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Former film mogul Harvey Weinstein has been transferred from a New York City jail to a hospital to undergo treatment for a variety of health problems including COVID-19 and pneumonia in both lungs, his representatives said Thursday.
Weinstein, who is awaiting trial in New York on rape and sexual assault charges, was moved from the city's Rikers Island jail complex to a locked ward at Bellevue Hospital. The other conditions he was to be treated for included diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, and fluid on his heart and lungs, according to a statement released by Weinstein's publicist that attributed the health information to Craig Rothfeld, Weinstein’s prison consultant.
“We continue to express our gratitude to the officers, doctors and nurses” in the city's corrections and public hospital systems “who saw to it that Mr. Weinstein was immediately transferred to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward,” said the publicist, Juda Engelmayer.
Weinstein has had at least one stint at Bellevue before, after he was first brought to New York City for legal proceedings related to his rape case.
Weinstein, 72, was found guilty in 2020 of rape and sexual assault. The conviction was tossed out by appeals judges who said jurors shouldn’t have heard testimony from women who had accused the film producer of misconduct but whose allegations weren’t part of the case.
A retrial has been scheduled for November.
While his conviction was thrown out, Weinstein has remained behind bars in part because he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in California after he was convicted in a rape case in Los Angeles in 2022.
Weinstein has denied that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone.
At a recent court hearing, Weinstein's lawyers had said he was in poor health and asked for him to be transferred from the jail to the hospital.
