Weinstein faces a new unsealed indictment in New York, prosecutors said

Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul who was convicted of sex crimes in New York in April, is facing a new charge, Manhattan prosecutors said at a hearing Thursday.

Mr. Weinstein, 72, was not in court Thursday morning. He remained at Bellevue Hospital after being rushed from the Rikers Island Jail Complex for emergency heart surgery Monday morning, according to jail records.

The new indictment remains sealed and awaits Mr. Weinstein's recovery so he can be charged, prosecutors said.

Mr Weinstein “almost died” and his health continued to deteriorate in prison, his lawyer Arthur Aidala told the court. The judge, Curtis Farber, ordered that Mr. Weinstein be held indefinitely in Bellevue's jail ward, but said he could be moved to a regular bed if necessary.

Justice Farber set a hearing for September 18 at which Mr. Weinstein will be charged with the new charges if he is medically cleared to appear.

The fallout from Mr. Weinstein, responsible for a long string of Hollywood productions, including movies like “Shakespeare in Love” and “Chocolate,” helped ignite the global #MeToo movement. His conviction for sex crimes in New York was followed by another conviction in a separate sex-crime case in Los Angeles and a 16-year prison sentence.

However, in April, in a 4-to-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in New York. The justices agreed with Mr. Weinstein's lawyers that the trial judge improperly allowed prosecutors to call many of the accusers as witnesses, even though their allegations did not lead to charges. The decision deprived Mr. Weinstein of a fair trial, they said.

Immediately after the decision, the district attorney of Manhattan, Alvin L. Bragg said he would try to re-try Mr. Weinstein.

In the months since, prosecutors have said they have identified rape and sexual assault allegations against Mr. Weinstein that they plan to present to a grand jury. According to prosecutors, the incidents, some of which prosecutors knew about during the first trial, occurred within the statute of limitations for bringing charges.

At a hearing this month, prosecutors said they had warned Mr. Weinstein's lawyer, Mr. Aidala, that they had begun presenting to a grand jury in mid-August and provided some details about three new allegations of sexual assault against Mr. Weinstein. He was questioned as to whether he had decided to testify before the panel.

One of the charges involved sexual assault at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, according to one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo. He said a second attack allegedly took place in the “winter season” of 2005 to 2006, at an apartment building in Lower Manhattan, either in Tribeca or Soho. A third sexual assault is described as having occurred in May 2016 at a hotel in TriBeCa.

In July, Justice Farber set a tentative date of Nov. 12 for the retrial of the case, which was overturned earlier this year. The new charges, as of now, will be a separate case.

On Thursday, Mr. Aidala argued that any charges stemming from the new charges should remain separate. Sixty days is not enough time to mount a proper defense to both new and existing charges, he said. Consolidating the cases and expecting both sides to be ready by November is “ridiculous,” Mr. Aidala said.

Nicole Bloomberg, an assistant district attorney, told the court that prosecutors “will be ready for trial by Nov. 12, along with all of our survivors.”

At the height of his Hollywood powers, Mr. Weinstein was seen as a career maker. According to his accusers, he also used his powers to harass and sexually abuse women for decades, many of whom were young and trying to establish themselves in the film industry.

He was charged with rape and criminal sexual activity in New York in 2018. Los Angeles prosecutors charged him with raping one woman and masturbating in front of a second in 2013.

In 2020, a New York jury convicted him of raping a woman and committing criminal sexual acts against another. In Los Angeles, he was convicted of forced rape, forced oral intercourse and sexual penetration with a foreign object.

Mr. Weinstein is appealing his Los Angeles conviction. In Britain, prosecutors recently dropped a case against Mr. Weinstein just two years after approving an indecent assault charge.