Harvey Weinstein is suing the Italian ‘lover’ of one of his rape victims, claiming he gave false testimony that sent the disgraced producer to jail.
The shamed media mogul was found guilty by a Los Angeles jury in December 2022 of raping Russian model Evgeniya Chernyshova in 2013.
Weinstein was jailed for 16 years for rape, forced oral copulation, and third-degree sexual misconduct, and acquitted of four other charges.
His lawyers filed an appeal weeks after the verdict, claiming Chernyshova was with LA Italia Film Festival founder Pascal Vicedomini when she alleged he raped her.
The California Court of Appeal is considering Weinstein’s bid for freedom while he sits through a retrial of his 2020 New York conviction, which was thrown out last year.
Weinstein has now taken the unusual step of suing Vicedomini in an Italian court for allegedly providing perjured testimony during the LA trial.
‘We believe the conviction was secured through fundamentally unreliable and misleading testimony,’ his PR consultant Juda Engelmayer told DailyMail.com.
‘The Italian courts now have an opportunity to scrutinize one of the key witnesses whose statements helped shape the outcome of a deeply flawed trial.’
Russian model Evgeniya Chernyshova and LA Italia Film Festival founder Pascal Vicedomini were the star witnesses at Harvey Weinstein’s 2022 rape trial in Los Angeles
Chernyshova alleged Weinstein raped her on February 18, 2013, at the LA Italia Film Festival (Weinstein pictured at the festival the day after the rape)
Weinstein has now taken the unusual step of suing Vicedomini (pictured together in 2008) in an Italian court for allegedly providing perjured testimony during the LA trial
Chernyshova alleged Weinstein showed up uninvited to her room at Mr C’s Hotel in Beverly Hills on February 18, 2013, during the LA Italia Film Festival.
She told the jury he pushed his way in insisting that they needed to talk, then forced her to perform oral sex on him and raped her in the bathroom.
Prosecutors argued no one but Vicedomini knew her hotel and room number 801 and he gave it to him to offer her up ‘as a piece of chattel’, as Weinstein’s appeal put it.
Both Chernyshova and Vicedomini insisted under oath numerous times that they were just friends since meeting in 2009.
Weinstein’s lawyers instead argued they were having an affair and thus Vicedomini would never have helped the movie mogul sleep with her.
They claimed ‘sexually explicit Facebook messages’ on February 12, days before the alleged rape, proved this – but the jury never saw them.
The basis of Weinstein’s appeal is that trial judge Lisa Lench improperly barred the messages from being presented in court, prejudicing the trial.
‘The jury was left with a false impression that there was some plan to introduce [Chernyshova] to Mr Weinstein for some improper purpose, when, instead, Mr Vicedomini was literally planning to have his own sexual encounter with [her] during the festival,’ the appeal argued.
‘The suggestion that he would have wanted to share his lover with Mr Weinstein is absurd.’
Weinstein is in the middle of a retrial on rape and sexual assault charges before a New York Supreme Criminal Court jury in Manhattan (pictured on Thursday morning)
Chernyshova (right) told the jury Weinstein pushed his way in insisting that they needed to talk, then raped her. The prosecution argued Vicedomini (left) told Weinstein what room Chernyshova was staying in. Both are pictured in 2024
Other Facebook messages from May 21, 2013, included in the appeal showed them planning to spend the night together at the Cannes Film Festival and Chernyshova bringing a change of clothes for the morning after.
The appeal claimed the prosecution worked hard to get the evidence excluded because it ‘obliterates their witness’.
‘Why would her boyfriend, the person she is having an affair with, provide the room number and basically the key to go up and for Harvey Weinstein to go up and engage her in some romantic affair?’ Weinstein’s lawyers argued in chambers, according to the appeal.
Two jurors, Weinstein’s lawyers claimed, told the defense after the trial that they would have a changed their vote to not guilty if they had seen the messages, and a third would have reconsidered their opinion.
Engelmayer said the pair’s testimony was central to the prosecution’s case, and Vicedomini was being sued in Italy as he gave evidence remotely.
‘These international legal efforts underscore Weinstein’s continuing fight to clear his name and highlight growing concerns about the judicial process that led to his conviction,’ he said.
Both Chernyshova and Vicedomini insisted under oath that they were just friends since meeting in 2009 (pictured that year) – but Weinstein’s lawyers claim they were lovers
Chernyshova alleged Weinstein showed up uninvited to her room on February 18, 2013, during the LA Italia Film Festival (pictured the day before she was raped)
Chernyshova told the jury Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in the bedroom of her room at Mr C’s Hotel in Beverly Hills, then raped her in the bathroom
Chernyshova’s attorney David Ring rubbished Weinstein’s arguments after the amended appeal was filed in June 2023.
‘Weinstein’s appeal makes the same tired arguments that he previously made multiple times, without success, to the trial court,’ he said.
‘We are of the strong opinion that the trial court vetted the evidence appropriately and made all the correct decisions in its evidentiary rulings.
‘We are confident that Weinstein’s appeal will be denied and he will spend many years in prison.’
Chernyshova was named as Jane Doe 1 during the trial but revealed her identity publicly after the verdict.
She described in an interview what happened after Weinstein, whom she had only met twice before – once in Rome and once hours earlier at a festival event – knocked on her door.
‘Hey, it’s Harvey Weinstein. Open the door. We have to talk. I’m not going to f**k you, I just have to talk to you”,’ she said he called to her through the door.
‘And that is the thing I have regretted for the last 10 years — that I did open this door.
‘He just walked through me and went directly to the chair. He was like, “We’re just talking. There’s nothing happening. Why are you so nervous?”
‘Something clicked, like a change in his eyes. I realized that something was wrong.
‘He opened his pants, and I became hysterical. I was continuing to show my kids’ pictures, to try to convince him that, “I have kids, please do not do that”.
Kaja Sokola (left) and Jessica Mann (right) along with production assistant Mimi Haley are the three alleged victims in Weinstein’s ongoing retrial in New York
‘But he did what he did. He assaulted me in the bedroom, and then he dragged me to the bathroom and he raped me there.
‘I felt very, very dirty and like I have to die.’
After the rape, Chernyshova and her husband separated. He has since died and she later moved to the US with her children where she runs a florist.
She kept what happened to her secret until 2017 when her daughter Maria, who was 16 at the time, told her she was sexually assaulted by a boy at school.
Weinstein is in the middle of a retrial on rape and sexual assault charges before a New York Supreme Criminal Court jury in Manhattan.
The ailing 73-year-old was convicted of sexually assaulting aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013 and raping production assistant Mimi Haley in 2006.
But last year, the New York Court of Appeals astonishingly ruled that Weinstein did not receive a fair trial – and tossed out his 23-year sentence.
Mann and Haley restated their cases during the trial, and Polish ex-model Kaja Sokola was added to the mix, alleging Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006 when she was just 19.
Weinstein is still behind bars at Rikers Island prison in NYC serving 16 years for unrelated sex crimes, but is being held at Bellevue Hospital during the new trial due to his declining health.
He maintains his innocence and his lawyers told the court the women consented to sex acts with Weinstein as a ‘quid pro quo’ to further their careers.
Weinstein’s lawyers are presenting their case with the trial expected to wrap up next week.
