Jan Ransom

President Trump denied the allegations. He called Carroll a liar, intent on selling a new book. He said he had never met her, despite a photo of the two of them together in the 1980s. He told reporters that he would not have assaulted Carroll because she “is not my type.”

Now Carroll, a journalist and columnist for Elle Magazine, has sued Trump for defamation, saying in a lawsuit filed in state court Monday that Trump had damaged her reputation and her career when he denied her allegation in June.

His statements about Carroll, the lawsuit said, “are fully consistent with his tried-and-true playbook for responding to credible public reports that he sexually assaulted women.”

Another woman, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s television show “The Apprentice,” has filed a similar lawsuit against the president, saying he defamed her when he called her a liar after she said he had sexually harassed her during a business meeting.

The suits raise the possibility that the president will have to defend his statements in court, and evidence about the truth of the allegations will come out.

“When Carroll’s account of what had happened to her was published, Donald Trump not only denied the rape, but denied ever having met Carroll or knowing who she was,” said Robbie Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll. “But Trump knew his statements were false and defamatory — he knew who Carroll was that day at Bergdorf Goodman and he knows who she is now.”

At least 10 women accused Trump of sexual misconduct during the presidential campaign in 2016.

Trump also suggested that Carroll was conspiring with the Democratic Party to hurt him politically.

The president’s remarks, the lawsuit states, “injured the reputation on which she makes her livelihood and attracts readers.” Carroll said in the lawsuit that readers no longer wanted to write to a woman who the president had branded a liar and that her column has received 50% less letters from readers.

Trump’s lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Carroll disclosed the alleged attack, which she said happened in late 1995 or early 1996, in a book and spoke publicly about it. She said that she was leaving Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store on Fifth Avenue, when she saw Trump entering the store.

The two had met once before and traveled in the same media circles, she said. At the time, Carroll was the host of a daily television show and a frequent guest on NBC’s “Today” show.

Trump, she said, stopped her and said, “Hey, you’re that advice lady!”

Trump then told her he was looking for a gift for a woman and asked Carroll to help him. Carroll suggested several items before Trump decided on lingerie, the lawsuit stated.

Trump spotted a lilac bodysuit and insisted Carroll try it on, to which she suggested that he try it on. According to the lawsuit, Trump grabbed Carroll by the arm, walked her over to the dressing room and said, “Let’s put this on.”

He suddenly lunged at her, pushed her against a wall and kissed her, she said in the lawsuit. She pushed him away and he then pinned her against the wall, pulled down her tights and raped her. The attack she said lasted up to three minutes.

“No one, not even the president, is above the law,” Carroll said in a statement Monday. “While I can no longer hold Donald Trump accountable for assaulting me more than 20 years ago, I can hold him accountable for lying about it and I fully intend to do so.”

This article originally appeared in

E. Jean Carroll, Who Accused Trump of Rape, Sues Him for Defamation

E. Jean Carroll had publicly shared a secret in June that she had kept largely to herself for more than two decades: Donald Trump, she said, had raped her in the dressing room of an upscale department store in New York City.

“I’m going home,” a fellow inmate recalled him saying.

McMillon had mental illnesses and had disciplinary problems over the years. He was punished for assaulting a guard and for fighting with another inmate, but had then vowed to stay out of trouble, and was looking forward to his parole hearing.

One day in January, McMillon, 67, was involved in a struggle with guards at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in upstate New York. According to the official account, he once again attacked a guard and resisted efforts to control him. He died of a heart attack, the official autopsy said.

As far as state investigators were concerned, the case was closed.

But several inmates who witnessed the struggle told a much different story.

Four inmates, all of whom were interviewed separately and in person by The New York Times, said they witnessed McMillon being harshly beaten by guards.

An additional five inmates provided similar accounts to prisoners’ rights groups.

“They killed that man,” one of the inmates, Pernell Griffin, told the Times. “There was a lot of blood. He was screaming in pain.”

It is unusual for inmates to speak out so forcefully about allegations of brutality behind bars. Many fear retaliation by guards.

The inmates differed with respect to some details, but they all offered the same basic narrative: McMillon was returning from dinner and asked to go back to his cell. He then began behaving erratically, though not violently, the inmates said.

The inmates said that in response, a female guard approached and punched him in the face. Several other guards also responded and beat him, the inmates said. One inmate said he saw McMillon being choked.

State investigators independently interviewed the same inmates, who made similar assertions that McMillon was beaten, according to an inquiry by the Washington County district attorney, J. Anthony Jordan.

But guards told state investigators that they merely tried to restrain McMillon, and the inquiry said the guards’ body camera footage supports their statements. State prison officials have not released the footage.

Several of the inmates who spoke to the Times and prisoners’ rights groups said guards retaliated against them because they spoke to state investigators.

The starkly conflicting accounts of the struggle deepened the questions surrounding McMillon’s death.

Government watchdog agencies and nonprofit groups have long expressed concern about what they said is a culture of brutality at Great Meadow, a troubled maximum-security prison with 1,415 inmates in Comstock, more than 200 miles north of New York City.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo toured Great Meadow last year in response to the turmoil there. On the day of his visit, the prison was on lockdown following fights among inmates — the third violent incident at the prison that week.

A correction officer there had also been suspended for beating an inmate. The governor said the problems at the prison demonstrated the need for statewide prison reform.

Great Meadow ranked third highest of all the prisons in New York for rates of assaults on inmates and assaults on staff in 2016, according to the most recent data collected by the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group that has the authority under state law to monitor prisons.

The association found that of the state’s maximum-security facilities, the prison had the highest incidence of guards using force against inmates.

Last year, several inmates filed lawsuits against the prison charging brutality by guards.

McMillon’s family has sharply criticized the official determination of his death. His sister, Carolyn Hodge, said that when she first called the local coroner’s office for information about the cause of death, she was told McMillon had been strangled.

A photo that family members took of his body when it was brought to a funeral home shows visible marks around his neck and face.

“I don’t think I will be able to forgive them for what they did to my brother,” Hodge said.

Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the state Department of Correction, said in a statement that investigators’ conclusions were based on an extensive review of body camera footage and interviews with guards and prisoners.

“Any story claiming that John McMillon was beaten by correction officers before his death would fly in the face of the Washington County medical examiner’s findings as well as the preliminary results of the investigation by the department’s Office of Special Investigations,” Mailey said. “Such a baseless assertion would be a blatant abdication of the truth.”

‘I’m Here. I’m Alive.’

McMillon had been in the state prison system since he was convicted in 1995 of two armed robberies of stores in Buffalo, during which he shot and wounded a store manager.

His lawyer at the time said McMillon had “a long-standing mental illness” and an “inability to piece together facts.”

He was one of nine children, the son of a bar owner in Buffalo, said Hodge, 62. Her brother began stealing cars and doing burglaries as an adolescent, she said.

“As long as he was taking his medication, he was fine,” she said.

In 1993, he married a woman he had met at a gift shop in a local bus depot. But before they could have a honeymoon, McMillon was in trouble with the law again, facing charges of attempted murder, robbery and related offenses.

“He apologized so many times in that visiting room,” recalled his wife, Victoria McMillon. “He knew he messed up.”

In prison, each day when the alarm went off in the morning, McMillon would shout: “I woke up another day. I’m here. I’m alive,” one inmate recounted.

Outside his cell, he was known for giving younger prisoners facing lengthy sentences tips on how to survive.

Griffin, one of the inmates who said he witnessed the conflict between McMillon and the guards, said McMillon used to recommend books for him to read, including “The Making and Breaking of a Ghetto Mind,” by Lloyd Williams.

In recent years, McMillon worked in the kitchen and the laundry room, but he continued to be plagued by mental illness.

His medical history included anxiety, schizophrenia, epilepsy and substance abuse, according to a report on his death by the Washington County District Attorney’s Office.

According to his disciplinary history, he twice assaulted prison staff at other facilities — in 2012 and 2017. After the latter incident, at the Washington Correctional Facility, McMillon was placed in isolation for 6 1/2 months.

He had also been involved in five fights with other inmates during stays at other prisons including an incident last year at the Clinton Correctional Facility, officials said.

In all, there are 39 incidents on his record, including some minor ones — all enough to make getting paroled an uphill battle.

The parole board had repeatedly denied McMillon’s request for early release, citing his disciplinary history, his sister said and records showed.

Starkly Different Accounts

In the weeks after McMillon’s death, word of what inmates described as a violent attack on him had spread beyond the prison’s towering brick walls.

The four inmates who spoke with the Times were housed in two different prisons, but all were at Great Meadow at the time of the struggle.

One of the inmates said he was hesitant at first to speak to a reporter during a visit because a guard had peppered him with questions and warned him “to be careful.”

On the evening of Jan. 22, McMillon returned from dinner in a cafeteria, went to retrieve medication and later returned to a gallery area in section B8 of the prison, the inmates said.

He asked a guard if he could go back into his own cell. He became upset when he was told he could not, an inmate said.

One inmate in a statement to investigators described his outburst as an “episode.”

It was then that McMillon either bumped into or touched a female guard, who wheeled and punched him, witnesses said. He went down under her blows. He reached up to block the blows, and one inmate heard her shout, “He touched my breast.”

The inmates said they saw at least five guards pile on top of McMillon. One guard wrapped his hands around McMillon’s neck and choked him, his knees pressed into the prisoner’s back, one inmate said.

The floor, a nearby phone area and a guard station were spattered with his blood, the inmates recalled.

Ricardo Rosado, another inmate, said that from his cell window, he saw what he described as an assault by guards that continued in the infirmary.

“They were stomping him out,” Rosado said. “They continued stomping him until he stopped moving. They were all over him.”

Inmates told state investigators in written statements obtained by the Times that guards had punched, kicked and stomped McMillon until he stopped moving.

But the district attorney, in its report, concluded that other evidence undermined the inmates’ accounts.

“In reviewing the body camera footage, there is no indication of any use of batons, no choking of Mr. McMillon or any other evidence of excessive use of force,” the report said.

The report includes a first-person account of a guard who said the struggle started when McMillon was “screaming incoherently” but would not follow an order to return to his cell.

“Inmate McMillon was walking toward myself flailing his arms and making bobbling noises, at which time I gave inmate McMillon several direct orders to back up and stop approaching officers,” the guard, Paige Londrigan said. “Inmate McMillon lunged at me, attempting to grab me, and as a result, physical force became necessary.”

Londrigan and another guard, Eric Rich, did not respond to requests for comment.

The Times filed a Freedom of Information Request for body camera and other video footage in order to evaluate the state’s assertion that McMillon was not beaten.

After initially denying the request, the department later agreed to provide very limited and redacted footage, but did not indicate when.

The struggle occurred at 5:25 p.m. Prison staff administered CPR, but emergency medical personnel did not arrive until 6:40 p.m., records show. The ambulance arrived at Glens Falls Hospital 34 minutes later. McMillon was dead.

Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association, said she believed that the accounts of the inmates who described a deadly beating of McMillon were highly credible. Inmates have everything to lose if they speak out, so they most likely would not fabricate what they say they witnessed happen to McMillon, Scaife said.

“People should not die at the hands of people who are there to protect them,” she said.

State investigators who questioned inmates about the death focused on whether McMillon had used drugs and who in the prison sold drugs, the inmates said.

“There was nothing about the police brutality,” one inmate said.

The autopsy did not show any drugs in McMillon’s system.

The medical examiner, Dr. Michael Sikirica, said in an autopsy report that “without the decedent’s significant underlying cardiovascular disease, the death would not have occurred.”

There were fractures and moderate bleeding on McMillon’s ribs, but the medical examiner wrote that was consistent with attempts to resuscitate him. The autopsy report also noted that the only significant injury was “a small area of hemorrhage along the soft tissue of the neck.”

Through his lawyer, Sikirica declined to discuss the marks around McMillon’s neck, which were visible in a photo his family provided to the Times.

“Dr. Sikirica cannot legally comment on the specifics of this autopsy,” his lawyer, John Bailey, said. “He is sure that he performed his duties thoroughly and professionally.”

Claims of Retaliation

Some inmates said they were punished after speaking to investigators and their defense lawyers about McMillon’s death.

Griffin, who spoke with investigators about what he saw, said he was beaten by high-ranking guards and then placed in solitary confinement.

Another inmate who spoke with investigators said in a letter to Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York that he was also placed in isolation on what he claimed were fake charges of misbehavior.

Others were moved to different parts of the prison, two inmates said, a tactic used to make it difficult for investigators to locate witnesses.

One inmate who had requested a transfer months ago was suddenly moved to another prison after speaking with investigators associated with the Correctional Association.

Another inmate said prison officials confronted him and said they had heard him talking about the attack over the phone.

Mailey, the state corrections’ spokesman, declined to comment about the inmates’ allegations that they had been punished for speaking out.

Officials from the Correctional Association toured Great Meadow after receiving a letter from an inmate about McMillon’s death.

But the prison’s superintendent and correction captains joined the group’s investigators as they attempted to speak with inmates.

Fearful, some inmates declined to talk.

Officials Called It a Heart Attack. Inmates Saw a Bloody Beating.

NEW YORK — After spending nearly a quarter-century behind bars, John McMillon was counting down to the day that he would be eligible to be released on parole.

McMillon suffered from mental illness and had disciplinary problems over the years. He was punished for assaulting a guard and for fighting with another inmate, but had then vowed to stay out of trouble, and was looking forward to his parole board hearing.

‘I’m here. I’m alive.’

His defense lawyer at the time said McMillon had “a long-standing mental illness” and an “inability to piece together facts.”

According to his disciplinary history, he twice assaulted prison staff at other facilities — once in 2012 and again in 2017. After the latter incident, at the Washington Correctional Facility, McMillon was placed in isolation for 6 1/2 months.

Starkly Different Accounts of the Struggle

The struggle occurred at 5:25 p.m. Prison staff administered CPR, but emergency medical responders did not arrive until 6:40 p.m., records show. The ambulance arrived at Glens Falls Hospital 34 minutes later. McMillon was dead.

Others were moved to different parts of the prison, two inmates said, a common tactic used to make it difficult for investigators and prisoner rights groups to locate witnesses.

Mailey, the state corrections’ spokesman, declined to comment about the inmate’s allegations that they had been punished for speaking out.

A 67-Year-Old Inmate Died in a Struggle With Guards. What Happened?

City officials had transferred Washington from Rikers to the jail in Albany, New York, after he was accused of attacking a guard. Soon after he arrived, guards there beat him, he said. His tooth was chipped, his lip was split and he had bruises all over his body.

Then he was sentenced to serve 360 days in solitary isolation.

Washington was one of four young detainees who sued the city last year, charging that city correction officials had sent them to the Albany County Correctional Facility knowing they would be beaten and thrown into solitary confinement for months. They claimed the transfers were intended to circumvent the city’s ban on using isolation as a punishment for youths.

On Friday, the four men reached a $980,000 legal settlement with the city. As part of the deal, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration reversed its earlier position and agreed to stop transferring young inmates from the city’s jails to the Albany County jail.

“In the future nobody will have to go through what we went through,” Washington said in a phone interview Friday. “They won’t have to experience that feeling.”

Four years ago, the city banned solitary confinement for inmates 21 and younger, a bold policy change that solidified de Blasio’s national image as a progressive leader in criminal-justice reform.

The ban came amid public outrage over the suicide in that same year of Kalief Browder, a young man who spent three years at Rikers Island, much of it in solitary confinement, before charges against him were dropped.

But, even as the mayor trumpeted the change, city correction officials quietly stepped up a practice of sending young inmates who they believed posed a security or safety risk to jails outside the city, where they could be kept in isolation for months, The New York Times reported last year.

De Blasio defended that policy, saying the city needed the ability to transfer some inmates to other counties for their own protection.

Under Friday’s settlement, the city has promised not to send inmates to the Albany County jail, but it will continue to transfer inmates to other counties if they are vulnerable to attack or present a high risk to other inmates or to guards.

“We believe there are a small number of cases where a transfer makes sense to protect the safety and security of individuals in our facilities,” a spokeswoman for the mayor, Avery Cohen, said in a statement. “The settlement will result in a more transparent process, which we believe is in the best interest of all parties.”

Washington, who had been convicted of attempted robbery, was 21 when he was transferred from Rikers Island to the Albany facility in March 2018, two weeks after he said he had gotten into an altercation with a deputy warden.

Currently, 10 detainees are being housed in jails outside of the city, including one person who is under 22. The city has not sent inmates to the Albany jail since November 2018, officials said.

The settlement came as de Blasio celebrated the City Council’s decision to close Rikers Island and to build new jails in four boroughs — his main criminal justice initiative since becoming mayor. That decision marked a milestone in the effort to reduce the jail population in New York City.

While de Blasio had been a leader in that effort, some advocates for inmates and elected officials criticized the administration’s practice of transferring young inmates to county jails.

Not only did the practice seem to be an end-run around the city’s own rule on solitary confinement, these critics said, it seemed to fly in the face of the plan to close Rikers Island and move inmates closer to their families and to legal services.

“Hopefully, this case sends a message: The city can’t absolve itself of responsibility from what happens to its detainees just by transferring them,” said Doug Lieb, a lawyer for the four young men. “They should monitor and prevent a situation where detainees are being brutalized or treated in an unlawful manner. ”

Officials in Albany and in New York did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and the evidence will not be tested at trial.

But a federal judge in Manhattan said in an April ruling that permitted the lawsuit to go forward that the transfers appeared to be punitive and referred the matter to state and federal prosecutors for investigation. The Albany County sheriff, Craig Apple, did not return a request for comment.

“Barbarity of the sort alleged — cannot be tolerated in a civilized society,” Chief Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in the decision. “There is reason to conclude, even at this early stage, that at least some of the horrors that are described in that pleading actually took place.”

One inmate, Steven Espinal, who had led an attack on a Rikers guard last year, was stomped and kicked so badly at the Albany jail that he lost hearing in his left ear and passed blood in his urine, the lawsuit said. Following hospitalization, he was sentenced to 600 days in solitary confinement.

Espinal is serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to the Rikers attack, and to attempted murder and weapons possession in connection with his original arrest.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating the allegations and recently interviewed the young men, one of their lawyers, Katie Rosenfeld, said.

The lawsuit claimed the abuse was designed to punish inmates from Rikers who had been accused of assaulting correction officers, in violation of their constitutional rights. The inmates claimed high-ranking correction officials in Albany targeted them for brutal treatment. The suit named as defendants the City of New York, Albany County officials and individual correction officers.

The city, in court papers, placed the blame on the state Commission on Correction, which authorized the jail transfers. The judge dismissed that argument.

Under the agreement, inmates sent to the Albany jail after de Blasio leaves office must be treated according to New York City rules, meaning solitary confinement for inmates under 22 would be outlawed, according to the agreement.

Beaten and Left in Solitary Confinement, He Thought He Would Die

NEW YORK — Davon Washington thought he was going to die last year while handcuffed and shackled inside a small, dark cell in an upstate jail more than a hundred miles north of Rikers Island in New York City.

Sciorra, who is known for her work in “The Sopranos,” has publicly accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in her Gramercy Park apartment in 1993, but the incident was too old to be prosecuted under state law.

Now, however, the Manhattan district attorney has obtained a new indictment from a grand jury that will let Sciorra tell her story on the witness stand under the legal theory that her testimony will support charges of predatory sexual assault, even though her alleged encounter with the producer happened too long ago to be charged separately as rape, prosecutors said.

Weinstein, 67, once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, pleaded not guilty to the new indictment in state Supreme Court in Manhattan on Monday. He maintains his sexual encounters with Sciorra and two other women were consensual.

Justice James M. Burke postponed the trial until Jan. 6 to allow Weinstein to respond to the new indictment.

After the hearing, Weinstein’s lead defense lawyer, Donna Rotunno, speaking on the courthouse steps, called the new indictment a last-minute maneuver by prosecutors who “are desperate.”

“I think it shows the strength of our case, frankly, that the DA went to the grand jury in the eleventh hour,” Rotunno said. “The case itself is weak, and they feel like they need this portion to help.”

But the lead prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, said the changes to the indictment were designed to remedy a legal obstacle to adding Sciorra to the case that Burke highlighted in a ruling earlier this month.

The judge had said Sciorra’s evidence was not admissible because the first grand jury had not heard it, so in the last week, the district attorney’s office presented her testimony to a new grand jury, which voted to amend the indictment.

Illuzzi-Orbon said Monday that there was “nothing new” in the charging document and that Weinstein’s defense lawyers were aware of Sciorra’s allegations.

“There are absolutely no surprises here,” she told the court.

The heart of the charges against Weinstein remains the testimony of two other accusers: an unidentified woman who told police that Weinstein overpowered her in a hotel room in midtown Manhattan in March 2013, and Mimi Haleyi, a production assistant, who said Weinstein forcibly held her down and performed oral sex on her at his Manhattan apartment in 2006.

The predatory sexual assault charges require prosecutors to prove that Weinstein committed a serious sexual assault against at least two women. The charge carries a life sentence.

Gloria Allred, a California lawyer who represents Sciorra, said her client “is looking forward to a just result.”

Sciorra, who first shared her story in 2017 with The New Yorker, said that Weinstein had dropped her off at her apartment in Gramercy Park after a film industry dinner in New York. The producer later appeared at her door, she told the magazine, and pushed his way into her apartment.

Sciorra said Weinstein cornered her into her bedroom even though she protested. She said he shoved her onto the bed, raped her and then performed oral sex on her, according to the magazine.

“I struggled, but I had very little strength left in me,” she told The New Yorker.

Illuzzi-Orbon has said that Sciorra did not speak with prosecutors until after the initial grand jury had concluded its work last year.

Last year, Weinstein initially faced charges involving three women. But in October, Burke dismissed one of those counts after prosecutors acknowledged that a detective failed to tell them about a witness who cast doubt on one of Weinstein’s accusers, Lucia Evans. Evans, a marketing executive, told investigators that the producer had forced her to perform oral sex on him in his TriBeCa office in 2004.

Besides the victims mentioned in the updated indictment, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is also expected to call on three other women to testify about Weinstein’s “prior bad acts” to establish a pattern of behavior for a person prosecutors have described as a sexual predator. Prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, followed that strategy in the sexual assault trial of comedian Bill Cosby, who was convicted and sentenced to prison.

In the Weinstein case, one of the women will testify that the producer assaulted her on a spring evening in 2004 at a midtown Manhattan hotel near Park Avenue, a court document showed.

A second woman will tell the jury about an assault that she said happened in a SoHo apartment where Weinstein had lived previously. The incident occurred between May and July in 2005, the document said.

A third woman is expected to testify that the producer attacked her on Feb. 19, 2013, inside a hotel in Beverly Hills, California, the document said. The time and place of that incident are strikingly similar to an alleged rape described to The Los Angeles Times in 2017 by an Italian model and actress.

The actress, who has not been identified, told the newspaper that Weinstein showed up at her room in the Beverly Hills Hotel after a film festival, without warning, and “bullied his way” into her room.

“He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I did not want to do,” she told the paper. “He then dragged me to the bathroom and forcibly raped me.”

A lawyer for the woman did not immediately return requests for comment.

'Sopranos' Actress Who Accused Weinstein of Rape Will Testify Against Him

NEW YORK — Actress Annabella Sciorra will testify against Harvey Weinstein at his trial in January on rape and other sex-crime charges, Manhattan prosecutors said in court Monday.

Sciorra, who is known for her work in “The Sopranos,” has said that Weinstein attacked her in her Gramercy Park apartment in 1993 but the incident was too old to be prosecuted under state law.

Weinstein, once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, has been indicted in Manhattan on rape and other sex crime charges stemming from the accusations of two other women. His trial starts Sept. 9.

But now the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., is maneuvering to use Sciorra’s account at trial to bolster counts in the indictment that charge Weinstein with predatory sexual assault. The charge carries a life sentence.

To do that, Vance’s office asked a grand jury to hear her testimony and to vote on a new indictment. The grand jury began listening to testimony and reviewing evidence this week, according to court records. It is expected to vote on a new indictment Aug. 26.

The lead prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, said in a letter to the judge Tuesday that Sciorra did not come forward until after the initial grand jury had concluded, and now prosecutors “wish to cure any deficiency in the charges.”

Prosecutors sought to present testimony from Sciorra to a new grand jury only after the judge, Justice James Burke, had ruled this month that her evidence was not permissible because they had not informed the first grand jury.

Burke had ruled that the prosecution’s request amounted to a “‘constructive amendment’ of the indictment and usurps the role of the grand jury.”

The move by Vance’s office was the latest twist in the case against Weinstein, 67, who was initially indicted on sex crime charges involving three women: one who accused him of raping her and two others who said he had forced them to engage in oral sex with him.

But last year, a judge dismissed one of the charges after it came to light that a detective on the case had committed a serious error. That charge concerned Lucia Evans, a marketing executive, who told investigators that Weinstein had forced her to perform oral sex on him in his TriBeCa office in 2004.

Weinstein now faces five charges based on the testimony of the two remaining accusers: an unidentified woman who told police Weinstein overpowered her in a Midtown hotel room in March 2013, and Mimi Haleyi, a production assistant, who said Weinstein forcibly held her down and performed oral sex on her at his Manhattan apartment in 2006.

The indictment includes two counts of predatory sexual assault, which requires prosecutors to prove that Weinstein committed a serious sexual assault against at least two women.

Weinstein has denied the allegations and has said the sexual encounters were consensual.

Prosecutors hope Sciorra’s testimony will strengthen the case, particularly the predatory sexual assault counts, by establishing a pattern of behavior. Her testimony before the grand jury was first reported in The New York Post.

Weinstein’s lawyers criticized the district attorney for pulling what they described as a last-minute maneuver, saying in court papers that it was “an example of prosecutorial overreach.”

“It’s an odd attempt at the eleventh hour,” Donna Rotunno, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, said in an interview.

The district attorney’s office this year asked the judge overseeing the case to allow testimony of several other women who maintain Weinstein assaulted them, but whose cases are too old to prosecute.

Burke held a hearing on whether evidence of uncharged crimes — known as “prior bad acts” — would be permitted, but the public was not allowed to attend and he has yet to release his decision.

But in a letter from prosecutors to Burke, Illuzzi-Orbon expressed appreciation for the “significant Molineux decision” and allowing prosecutors to “call additional witnesses.”

Similarly, in Bill Cosby’s second trial, prosecutors included the testimony of five other accusers to help bolster their case. Last year, a jury convicted the 82-year-old entertainer, who is serving a three-to-10-year sentence for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/nyregion/harvey-weinstein-annabella-sciorra-trial.html" id="97fc232e-595f-370f-a7c5-b5a4a56255f5">The New York Times</a>.

'Sopranos' Actress Who Accused Harvey Weinstein of Rape May Testify at His Trial

NEW YORK — The Manhattan district attorney is seeking a new grand jury indictment against Harvey Weinstein that would allow actress Annabella Sciorra, who has accused him of rape, to testify at his criminal trial next month.

The sentencing capped a case of a young grifter who spun her tale with brazen flair. Sorokin wore designer clothes, lived in boutique hotels, dined in expensive restaurants and lured investors for a $40 million private club — all without a penny to her name.

She has been held on Rikers Island since October 2017. Sorokin, 28, was convicted last month of most of the charges against her.

Her lawyer, Todd Spodek, said during that trial that Sorokin was simply an enterprising business-minded woman eager to make it in the big city.

But jurors agreed with prosecutors that her gilt-edged life was an elaborate ruse financed by lies.

In addition to the prison sentence, Sorokin was fined $24,000 and ordered to pay restitution of about $199,000.

“I apologize for the mistakes I made,” she said at the sentencing.

Sorokin stiffed hotels, persuaded a bank employee to give her a $100,000 line of credit, swayed a private jet company to let her fly on credit, and tried to secure a $25 million loan from a hedge fund. In all, she stole about $213,000 worth of money and services.

Still, the jury found her not guilty of the most serious offense — faking records in an attempt to obtain a $22 million loan. She was also acquitted of stealing from a friend who said Sorokin duped her into covering the cost of a $60,000 vacation to Morocco.

To many friends, there was every reason to believe that Sorokin was a wealthy German heiress named Anna Delvey with so much money that she frequently doled out $100 tips and flew on a private jet to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual investment conference.

NEW YORK — Anna Sorokin, the fake German heiress who swindled her way into Manhattan’s elite party circles, was sentenced Thursday to four to 12 years in prison for bilking hotels, banks and a private jet operator out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Jan Ransom

Articles written by the author

E. Jean Carroll, Who Accused Trump of Rape, Sues Him for Defamation

Officials Called It a Heart Attack. Inmates Saw a Bloody Beating.

A 67-Year-Old Inmate Died in a Struggle With Guards. What Happened?

Beaten and Left in Solitary Confinement, He Thought He Would Die

'Sopranos' Actress Who Accused Weinstein of Rape Will Testify Against Him

'Sopranos' Actress Who Accused Harvey Weinstein of Rape May Testify at His Trial

'Anna Delvey,' Fake Heiress Who Swindled New York's Elite, Is Sentenced to 4 to 12 Years in Prison

Judge Upholds Conviction in Karina Vetrano's Murder, Despite Lone Juror's Claim It Was Tainted

The Conviction in Karina Vetrano's Murder Was Swift, but a Juror Now Says It Was Tainted

Brooklyn Man Found Guilty in Murder of Jogger Karina Vetrano

Brooklyn Man Found Guilty in Murder of Jogger Karina Vetrano

He Confessed to Beating a Jogger Who Died. Questions About Race and Policing Led to a Retrial.

Harvey Weinstein's 'Dream Team' of Lawyers Is Approved by Judge, With a Warning

White Supremacist Pleads Guilty to Killing Black Man in New York to Start a 'Race War'

Weinstein Is on the Market for a 'Dream Team' Defense

Weinstein's Lawyer Is Said to Be Withdrawing From Rape Case

Former Deputy Police Inspector Is Acquitted in Federal Corruption Case

NY Police Official Who Took Las Vegas Trip and Gifts Is Not Guilty on Corruption Charges

NY Police Official Who Took Las Vegas Trip and Gifts Is Not Guilty on Bribery Charges

NY Police Official Who Took Las Vegas Trip and Gifts Is Not Guilty on Bribery Charges