Jennifer Siebel Newsom Testifies At Harvey Weinstein Rape Trial That “Kingmaker” Producer Treated Her Like She Was “Special”; Witness Breaks Down In Tears On The Stand

deadline.com:

“He was really focused on telling me I was special, and I was different,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom told a downtown Los Angeles jury today of her first meeting with Harvey Weinstein. “He was like the kingmaker, he was the top of the industry,” Siebel Newsom stated encountering Weinstein in 2005 at the Toronto Film Festival. “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,” she added in her testimony that started just before the lunch break.

Expected to continue her testimony this afternoon, Siebel Newsom broke down in tears at one point this morning when asked to point out Weinstein in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center courtroom.

Siebel Newsom took the stand after several other witness Monday. Having first revealed in late 2017 an interaction with Weinstein years beforehand, Siebel Newsom went public via her lawyer on October 10 that she was Jane Doe #4 in the incarcerated producer’s LA trial. “Like many other women, my client was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at a purported business meeting that turned out to be a trap,” said attorney Elizabeth Fegan in a statement “She intends to testify at his trial in order to seek some measure of justice for survivors, and as part of her life’s work to improve the lives of women.” Widely seen as a potential Presidential candidate at some point, last week Gavin Newsom was easily reelected Governor of California.

Weinstein is facing grand jury indictments of four counts of rape, four counts of forcible oral copulation, one count of sexual penetration by use of force, plus one count of sexual battery by restraint and sexual