NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting former “Project Runway” production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, ending a New York prosecution that began with multiple accusers and, after retrials, mistrials, acquittals and appeals, came down to one, The Associated Press reported.
Judge Curtis Farber said the case cemented Weinstein’s reputation as “the literal face of the #MeToo movement.” He said the former studio boss preyed on women trying to break into the industry, treating them as “mere objects to be played with and discarded with impunity.” Weinstein had faced up to 25 years. Farber said his refusal to accept responsibility, including jailhouse interviews in which he cast himself as the victim, weighed heavily on the sentence.
Weinstein, 74, sat in a wheelchair and asked for mercy, citing cancer and congestive heart failure. “I live with many regrets and sincerely apologize to anyone I have affected with my actions,” he said. Then he added, “I have to reiterate my innocence.” His lawyers said he will appeal.
Haley, 49, told the court the assault “has had a devastating effect on my life and sense of security that may never go away.” She said Weinstein hired private investigators to follow her and his supporters ridiculed her in the media. “It’s a life sentence for me,” she said. Outside, she said she was happy with the outcome. “I think he still feels entitled, and that’s part of the problem,” she said.
Weinstein’s Conviction History
Weinstein has served more than six years since his 2020 conviction, leaving roughly nine on the new term. The larger question sits in Los Angeles, where he drew 16 years for a 2013 rape and awaits resentencing. Farber said the California judge will decide whether the terms run together. If it were his call, he said, he would stack them.
A jury convicted Weinstein in 2020 and he drew 23 years: 20 for assaulting Haley and three for raping Jessica Mann. New York’s highest court threw out both verdicts in 2024, ruling that testimony from women whose claims were not charged had prejudiced the jury. A 2025 retrial convicted him again on the Haley count, acquitted him of assaulting Kaja Sokola and hung on Mann. A third trial in May hung again, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped the Mann charge after she said she could not testify a fourth time. Mann wept in the gallery Wednesday as other accusers consoled her.
The Mother-Daughter Arrangement: Bloom and Allred
Haley walked out beside her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who told reporters that “women are empowered in a way they have never been before.” Allred’s daughter, Lisa Bloom, spent 2016 and 2017 on Weinstein’s payroll at $895 an hour and, in a memo that later became public, laid out a plan to discredit his accusers. Bloom resigned days after the first allegations ran and has since apologized. We traced the mother-daughter arrangement, one lawyer representing Weinstein’s accusers while the other advised Weinstein, in our reporting on “catch, pocket and kill.” Allred has not been accused of wrongdoing in the Haley case, and her client won.
The defense bench has its own trail. In 2018, when Benjamin Brafman took over Weinstein’s criminal defense, one of the lawyers on the case was Alex Spiro, now Jay-Z’s lead attorney at Quinn Emanuel. Accuser Melissa Thompson told the New York Post that Spiro tricked her into turning over “visual and audio evidence of Weinstein’s actions” by convincing her that he and Brafman were “working for the victims” of the movie mogul. Spiro was also accused of impersonating law enforcement in 2013.
Rose McGowan, previously referred to the “diabolical and illegal effort” by Lisa Bloom, David Boies, and Black Cube, to silence her rape allegations against Weinstein. McGowan’s claims included racketeering, violations of the Federal Wiretap Act, invasion of privacy, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Bloom worked with private investigator, Jack Palladino, who was later suspiciously murdered in 2021.
We revisited that episode last year.
The Epstein Paper Trail Includes Alex Spiro
The Justice Department’s Epstein file releases this year put Weinstein’s legal team in a new light. In a January 2019 iMessage, Jeffrey Epstein wrote that “alex spiro and burck both have worked with Ben and say Harvey can’t handle that he is going away for 20 years.” That April, Epstein asked his lawyer whether he should hire Spiro, on Steve Bannon’s advice, “to deal with civil,” and days later wrote that “Alex Spiro and Bannon coming at 4 tomorrow.” We published the messages in February. Epstein’s forecast missed by three years.
The same release included an FBI report in which a woman said she once woke up in a room with Weinstein and Shawn Carter, the rapper known as Jay-Z. Variety reported the document with the caveat that it was a public tip archived with the investigation, not a finding, and neither man has been charged in connection with it. Carter’s business ties to Weinstein are not in dispute: a 2016 first-look deal with The Weinstein Company and a 2017 documentary on Kalief Browder. We followed those threads and, last week, Spiro’s conduct in other cases.
None of that was before Farber on Wednesday. His job was one count and one victim. But the sentence closes a case, not a network. The adviser who shaped Weinstein’s response in 2017, the lawyers who defended him in 2018 and the partners who did business with him are still practicing, still producing and, in Spiro’s case, still standing beside the next celebrity defendant. Haley said speaking up will leave her looking over her shoulder for years. The people she was looking at have not gone anywhere.
Sources: The Associated Press (Michael R. Sisak and John Seewer, Sept. 23, 2026); ABC News; Variety; People v. Weinstein, 2024 NY Slip Op 02222 (N.Y. Ct. App.); Justice Department Epstein file releases; New York Post; Paul Smith’s reporting at Shockya.
This is an opinion article.
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