartment in the 1990s and raped her as she tried to fight him off. Fellow actress and friend Rosie Perez testified a distraught Sciorra informed her about the alleged attack soon after it happened.

Rotunno delivered her closing argument under a week after she came under fire on social media for telling THE BRAND NEW York Times’ podcast “The Daily” she’d never been attacked “because I'd never put myself for the reason that position.”