Harvey Weinstein sits in Manhattan Supreme Court March 4 before a judge set his retrial date for April 14, 2026.
Pool photo by Curtis Means for the Daily Mail
Unsettled Luigi Mangione trial dates are wreaking havoc on the schedule of Harvey Weinstein’s looming retrial.
Since Weinstein took up the same defense counsel as Mangione in late February, the uncertainty around Mangione’s dueling trial dates for the stalking and shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in both federal and state court has now spread to Weinstein’s planned third appearance before a Manhattan jury on rape charges.
Weinstein’s retrial is, as of now, slated to begin April 14. But that might change if Weinstein’s latest legal team has its way.
Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan of Agnifilo Intrater are hoping they will be able to shift Weinstein’s date back — along with the scheduled trial dates for both of Mangione’s cases.
Whether those three shifts will happen all depend on a ruling by U.S Judge Margaret Garnett of the Southern District of New York, who presides over Mangione’s federal case and could lay down the first blocks of a game of Tetris in which one firm representing two defendants must prepare for three separate trials.
“April 14 is the trial date, absent some miraculous change in the federal schedule,” said Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Curtis Farber, who is presiding over the Weinstein trial, in a hearing Wednesday afternoon in which prosecutors and defense counsel attempted to settle on when to begin and address a host of motions over limiting witness testimony.
Weinstein’s retrial will address about whether the disgraced Hollywood mogul raped hairstylist and actress Jessica Mann. It comes after the former producer was convicted in June of forcing oral sex on former “Project Runway” assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and not guilty of assaulting Polish model Kaja Sokola. During that trial, jurors were unable to reach a verdict on a third charge involving Mann.
Weinstein recently changed his defense team from attorneys for Aidala, Bertuna and Kamins to Agnifilo Intrader.
As it now stands, attorneys for Mangione and Weinstein are slated to participate in three of the most widely publicized criminal trials in the country back-to-back through September — in spite of their protests that the calendar is not sustainable. Mangione’s state trial is tentatively set to begin June 8. His federal trial is set to begin Sept. 8.
Defense attorneys have requested to suspend the beginning of Mangione’s federal trial until January 2027. Earlier this week Garnett set a hearing date for April 1 to discuss the proposal. That would give the judge overseeing the state case the opportunity to push that case back to September, and Farber the chance to push Weinstein’s case back to late May.
The defense argued Wednesday that they’re going to need the extra time in the Weinstein case because they do not have a tranche of Weinstein’s emails that his previous defense counsel received as part of discovery in the 2020 and 2024 trials.
The attorneys say that the entire history of several Weinstein’s email addresses were supposed to be handed down from previous counsel in his past rape trials, but the defense told the team that they couldn’t find it.
Without the emails, Kaplan said, it would be hard to say whether the team could properly prepare for an April 14th trial. Farber said that he was ready to bring Arthur Aidala, Weinstein’s attorney in the 2024 trial, into court to compel him to try and find the evidence.
“Prior counsel has to do better than just tell you that they don’t have it,” Farber said during the hearing.
The judge said he expects to make a decision on motions to limit testimony on April 10, in order to stay ahead of a potential April 14 start date.
“You’re going to try and work your magic,” Farber said to Kaplan, about the upcoming hearing over Mangione’s federal trial date.
“Before we schedule anything let me see if there’s any magic to be worked,” Kaplan said.
