Jennifer Siebel Newsom is a filmmaker and the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom. On Monday, she testified in Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial in Los Angeles saying that he raped her in a hotel room in 2005. At times, she cried as she said this.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of sexual assault, including four counts of rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by force, and sexual battery by restraint from 2004 to 2013.
When the judge stopped the trial for the day, Siebel Newsom was being questioned by the defense team. She will keep talking about her case on Tuesday morning.
Siebel Newsom was the fourth accuser to testify. She said she was “a little nervous” before taking the stand, and she started to cry soon after.
When prosecutor Marlene Martinez asked Siebel Newsom if she could see Weinstein in court on Monday, she started to cry and said “yes” in a shaky voice into the microphone.
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“He’s wearing a suit, and a blue tie and he’s staring at me,” she said. She told the court that she met the media mogul when she was 31 years old in 2005 at the Toronto Film Festival.
She was at a bar with other people in the business. “There was this big person coming towards me and it felt like everybody sort of backed away,” she recalled, saying, “It felt like the Red Sea was parting.”
He then told her who he was and asked her to meet him later so they could talk more because he had to go to a meeting.
“I felt like I had to go meet with him … maybe he’ll give me good advice. I thought that there was a genuine interest in talking to me about my work,” she said, adding she and a friend met with Weinstein at a different hotel bar.
Siebel Newsom told the court that Weinstein “was really focused on telling me I was special.” Weinstein told her he wished he could stay and talk more, but he had to catch a flight to New York.
Siebel Newsom tells the court that they met at a LA hotel, where Weinstein attacked and raped her
She said that Weinstein then called her at the end of September 2005, when he was in Los Angeles and she was living in the West Hollywood neighborhood.
He dropped by a party she was having for five minutes and, according to Siebel Newsom, said: “I’ll be in touch, I’d like to have a meal with you or a drink or something and continue the conversation. We can talk about your film projects.”
She testified that he called her and asked her to meet him at a hotel, where an assistant told her they would be meeting in Weinstein’s suite. She told the court that after she got there, either Weinstein or one of his assistants told everyone in the room to leave.
For those who don’t know the context, Jennifer Siebel Newsom testified yesterday that Harvey Weinstein raped her in a hotel in 2005, three years before she married Gavin.
This is how Disco Inferno chose to share that information with the world: https://t.co/de6PJwoEVQ
— Will Washington (@WilliamRBR) November 15, 2022
Then she said that Weinstein didn’t care about her projects and didn’t want to hear about them. “He abruptly got up and said I’m going to go get more comfortable,” she said.
From what she said, Weinstein was walking down a hallway with his head down and a robe on. “Can you help me?” she says he asked.
She started crying as she told the jury, “Then I saw that he was touching himself, and he grabbed me.” Then she said he was rude and she tried to get away from him.
She said that Weinstein changed his behavior but in the end, he carried or dragged her to the bedroom and raped her.
When a prosecutor asked her why she stayed in the hotel suite, she said, “Because you don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein.” He could help you get ahead or hurt you. I thought we were going to talk about my work.”
Siebel Newsom said that she didn’t tell anyone about what happened that night, nor did she call the police. “I was so violated and I don’t know how that happened,” she said through tears. “I didn’t see the clues and I didn’t know how to escape.”
Defense asks how much money husband got for his campaign
In his opening statement on October 24, defense attorney Mark Werksman said that Siebel Newsom had consensual sex with Weinstein because she wanted his help getting roles and making movies.
He went after her in particular and used rude words to attack her credibility. “She’s made herself a prominent victim in the #MeToo movement … otherwise she’d be just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood,” Werksman said.
On Monday, he spent some time thinking about whether the governor, who married Siebel Newsom in 2008, knew about the alleged rape when he took money from Weinstein for his campaign. Siebel Newsom said she asked the campaign staff to ask Weinstein for money, but Newsom returned the money “right away” in October 2017 when she found out something had happened.
Much love to California’s first lady, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Fuck Harvey Weinstein a gross disgusting pig rapist and his victim blaming shit lawyers.
— Michele Dauber (@mldauber) November 15, 2022
“I told him that Harvey was sketchy at different times and he picked up on it himself when he met him,” she testified.
Court documents say that between September 1, 2004 and September 30, 2005, Weinstein forced Jane Doe 4 to have oral coitus and raped her. Jane Doe 4 has been identified as Siebel Newsom.
Siebel Newsom went to Stanford University and has written, directed, and produced several documentaries, such as “Miss Representation,” “The Mask You Live In,” and “The Great American Lie.”
During her time as California’s first partner, Siebel Newsom has worked to improve the lives of working mothers and close the pay gap between men and women, among other things.
This is Weinstein’s second trial for sexual assault since The New York Times and The New Yorker published stories in 2017 about his alleged history of sexual abuse, harassment, and secret settlements with young women he took advantage of by using his power as a Hollywood power broker.
Weinstein was found guilty of the first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape in New York in 2020. He was given a 23-year prison sentence. He has said that he is not guilty, and in August, the highest court in New York agreed to hear his case.
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