Harvey Weinstein Made His First Court Appearance to “Exonerate Himself”
One month after the Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy, former C.E.O. Harvey Weinstein has filed..
One month after the Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy, former C.E.O. Harvey Weinstein has filed papers in court in a continued attempt to “exonerate himself.” The former studio head claims that T.W.C. has violated his due-process rights by refusing to allow him to access their e-mail server, which he claims contains materials that would help him in his own criminal investigations.
Weinstein filed court papers on Friday that claim “it is critical that Mr. Weinstein be granted access to e-mails relevant to the certain civil proceedings and criminal investigations and that are in the Debtors possession, as they were sent or received by his T.W.C. e-mail accounts. The Debtors continued refusal to permit Mr. Weinstein to access these e-mails has significantly impinged his ability to effectively defend himself from these allegations and is a continuing deprivation of his due-process rights.”
The Hollywood Reporternotes that he has attempted to get the e-mails before by filing with a Delaware state court, which failed. In the papers, Weinstein seems to imply that granting him access to company e-mails would help T.W.C. in their bankruptcy case as well. He stated, “the narrowly-tailored discovery requested herein is designed to allow Mr. Weinstein to exonerate himself and protect the Debtors, while minimizing the burden on the Debtors both in regard to providing the requested discovery and in regard to the Debtors own potential liability in those actions. Moreover, Mr. Weinstein is a creditor, shareholder, and former director, officer, and employee of T.W.C. Accordingly, he has a vested interest in ensuring that the value of these estates is maximized and that all potential estate liability is minimized.”
“T.W.C. prefers that Mr. Weinstein be unable to defend himself,” Weinstein claimed. “T.W.C.s withholding of exculpatory e-mails is a manifest injustice to an individuals due process and should not be tolerated.”
Vanity Fair has reached out to T.W.C. for a comment.
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