Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is back in the hospital amid his cancer battle and is blaming New York City officials for “ongoing medical negligence,” his rep told The Post Friday.
The rep said the 72-year-old does not think Rikers Island, where he’s been serving prison time for multiple sex crimes, the Correctional Health Services or his doctors, whom he “deeply respects,” are at fault.
The Miramax cofounder is believed to be suffering from chronic myeloid leukemia, but his prognosis is unknown. His reps previously slammed The Post for the “speculation” surrounding Weinstein’s health.
“Craig Rothfeld, Mr. Weinstein’s authorized legal healthcare representative in New York State, expresses profound dismay at the speculation,” a spokesperson said last month.
“It is both troubling and unacceptable that such private and confidential health matters have become a subject of public discourse. Out of respect for Mr. Weinstein’s privacy, we will offer no further comment.”
The Post learned Friday that Weinstein is looking to sue NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue for not giving him the “right to proper care while in custody.”
His rep said, “This treatment suggests a broader agenda for a more sinister outcome through lawfare and inadequate healthcare.”
Weinstein’s team also noted that the city’s alleged refusal to keep the former film exec at Bellevue hospital during his upcoming trial is a “severe oversight, jeopardizing his ability to attend to his own retrial.”
Weinstein is facing a retrial on two sex crime charges that the New York state’s highest court overturned earlier this year following his 2020 conviction.
The New York Court of Appeals reportedly ruled in April that testimony from “prior bad acts” witnesses should not have been allowed in the trial four years ago because it “was unnecessary to establish defendant’s intent and served only to establish defendant’s propensity to commit the crimes charged.”
Weinstein, a prominent adversaries of the #MeToo movement, was convicted in February 2020 of one count of rape in the third degree and one count of a criminal sex act in the first degree.
He was found guilty and hit with a 23-year prison sentence for forcibly performing oral sex on former “Project Runway” production assistant Miriam “Mimi” Haleyi and for an attack on hairstylist Jessica Mann.
Three years later, Weinstein was sentenced to another 16 years in prison following his trial in Los Angeles for the 2013 rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by foreign object of Jane Doe 1, an unidetified Italian model.
Amid all of his legal issues, the film producer behind hit movies such as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love” has portrayed an image of a feeble and ailing man.
In October 2020, his attorneys claimed that Weinstein would likely die in prison because “his physical and mental condition has so deteriorated.”
“The defendant is almost blind, and he’s not ambulatory, and he’s on 20 medications,” lawyer Barry Kamins claimed at the time, noting his client had diabetic retinopathy, coronary artery disease and spinal stenosis, or pressure on his back nerves, which causes a dragging foot.
Since then, he has undergone emergency heart surgery. He was rushed to the hospital in September after experiencing chest pains.
Weinstein’s prison consultant Craig Rothfeld told The Post later that month that while the convicted felon was “in a lot of pain,” he was “in the ICU recovering.”
