WASHINGTON DC: Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has filed a Hail Mary motion to dismiss two of the five remaining counts against him.
Weinstein's Defense attorney Arthur Aidala, in the papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, asserted that one two counts of predatory sexual assault deserve to be dropped because they are based on the same alleged crimes, Page Six reported.
He also suggested that count five, the alleged rape of a longtime lover at a Manhattan hotel, should be dismissed. In the document, Aidala also specified that the complex legal method, that the prosecutors have used to get around the statute of limitations, assumed that Weinstein was a resident of Connecticut.
However, the papers argue that Weinstein was in fact, a resident of New York. The advocate claimed that the tolling provision, which stops the clock when Weinstein travels out of state, does not apply in this case. Weinstein's previous attorney, Ben Brafman, also filed a similar motion about eight months back, which Justice James Burke had denied.
Meanwhile, the beleaguered producer's sex assault case is headed to trial September 9 and his legal team is already falling apart. Reportedly, lead counsel Jose Baez has asked the judge to let him off the case stating that Weinstein wasn't paying him the agreed-upon fee and even threatened to sue his firm.
Earlier, Harvard professor Ron Sullivan crumbling under the pressure from his students who objected to him representing the producer, pulled out of the defence team.