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As Harvey Weinstein tried to weather the avalanche of accusations that he’d sexually abused numerous women, he was alternately suicidal, defiant, and hopeful that the support of powerful pals like Apple CEO Tim Cook or former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg could help save him.
Court documents unsealed this week, ahead of Weinstein’s Wednesday sentencing for rape and sexual assault, shed light on his state of mind in the weeks following the October 2017 publication of bombshell reports from the New York Times and New Yorker that alleged he’d spent years concealing sexual misconduct. The 67-year-old could now spend up to 29 years in prison after being convicted last month of first-degree criminal sex act and third-degree rape.
“I’m an addict. I’m a sex addict. I’m an anger addict. To medicate, I comfort myself with bad food. My mind sees despair. My body has trauma. Vets tell me I have PTSD,” read a draft of a statement, which was not publicly released by Weinstein’s PR team, in December 2017. The statement was obtained by Vulture.
“I have only despair,” continued the statement. “I have lost my family. I have daughters that will not talk to me. I have lost my wife. I have lost the respect of my ex-wife and generally almost all of my friends. I have no company. I’m alone.”
“And I will be honest with you: I’m suicidal.”
A spokesperson for Weinstein declined to comment on the documents to VICE News.
Weinstein also imagined building a hospital for people with addictions that would be similar to St. Jude’s, which treats children with cancer, according to a statement obtained by Vulture. Weinstein would help secure the funding for the facility, which would then be run by women.
“It will be a place where women can talk, have groups, explain their experiences, and talk to men directly,” the statement read. “It wouldn’t be just men having group therapies, but women confronting them, talking to them, understanding why they acted out.”
In an exchange with a gossip columnist, Weinstein also appeared to suggest that he had been sexually abused. The columnist asked Weinstein if he knew whether someone had “done things” to Weinstein as a child, according to the New York Times.
Weinstein replied, “It is a incident when I was a very young boy.” He then asked the columnist to delete the message.
But Weinstein, who was infamously easy to enrage during his career as a Hollywood power broker, also refused to go down in the court of public opinion without a fight. He’s continuously denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex. He also struck back at reports that Jennifer Aniston had accused him of groping her, writing to his representative, “Jen Aniston should be killed.” (A representative for Aniston has denied to multiple outlets that Weinstein ever made inappropriate advances towards the “Friends” actress, because Aniston has never been alone with Weinstein.)
In October emails to Bloomberg and Bezos, Weinstein also pleaded for the billionaires to lend him their support before the Weinstein Company board fired him.
“There are many false allegations and over time, we’ll prove it, but right now I’m the poster boy for bad behavior,” he told Bezos in one email, the New York Daily News reported.
“A lot of the allegations are false, and given therapy and counseling, as other people have done, I think I’d be able to get there,” Weinstein wrote in another email to Bloomberg, according to the Daily Beast.
But Weinstein’s brother’s Bob was apparently unconvinced by Weinstein’s protestations of innocence, according to a November 2017 email obtained by the New York Daily News.
“U deserve a lifetime achievement award for the sheer savagery and immorality and inhumanness, for the acts u have perpetrated,” Bob Weinstein wrote, adding, “Now show some strength and don’t write back. If u do, it’s just your denial and disease having the power of the last word. If u actually say u are trying to get better, It’s just another lie amongst the millions.”
“I pray there is a real hell. That’s where u belong,” Bob Weinstein continued. “I suppose being you, is its own hell, if u could feel it, but no chance. OJ didn’t kill Nicole Simpson and u had consensual sex with all those poor victimized women.”
Cover: Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse as jury deliberations continue in his rape trial, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
