With just over four months until his Manhattan sex-assault trial begins, Harvey Weinstein is on the verge of losing his high-powered criminal-defense lawyer, The Post has learned.
Weinstein and attorney Benjamin Brafman have previously butted heads but had a blowout argument in the past several days after the movie mogul started looking to expand his legal team, sources said.
The two men are now discussing the lawyer’s withdrawal from the case, sources said.
Brafman, who declined to comment, would have to first get Manhattan Criminal Court Justice James Burke to sign off before he could leave Team Weinstein.
Weinstein, 66, is charged with forcibly performing oral sex on production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006 and raping a longtime lover at a Manhattan hotel in 2013.
Although Brafman has scored several wins in pretrial proceedings, Weinstein recently reached out to other lawyers in advance of the scheduled May 6 start of his trial, angering the lawyer, sources said.
“Weinstein has been meeting with attorneys to build a team with expertise for various aspects of the upcoming trial,” said the producer’s spokesman, Juda Engelmayer, who declined to comment on whether Brafman would exit the case.
One point of contention between Weinstein and Brafman may stem from early December, when Weinstein reportedly fired off e-mails to several unidentified people whining that the past year was “the worst nightmare of my life” and complaining about the cops investigating his case.
At the time, Brafman and Engelmayer distanced themselves from the e-mails, saying Weinstein sent them without their knowledge or input.
The e-mails emerged after Brafman scored a coup for him in October: winning a motion to dismiss a felony charge against the producer related to a third accuser, Lucia Evans, who was once considered the strongest part of the prosecution’s case.
Evans alleged that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in his Tribeca office in 2004, but prosecutors uncovered an e-mail she had written suggesting the encounter was consensual.
It was also revealed that the lead detective on the case, Nicholas DiGaudio, withheld information from a witness that undermined her account.
Brafman has long been known as a go-to attorney for celebs.
His clients have included Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who was charged with sexually assaulting a maid at a Midtown hotel.
That case was dropped after prosecutors said the accuser repeatedly lied about her background and the circumstances surrounding the alleged 2011 attack.
Brafman also won an acquittal for rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was accused of bribery and weapons charges in connection to a 1999 shooting at a Manhattan nightclub that injured three.