Harvey Weinstein has weighed in on Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively’s legal battle from his prison cell on Rikers Island. Per TMZ, the disgraced producer and convicted rapist has thrown his support behind Baldoni, alleging that The New York Times treated him the same way it treated the director of It Ends With Us.
Baldoni and Lively are currently engaged in a sprawling legal entanglement that began when Lively sued Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation that allegedly occurred both on the set of their movie, It Ends With Us, and the ensuing press tour. Baldoni countersued, claiming that Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, waged a smear campaign against him. He also sued The New York Times, which broke the news of Lively’s claims, for allegedly cherry-picking details and altering key communications to “deliberately” mislead readers.
Weinstein would have you believe that he has also been mistreated by the Times. “Watching Justin Baldoni take legal action against The New York Times and its reporters—accusing them of manipulating communications and ignoring evidence that countered Ms. Lively’s claims—hit me hard,” said Weinstein in a statement issued to TMZ. “It brought back everything I experienced when the Times reported on me in 2017. They did the same thing: cherry-picked what fit their story and ignored critical context and facts that could have challenged the narrative.”
Weinstein’s career was upended after The New Yorker and The New York Times interviewed numerous women who accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and sexual assault, including Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie. The reports invigorated the #MeToo movement, and led to Weinstein ultimately being convicted of rape in New York in 2020. In 2022, Weinstein was convicted of three more sex crimes in a separate trial in Los Angeles. (Weinstein pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and has denied all allegations of sexual misconduct.) In 2024, his first conviction was overturned after an appeals court ruled that he had not received a fair trial. Weinstein’s retrial on the original New York charges, as well as some new accusations, is scheduled to begin jury selection on April 15.
Although he was found guilty in a court of law, Weinstein told TMZ that he “should have stood up and fought back” against The New York Times. “I should have had the courage to speak out against the way the truth was twisted,” his statement continues. “That failure still haunts me. I’ll be watching this case closely—it matters to anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end of a media takedown, and even more to someone who’s had to pay a high legal price.”
New York Times reporter Megan Twohey, who coauthored the original Times story on Lively’s allegations against Baldoni, also reported on Weinstein’s alleged sexual assault and misconduct. The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for Twohey and reporter Jodi Kantor’s reporting on Weinstein; The New Yorker also won a Pulitzer for Ronan Farrow’s report on Weinstein. Twohey and Kantor’s book, She Said, was adapted into a film starring Zoe Kazan and Golden Globe nominee Carey Mulligan. Weinstein was not involved in the project.
In a statement to TMZ, a spokesperson for The New York Times said, “Our comprehensive investigation into the allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against Mr. Weinstein was rigorously reported over many months and based on on-the-record interviews, legal settlements paid to accusers and other documents. None of the facts in our coverage are in dispute. Mr. Weinstein acknowledged his misconduct in a statement that was published in full in the Times. He’s since been criminally convicted of rape and sexual assault.”
