Lawyer says Harvey Weinstein hospitalized after ‘dangerous blood test’

File photo of former film producer Harvey Weinstein in Manhattan Criminal Court. Photo courtesy: Reuters

Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized on Monday (December 2, 2024) after a “dangerous blood test”, his lawyer said, in a legal claim by the disgraced movie mogul alleging substandard medical care at New York City’s notorious prison complex. Less than a week after filing.

Weinstein, 72, was flown to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for emergency treatment “due to alarming blood test results that require immediate medical attention,” his lawyer Imran Ansari said in a statement.

“He is expected to remain there until his condition is stabilized,” the statement added. “Denying her care is not only medical malpractice, but a violation of her constitutional rights.”

A spokesperson for the New York City Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email. The agency’s prisoner database confirmed that Weinstein had been transferred from Rikers Island to the Bellevue Hospital prison ward in Manhattan.

Weinstein remains in city custody after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction in the state earlier this year. The case is scheduled to be heard again in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.

In a legal filing last week, Weinstein’s lawyers accused the city of providing him substandard medical care for multiple medical problems, including chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes.

“When I last visited him, I found him with blood splatters on his prison uniform, possibly from IVs, clothes that had not been washed for weeks, and he had not even been provided with clean underwear – serious medical conditions. Hardly sanitary conditions for someone living here,” Ansari said in a statement, comparing Rikers Island to a “gulag.”

The troubled prison complex, located on an island in New York City’s East River, has faced increasing scrutiny for prisoner abuses and dangerous conditions. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for a possible federal takeover of the prison system, finding that the city has put its incarcerated population at “unconstitutional risk.”

Weinstein’s publicist Judah Engelmayer repeated the allegation in a statement on Monday.

“Mr. Weinstein, who suffers from multiple illnesses, including leukemia, has been denied the medical care that any person deserves, whether a prisoner or not,” he said. “In many ways, this abuse is cruel and unusual punishment.”