Rape accuser after four-hour hotel visit with Harvey Weinstein: ‘I feel so fabulous’
One of Harvey Weinstein’s rape accusers admitted in Manhattan court Tuesday that she spent four hours holed up with him in a hotel room in 2016 — three years after she says he attacked her there — then gushed to him in an email, “I feel so fabulous and beautiful.”
“Thanks for everything,” then-aspiring actress Jessica Mann added to the now-disgraced movie mogul.
Weinstein dozed off at times during Tuesday’s testimony in Manhattan Supreme Court. A diabetic, he popped candy in his mouth at other intervals.
Mann was under cross-examination by Weinstein’s lawyers. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance made an appearance in court to listen. He has missed only one day of testimony.
Mann, 34, has claimed that while she and Weinstein had consensual sex over the years, he raped her twice in 2013, including at a Manhattan hotel that March. She has said he also raped her at the Peninsula Hotel in LA in November 2013, but the former powerhouse mogul is not charged in that alleged incident.
The pair’s 2016 encounter occurred at the Peninsula, where the pair repeatedly met over the years, according to court testimony.
Mann said Tuesday that she caught Weinstein filming them at one point.
“There was a lamp in the room, and he had his cellphone camera turned out, staged like that, at us,” she said.
Asked what her response was, Mann testified, “I freaked out.”
The alleged victim acknowledged that in February 2015, she went to Weinstein for help getting membership in the Soho House members-only club in Los Angeles. Mann said it was strictly for work.
“You want the ladies and gentlemen of the jury to believe that the person you wanted to sponsor you for this exclusive club was your rapist?” defense lawyer Donna Rotunno asked Mann.
Mann replied, “He raped me. It is irrelevant.”
Her cross-examination ended mid-afternoon Tuesday, and prosecutors, in an unusual move, declined to question her on the stand again.
Criminal defense lawyer Mark Bederow, who is a former Manhattan prosecutor, called it “surprising” that Assistant DA Joan Illuzzi-Orbon did not re-question Mann after she endured two days of grueling cross-examination.
“It is very surprising that the prosecution wouldn’t even try to repair any damage caused by glaring inconsistencies,” he told The Post. “It suggests they wanted the witness off the stand ASAP and they will hope to explain away the damage in summation.”