Harvey Weinstein weighs plea on rape charge but insists he 'never assaulted anyone'

NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein is weighing a potential guilty plea to resolve a rape charge and avoid going to trial for a third time in New York, his lawyer and a judge said Thursday, even as the disgraced movie mogul insisted he ''never assaulted anyone.''

For now, at least, Weinstein is on course for a retrial as soon as March in the landmark #MeToo-era case. The judge asked defense lawyers to tell prosecutors within two weeks whether Weinstein is planning a guilty plea.

Prosecutors haven't offered Weinstein any breaks. But he could plead guilty to the crime as charged, a low-level felony. Defense attorney Arthur Aidala said the 73-year-old Weinstein might do so if assured that any prison time for the rape charge would run concurrently with a sentence he's awaiting on a separate, higher-level sexual assault conviction, which Manhattan Judge Curtis Farber declined to overturn Thursday.

After asking Farber to hear him out, a pallid but emphatic Weinstein said his ''spirit was breaking'' after nearly six years behind bars, presently at New York City's Rikers Island jail.

''I live in constant anxiety, unable to sleep, haunted by the thought that I will die" in the infamous jail, said Weinstein. He has myriad health problems and is brought to court in a wheelchair.

''I know I was unfaithful, I know I acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone,'' he added.

The Oscar-winning producer and his lawyers argued that the verdict last June was tainted by infighting and bullying among jurors. The defense contends the tensions amounted to threats that poisoned the process, and that Farber didn't look into them enough.

Farber responded: ''You had a fair trial.''

''Whatever took place the jury room was the normal course of deliberations. Deliberations become heated. Sometimes jurors don't behave in a manner that we would hope, but it didn't rise to the level of anything improper,'' the judge added.

Outside court, Aidala said Weinstein was ''not strongly considering'' a guilty plea but was thinking about it for his children's sake.

The hearing was the latest convoluted turn in the ex-Hollywood honcho's path through the criminal justice system. His case has spanned seven years, trials in two states, a reversal in one and last year's retrial, which came to a messy end. Weinstein was convicted of forcing oral sex on one woman, acquitted of forcibly performing oral sex on another, and the jury didn't decide on the rape charge, which involved a third woman.

The sexual assault conviction carries the potential for up to 25 years in prison. The rape charge is punishable by up to four years — less than Weinstein already has served.

They were one outgrowth of a stack of sexual harassment and sex assault allegations against him that emerged publicly in 2017 and ensuing years, fueling the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. Early on, Weinstein apologized for ''the way I've behaved with colleagues in the past,'' while also denying that he ever had nonconsensual sex.

At trial, Weinstein's lawyers argued that the women willingly accepted his advances in hopes of getting work in various capacities in show business, then falsely accused him to net settlement funds and attention.