‘Regret is not rape’ – Weinstein’s lawyer

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, was not raped by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, his lawyers argued during their closing arguments on Thursday. She instead engaged in “transactional sex,” attorney Alan Jackson claimed.

The attorney noted that while documentary filmmaker Siebel Newsom may have regretted sex with the disgraced producer, “regret is not rape.”

Jackson assessed the filmmaker’s testimony in the Los Angeles courtroom over the past weeks as a “theatrical, overly dramatized performance,” dismissing it as “an act” and adding that she was aware she was engaged in “transactional sex” and that “she hates it.” 

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Siebel Newsom described her alleged rape by the producer in a hotel room after they met in 2005 at the Toronto International Film Festival, telling the jury the details of his physiognomy. Weinstein was not just covered in “bruises” and “stretch marks,” she said – he “looked uncircumcised and strange though, kind of fish-like...lots of skin down there.”

During the act itself, she testified, “I’m standing, I’m resisting. Horror. I’m trembling. This is my worst nightmare.” Despite her detailed description of events, however, Siebel Newsom reportedly waited until two years after the encounter with Weinstein to send him an email claiming he had raped her. 

The documentarian is one of four women whose testimony against the movie mogul was heard in the Los Angeles case, in which Weinstein is charged with raping and sexually assaulting two women and committing sexual battery against two others. It is the second of a series of sex assault cases being prosecuted against the disgraced Miramax moviemaker. 

Another alleged victim of Harvey Weinstein, outspoken actress Rose McGowan, has accused Siebel Newsom of seeking to keep her quiet about the producer’s abuses. When she was about to go public with her allegations against the infamous predator, Siebel Newsom allegedly contacted McGowan on behalf of his attorney David Boies, asking what it would take to “make her happy.” Siebel Newsom, McGowan claimed, had repeatedly misrepresented herself as a Weinstein rape victim in order to get access to the private details of actual Weinstein victims.