Harvey Weinstein to Be Arrested in New York on Sex Assault Charges

Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul, is expected to surrender to investigators in Manhattan on Friday and face sexual assault charges after a monthslong inquiry into allegations by numerous women.

The charges follow an avalanche of accusations against him that led women around the world, some of them famous and many of them not, to come forward with accounts of being sexually harassed and assaulted by powerful men.

Those stories spawned the global #MeToo movement, and since then, the ground has shifted beneath men who for years benefited from a code of silence around their predatory behavior.

Mr. Weinstein, 66, who has been accused of sexually abusing and assaulting movie stars and employees of his former namesake company and then paying them or coercing them to stay silent, will face sexual assault charges in connection with the accusations of two women, according to law enforcement officials. One of the women is Lucia Evans, whose account was reported in The New Yorker. Ms. Evans said Mr. Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him during a business meeting in 2004.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office had also been investigating allegations that Mr. Weinstein raped an actress, Paz de la Huerta, in her home in New York City in 2010, as well as allegations by three to five additional victims whose accounts investigators found credible.

Mr. Weinstein, the subject of rumors in media and entertainment circles for years, began facing official inquiries in New York, Los Angeles and London after revelations in The New York Times and The New Yorker about his history of sexually assaulting women and paying or putting pressure on them not to speak out. Three years ago, the Manhattan district attorney’s office decided not to prosecute Mr. Weinstein after an Italian model, Ambra Battilana, accused him of groping her breasts during a meeting in his office.

Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment. In the past, he has said that Mr. Weinstein denies any allegations of “nonconsensual sex.”

In the recent inquiry detectives traveled to the United Kingdom and Canada to interview witnesses in the case and investigators were in Los Angeles as recently as late April and early May, several people briefed on the matter have said. Prosecutors have also combed through Mr. Weinstein’s financial records in an effort to uncover any possible improprieties, several people have said.

Federal prosecutors have also been investigating whether Mr. Weinstein’s abusive conduct violated federal stalking laws and examined the movie producer’s finances, several people with knowledge of that inquiry have said.

The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., convened what is known as an investigatory grand jury to examine the accusations.

In the course of the investigation, prosecutors created what amounted to an elaborate timeline of Mr. Weinstein’s whereabouts in an effort to take advantage of a section of New York State law that says the clock stops ticking toward the statute of limitations when a defendant is continuously outside the state. Investigators compiled instances in which Mr. Weinstein left New York to determine whether some accusations of assault, even if they appeared to fall outside the statute of limitations, could in fact be included in criminal charges.

The federal investigation of Mr. Weinstein, which began last year, focused on fraud allegations in connection with two auction items that were to be offered together at an AIDS charity fund-raiser in France in May 2015, the people have said. The items were a sitting with a famous fashion photographer and a package of tickets to a Hollywood awards event and party. That investigation expanded into a review of whether Mr. Weinstein violated federal stalking laws, the people said.

News outlets have reported on dozens of allegations against Mr. Weinstein, many of them sharing a common narrative: Women reported to a hotel for what they thought were work reasons, only to discover that Mr. Weinstein sometimes seemed to have different interests.

But it remains to be seen how sweeping the charges against Mr. Weinstein will be, and how much supporting evidence prosecutors will be allowed to introduce in seeking to show a pattern of criminal behavior.

That is one of many hurdles sex crime prosecutions often face, ever more so in cases of powerful men like Mr. Weinstein who come armed with high-priced lawyers and private investigators.

New York Police Department officials said as early as November that detectives were gathering evidence with an eye toward preparing a warrant to arrest Mr. Weinstein. But as Mr. Vance’s investigation continued, the pace of prosecutors’ work fueled tensions between the police and district attorney’s office.

Mr. Vance’s office faced added pressure because it decided not to prosecute Mr. Weinstein after Ms. Battilana accused him of groping her in 2015. Mr. Vance said the evidence was not strong enough to win a conviction and dropped the investigation, despite having an audiotape of Mr. Weinstein acknowledging he had touched her breasts and promising not to do so again. The decision by prosecutors followed lobbying by Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers, who pointed to shifting accounts by Ms. Battilana in sworn testimony in another sexual assault case in Italy.

In recent months, Mr. Vance has been under tremendous pressure from activists and elected leaders to resolve his office’s investigation into Mr. Weinstein. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered a review of his handling of the 2015 allegations and women’s advocates have criticized the slow pace of Mr. Vance’s investigation.

About time this asshole is going down... sick f*cker...