The People Vs. Weinstein Pt. 2

Jennifer Siebel Newsom takes the stand as a "Jane No"

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MONDAY NOVEMBER 14th

In a fluorescent green walled cafeteria, I fill a large cup of stale coffee, doused with enough powdered creamer to make it bearable, and head to the 9th floor just before the doors to the courtroom open.

When the elevator doors part I’m stunned by the scene in front of me, a hallway crammed with unfamiliar faces in coats and dresses arranged in a scattered line at the entrance. Until now, the crowd has been consistently dwindling, so this grip of women chatting at ease with each other catches me off guard.

The regular string of court reporters is sitting on red benches on the sidelines, eyeing the crowd.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"Jennifer Siebel Newsome is testifying today," one of them dryly responds. "This is her support crew. Some are Cosby victims. The major outlets are all here too. Tipped them off, obviously."

"Ahhh. Makes sense," I say, silently counting the bodies in line. "No Newsom is going to greet an empty room."

Down the hallway, Lady Victoria Hervey, clad in a white coat and tall black suede boots, appears with a burst of energy. I invited her to sit with me in court since she's in town from London and my days are consumed by the trial schedule. Plus, I’m interested in her insight. She knew Harvey, she partied with him in Cannes and was a part of the scene during this era, so the names and locations attached to this trial are familiar to her.

Her arrival sparks a wake of confusion and curiosity, a towering 6ft blonde with an English accent in the hallway hooks attention without much effort.

The vibe amongst journalists is tense. There is not enough space for us all, and we know it.

When they cut off the admission entrance after me, I sense a sting of resentment trailing me as I enter. Inside we are seated in the last row in the back. Two men in suits with security-style earpieces sit up front while a handful of uniformed law enforcement officers gather in the back. The governor's wife is ushered in with odd urgency.

On the stand, a relief guide is seated beside her. Jennifer Siebel Newsom takes off her camel-colored wool coat to reveal a long lilac dress and pauses to sweep the length of her long blonde hair so that it falls over one side of her shoulder, then coughs loudly into the microphone before apologizing with a smile.

I loathe her already.

When asked how she is doing, she answers with a shimmy, "A little nervous," she replies, revealing an exaggerated valley girl dialect.

Her presence sparks fleeting jolts of rage. I saw this was coming. My bias is raging and I have no interest in capping it. The sight of her provokes an onslaught of fragmented covid memories cutting circles in my brain. I see Gavin's face on my TV screen, praising us like children for continued obedience. Perfectly coiffed hair, unlined forehead, and big bright smile in working action while happily extending the lockdowns, lecturing us about masks and shots while his own unmasked date nights at The French Laundry (with wealthy friends whose bank accounts and life routines went uninterrupted by the pandemic) were ignored and overlooked by media.

When I look at her all I see are live-in nannies, private schools, lavish winery weekend escapes, gross privilege, tone-deaf policies, political profit, polished lies, and unchecked corruption. I have to talk myself out of an impulsive desire to throw away all of my courtroom privileges to entertain one outburst. To say out loud what I know - based on various sources - to be true.

I want to stand in open court and say to her, "your friends all told me your kids are not vaccinated, so why are you pushing it on ours!?”

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My vengeance has nothing to do with this case. My bias is tainted by personal resentment, remembering how we as mothers were framed as monsters because we wanted some time to decide on this shot for our children, rushed by a government we don’t trust. I see her as a soulless aid to a slick-haired mascot pushing an agenda his own family has silently rejected, posed as a Jane Doe in this case, but everyone in the room knows exactly who she is. And she loves it. A couple of the masked jurors perk when she enters the room.

Between the covid hypocrisy and the Boies connection, I’m genuinely disgusted before the defense has even begun to unravel her lies.

No one in this courtroom wants to side with the defendant. But Jennifer’s role, in this case, is laughable.

When she is asked to identify Harvey Weinstein, she points sheepishly to him seated at a desk below, wiping her eyes as she describes the color of his suit and tie. He stares back at her with a stiff, lifeless gaze, annoyed.

Ms. Martinez, leading the prosecution, asks Ms. Newsom to describe her first introduction to Harvey. A hotel greeting that led to a house party that cycled back to another hotel invitation for a "business meeting."

First intro: "It was the early evening, late afternoon. I was with a bunch of peers, and friends at this gathering. I believe in a hotel. I was huddled in a hotel area with some friends, guy friends who were in the industry in various ways, and a girlfriend I was working on a project with."

Something kind of happened, and this big person was coming toward me, and everybody sort of like backed away. Then Harvey Weinstein introduced himself to me. He was like the kingmaker." She tells the jury. "He was at the top of the industry. I was a working actress, I had little roles, guest starring roles on TV shows and films, and I was working on some short films, I’d been in two features … but they were small roles.”

Yes, Harvey Weinstein was more powerful than me. It felt like the red sea was parting. I don’t know if it was deference or fear. I felt a bit intimidated. He was charming. He treated me initially like he was really curious about me."

She said Weinstein requested to meet her again and admits to being flattered by it. "I felt like I had to, like ‘OK, sure. I felt like there was a genuine interest in talking about my work. One interesting thing is that he was very charming. He saw that I was smart, even though I clearly can’t do math anymore. He was really focused on telling me I was special and I was different.”

Her descrips are long and rambling. They go nowhere and reveal little. She dwells on meaningless details paired with overly dramatic hand gestures and erratic inflection. Her forced acting flare-ups make me think I’m watching Amber Heard’s understudy.

When she speaks about herself, her degrees, accolades, and accomplishments, she seems much younger than her years. The prosecution allows her to expand with aimless direction in a painful path that avoids any "yes or no" answers. A couple of times she replies, "totally."

"He asked for my phone number," she continues, "so we could continue the conversation when we were back in Los Angeles. I thought he would reach out in the future to talk to me more about it and give me advice on work."

Second Meet Up: A few weeks later she says Weinstein reached out again via a phone call asking to drop off a gift at her house in West Hollywood while she was entertaining friends. She found it odd but welcomed him anyway.

The gift he brought was a book that "meant something" to him. His presence at the party (unexpected but monumental) impressed friends in the industry. It’s not hard to imagine how "The King of Hollywood" crashing a low-key West Hollywood house party would be perceived amongst a house filled with aspiring actors and screenplay writers. It’s the kind of scenario he (and they) lived for, where a God complex is not only welcomed but worshiped.

"He showed up in a big black SUV at my little home. We were having a party, and I believe he gave me the book right away. It was the book on the studio producer from the golden age, Louis B. Meyer. I was having a party and a bunch of my friends were there, it was really awkward. I had just been raised to be polite and gracious. He was Harvey Weinstein. It was very - I didn’t want him to come inside. It was very awkward. He was looking around, and it was weird energy. I took it as he was very self-conscious because he was Harvey Weinstein, and these were just a bunch of my peers. He was very proud of the book. I guess maybe this was a mentor of his. And, ironically," she continues, her voice cracking with tearless emotion, "Louis B. Mayer was a sexual predator.”

The woman beside me begins to weep. I sit stonefaced in crooked sunglasses trying not to dispel the dark remarks blooming in my head.

When we break, Lady Victoria files out alongside the crowd and announces to no one in particular, “what a liar!” she is. The hallway looks stunned by her outburst. It’s what many of us are thinking but are too reserved to express it aloud.

She slips into a long rant about how ridiculous the whole thing is. “What a waste of time,” she scoffs.

The Cosby victims are now glaring at both of us.

“It’s not my fault they choose a terrible witness to include in this case,” I think to myself, with defenses mounting.

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Third Meeting: The Peninsula Hotel, Weinstein's favorite hunting site, where Newsom recalls his assistant directed her to his room for this pre arranged meeting.

Up top, she arrives at a grand hotel suite stocked with sparkling silver food trays and champagne in stainless buckets on ice.

“Kinda romantic,” she admits.

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“It felt like not what I thought I was going to. It felt fancy, it felt a little bit like a date. It was very opulent. I hadn’t been to a room like that, I thought wow, he’s got a lot of money and a lot of power to be in a suite like this, I’d never been in a suite like that. There was room service with silver trays. It felt not what I thought I was going to. It felt fancy, it felt a little bit like a date.”

The prosecution presses her on these feelings.

"I was nervous, I was kind of uncomfortable, but I just tried to not, I just tried to be present, and I just waited.”

"Why?"

“Because you don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein.”

Why not?

Long pause, “He could make or ruin your career.”

“I thought I was going to discuss my projects, I had a film project in Africa, and I had a film project in India that I’d written as well. He came out sort of in a hurry and sort of said sorry, sorry, and I sort of like sat down next to me on the couch.” Came from the back area of the suite, where she had been seeing shadows, there was an outside deck area. She heard some voices from back there, things like ‘it’s time to go, let’s go, everybody out.’ I feel like he sort of slapped the couch or something he said ‘come on let’s get something to eat.’ He was “anxious and harried,” and seemed in a hurry. He wasn’t interested at all in talking to me about my projects, it’s like his head was not there. He abruptly got up and said I’m going to go get more comfortable.”

When asked about the time, she recalls, "It was like 4 or 5, but I’m not going to pass on food," she says with a laugh.

"I didn’t know there was danger.”

What follows is a graphic play-by-play account of the alleged assault where Harvey calls from down the hall, asking if she can "help" him.

When she approaches, she finds him hunched in a bathrobe and assumes he's hurt. He's not. He's masturbating in front of her. The shock of it leads to what she calls a "cat and mouse game," where he is chasing after her, insisting that she touch him and she is fumbling, overcome with fear, trying to escape him.

“I kept looking for an out behind me. But it was dark. At some point, he softened, like he was trying a different approach because I was shaking. So he sort of grabbed me and pulled me toward the couch. At one point, it felt like he was sort of lower than me asking for my forgiveness, and went into this diatribe.”

She tells the court that he picked her up and "carried her" to the bed. "He like lifted me, and I don’t remember if he carried me or he like dragged me. I distinctly remembered standing by the bed. My recollection was that he sort of carried me in there. That was my recollection. But I think a second time that I thought about it, I couldn’t prove that my memory is not perfect.”

"Once you get in the bedroom, are you still shaking?"

“100 percent."

“He’s just so focused on his penis and getting an erection. And then he puts part of his penis inside of me because he pushes me back against the bed. And I’m so scared, and all I can think about. It’s not staying in because his penis is so weird and messed up. He realizes this. I was just worried I was going to get some disease, it was so gross!" She cries aloud.

"He was just so big and so determined he was like so aggressive, this is not, this was hell. And then he pushes me around, and he pulls my dress up and I was on the bed, and he puts his tongue in my vagina.”

“Oh, I just made some noises to get him to ejaculate faster. Just like ... pleasure noises.”She describes a feebly faked orgasm.

“I was afraid of what he was doing, putting his body into my body, and hurting me.”

“I’m crying, I’m trembling, I’m shaking and I’m frozen too. I’m frozen I don’t know what to do.”

“And then he tries to climb up and stick his penis in me again. He’s kind of at an angle. I found the strength to just like move over to the side. And then I just, because I couldn’t have him in me anymore,” she wails “I used my hand on his penis … to try to make him stop.”

“I could tell he just needed, he was so determined, just so scary, just all about him and the pleasure, his need for satisfaction, so I just did it to make it stop," she cries out, breaking into a heap of hysterics.

The courtroom sits silent.

Like each of the women before her, she is asked to describe his anatomy.

“Lots of bruises, markings, yellow and green, lots of stretch marks on his belly, very not physically fit at all. Looked uncircumcised and strange though, kind of fish-like, the penis, something was distorted in the testicle ... Lots of skin, lots of skin down there. I just remember being shocked by everything.”

“It was like the Twilight Zone, I just walked down this hallway it felt like forever.” She says, wiping a tearless cheek.

When asked why she didn't call the police, she blames past experiences with law enforcement on her resistance. She was interviewed by the cops as a child after the death of her sister in a golf cart accident, and again for another incident (unintelligible to the court) that involved being interrogated by cops in college.

When asked if she followed up with Weinstein after the assault, she says "yes." With an audition tape sent to him shortly after.

“I was just playing the game, I was just pretending like nothing happened and putting that in a box over here and moving on with my career.”

When she is asked to recall occasions where she would "unfortunately bump into him" after the attack, I catch Weinstein's two young female attornies briefly connect with matching eye rolls.

She perks up when discussing a film of hers titled, “The Invisible War,” about sexual assault in the US military, nominated for the best documentary feature in 2013. She says, had she won, she would have addressed the elephant in the room.

“I was going to say ‘we have a problem in this industry if I’d gotten on the mic that night," she turns her direction to the jury.

The women in her audience are moved with admiration. When she exits, they all get up and trail behind her like a Queen. The hallways get parted by her security, meaning everyone is required to uproot and leave their seat, laptops, and conversations. The crowd is pushed to one side of the hall like schoolchildren so the Governor’s wife can cross 15 ft from one doorway to another. This happens with every break.

The entire hall is visibly annoyed, trading sharp glances. One reporter laughs aloud when she passes.

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Cross-examination is led by Mark Werksman, Weinstein's second lead attorney who bears a striking resemblance to Leonard Cohen (a detail only I appreciate)The decision to use him instead of Allan Jackson, a theatrical attack dog, is strategic. 

Werksman offers no tricks or shocking thrills in his crosses. He is steady and tough.

He shares a promo of a flyer sent to Harvey, for a film she helped produce called “Work Sex.” The artwork for it is two hotel buckets cradling bottles of champagne. Then he cuts straight to the chase and dives into the topic of missing emails (“dozens of them”) sent to Weinstein, erased by Newsom. The emails alone offer evidence of her hounding and chasing him for years. They undermine her entire testimony.

The changes in her story, documented in varying depositions, are merely a bonus for the defense. Her stories, and major details, have changed multiple times since her first interview in 2017.

But Weinstein’s defense smartly sticks to the emails. They read each of them aloud in what becomes a two-hour talking point. I lose count and quit taking notes on the 21st email. For 6-7 years she is documented in these communications eagerly inviting or requesting his attendance at brunch dates, film festival meet-ups, after-party cocktail hours, weekend family gatherings, political fundraising events, hotel meetings, and Oscar parties. Sometimes her responses are instant (6-8 minutes to be exact) 

MW: “You blocked out of your memory your truth, and that includes the fact that you had sent dozens of emails to Mr. Weinstein.” 

JN: “That trauma of being sexually assaulted is still with me” (tears up as she finishes.)

MW: “You’ve been honest about the fact that there is a lot you don’t recall.” 

JN: “about emails.” 

MW: “Oh only about emails?” 

Werksman pulls up an email offering to meet with Weinstein: 

MW: “You didn’t hesitate to arrange to see your rapist as soon as you could?”  

JN: “I send hundreds of thousands of emails to people.” 

MW: “But only one person is accused of doing despicable things to you.” 

He refers to an email where Newsom is asking a favor of him, trying to arrange an audition with Weinstein’s people "for a friend." 

MW: “You’re doing your friend a favor by leveraging or exploiting your relationship to Harvey Weinstein, right?” 

JN: “I’m just trying to help my girlfriend.” 

MW: “You’re asking for advice from a guy who raped you, and you’re asking repeatedly throughout the following year?” 

MW: “By this time it’s March of 2007, you’ve emailed him 18 times and seen him at least 2 or 3 times.”   

As he continues to read through cheery email correspondence between Weinstein and Newsom, she stops him to say, “I’m sorry, I just don’t recall any of this.” 

Her auto response becomes, "I don't recall." She is growing flustered and irritated.

Werksmen brings up an email from 2007, asking Weinstein for advice on a situation with her husband at SF city hall. (Werksman is not allowed to go too deep into the content.)  

JN: “As somebody who had a strong (unintelligible) and a lot of experience in the media.” 

MW: “Did you reach out to Mr. Weinstein about this situation that was so troubling to you?”

JN: “I honestly don’t remember.”  

Additional Email Remarks:

• “You’re inviting, you’re hoping that Harvey will make it to a screening.”

• “Do you remember trying to communicate to the grand jury that you were so disgusted by him you would never even think of auditioning for something that involved him?”

• “You recalled (yesterday) that you just ran into Mr. Weinstein and it was weird and it was creepy. But you didn’t tell the jury that you actually arranged to see Mr. Weinstein.”

•  “You found him weird and scary, but you still went to a breakfast meeting. … and you cared enough about his feelings to tell him you were running late.” 

An angry Newsome finally admits, "I was just hustling,” regarding the incessant fundraising email invites. 

Their point is to show that she was an educated, well-traveled, cultured woman at 31, when introduced to Weinstein. They want to show that this naive alibi fails miserably.

“Ok, you’re hustling with a man you say violently raped you,” Werksmen concludes with a nod.

He pulls one another email sent just to Weinstein.

In it, she says that she and Gavin will be at the Clinton Global Initiative conference and asks about the two of them meeting up with Weinstein at some point after. 

JN: “This is just business, this is just networking, this is just the industry.”

Weinstein, below her, sits slowly shaking his head, the hint of a smile spreading across his face.

When they finally excuse Newsom from the stand she rushes out in tears. The women in the front rows flee behind her.

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Later that night I sit debating how to recap her testimony. I decide on uncensored, opinionated, and honest.

I fire off a series of slides shredding her integrity and exposing her lies to show how she is undermining the real victims here. Working an angle to suit her status, which has changed drastically since she first met Weinstein. But it’s also my opportunity to drag in Boies, who I've been examining for the past few months concerning his role in the Maxwell case as proof that he is protecting her elite clientele through manipulated victim representation.

I need to show how Newsom is connected to Boies through family ties. Her sister is married to his partner's son, which explains why - before the MeToo movement exploded - she was working to help David Boies try and stop / silence Rose McGowan from exposing Weinstein (Boies’ client at the time)

When the stories about Harvey finally broke, the Newsom narrative shifted. She was now wife to a future presidential contender. Victimhood was a better sale than the truth: Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a once aspiring actress, married to the governor of California, gave The Kind of Hollywood a handjob at the Pennisula Hotel to secure movie roles, favors for friends, and political campaign funds.

Put that in a slogan and choke on it.

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“Do the math it’s all connected” - Rose on Boies, Newsom, Clinton

“The gift is set to reignite accusations that Newsom's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, helped Boies try to squash negative stories about Weinstein.” - Via Daily Mail

Newsom Controversies, via California Globe

“In December, while Californians were locked down under stay-at-home orders by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Nathan Ballard, a top advisor to Newsom, was charged with domestic violence for allegedly attempting to suffocate his four-year-old daughter and for pushing his wife into a glass door at the Carneros Resort and Spa in Napa Valley.

Ironically, Ballard wrote a preachy column in 2019 about “what it takes to be a rad dad,” for the lifestyle website Better, before being charged with domestic violence for”‘trying to suffocate his daughter with a pillow and pushing his wife into a glass door,” the Daily Mail reported recently.”

Here’s what else the Daily Mail reported:

• Nathan Ballard, 51, faces two felony domestic violence charges in Napa

• He allegedly attempted to suffocate his daughter, 4, with a pillow

• He is also alleged to have pushed his wife, Mara, into a glass door

• Mara told officers that Ballard had consumed ‘a large amount of alcohol’

• An attorney for Mr. Ballard called the charges ‘unsubstantiated allegations

• Last year, Nathan Ballard penned an essay about being a ‘role model dad’

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