Jailed Harvey Weinstein rushed to hospital for emergency heart surgery

Harvey Weinstein is hospitalized in New York City after emergency heart surgery, according to the ex-movie mogul’s representatives. 

“At our urging he was rushed to the hospital last night and after examination the medical team decided to perform a procedure,” Arthur Aidala, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, confirmed to CBS News.

Weinstein, 72, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan from the Rikers Island jail complex “due to severe medical conditions,” his publicist Juda Engelmayer and prison consultant Craig Rothfeld told the Associated Press.

“We can confirm that Mr. Weinstein had a procedure and surgery on his heart,” the pair stated, declining further comment. 

The development was first reported by ABC News.

The disgraced Hollywood figure is awaiting retrial on rape and sexual assault charges in Manhattan.

After the New York case is finished, Weinstein is to return to California to serve a 16-year sentence for a separate rape conviction. 

He was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 while already serving a 23-year sentence in New York. But his initial 2020 conviction in Manhattan was thrown out this spring by New York’s top court, which found that the judge had unfairly allowed testimony based on allegations outside the realm of the trial.

Weinstein has denied raping or sexually assaulting anyone. 

Weinstein has been in and out of Bellevue Hospital since returning to Rikers Island from state prison in April.

He was hospitalized in July for health troubles including COVID-19 and pneumonia in both lungs, his representatives said.

Weinstein became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement, which took root in 2017 when women began to go public with accounts of his alleged behavior.

At the original trial, Weinstein was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013. Those allegations will be part of his retrial. 

Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Company film studios, was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, producing such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love.”

—The Associated Press contributed to this report.