Harvey Weinstein Case

Harvey Weinstein has hired Manhattan defense lawyers Jacob Kaplan, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos—best known for representing Sean “Diddy” Combs and accused killer Luigi Mangione—to handle his upcoming third New York rape trial, according to court papers filed Tuesday. The new team, all partners at Agnifilo Intrater, replaces longtime trial attorney Arthur Aidala, who will now focus on Weinstein’s appeals and civil cases after the former producer rejected a plea offer. Kaplan, who was on Weinstein’s original 2018 defense team, is expected to lead the defense against a still-pending charge that Weinstein raped hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann in a Manhattan hotel in 2013; the retrial on that count ended last June in a hung jury after a messy split verdict on other charges. Judge Curtis Farber, who has already rejected juror-misconduct challenges and called the retrial fair, will also preside over this third trial, which was postponed from a March 3 start but now has a March 4 status conference. The shake-up comes nearly six years into Weinstein’s incarceration and after New York’s highest court threw out his 2020 convictions for raping Mann and forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley because jurors heard testimony about unrelated allegations, forcing the 2025 retrial.