Weinstein attorney slams #MeToo as jurors are picked

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was in New York court on Wednesday for the second day of jury selection for his trial on charges of rape and sexual misconduct.

Forty people – a third of the 120 summoned to be potential jurors in the case – were sent home during Day One, after they indicated they would be unable to remain impartial in the widely publicized case.

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“For a prosecutor, this is Christmas morning — the morning of jury selection to have him smeared everywhere,” said Arthur Aidala, one of Weinstein’s defense attorneys.

Judge James Burke estimated the jury selection process will take at least two weeks, with opening statements sometime after Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 20.

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The trial surrounds allegations that Weinstein raped one woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and performed a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006.

At least one Hollywood actress is expected to testify against Weinstein, and several other accusers have said they plan to attend the trial, which could last about four weeks once a jury is picked. Approximately 100 accusers have detailed their own allegations of sexual misconduct, according to The Cut.

And on Monday afternoon, Los Angeles County prosecutors announced they had charged Weinstein with forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery. Prosecutors in California alleged on Feb. 18, 2013, he forced himself into an unidentified female victim’s hotel room and raped her, according to a press release by the district attorney’s office.

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The next day, he allegedly sexually assaulted a different woman in a Beverly Hills hotel room, the release states.

The Sunday before Weinstein’s New York  trial, the filmmaker’s lead attorney, Donna Rotunno, was quoted in Vanity Fair as describing how the “pendulum is swinging so far in the overly sensitive direction that men can’t really be men, and women can’t really be women.”

“I feel that women may rue the day that all of this started when no one asks them out on a date, and no one holds the door open for them, and no one tells them that they look nice,” she said, according to the report.

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Weinstein’s former assistant, Rowena Chiu, responded to Rotunno’s comments on Tuesday through Twitter, calling it “such an appallingly indefensible defense.”

Chiu reportedly said during an episode of "The Dr. Oz Show" that same day, she would often go to work wearing two pairs of tights "for protection" and Weinstein would “typically be either naked or just dressed in a robe that was gaping open,” according to Daily Mail.com.

The woman, who worked as an assistant for Weinstein at his Miramax studio, alleged he “pushed her back against the bed” inside a hotel in Italy in 1998. Rotunno previously denied her claims.

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“He would try to cajole you into taking off a pair of tights or allowing him to take off a pair of tights, and he would do that and he would be, ‘I don't understand why you're wearing so many layers. Come on, let's relax a bit, let's have fun,’” she said, according to the outlet. She later added: “He would request massages for sure. He would ask me to massage him. He would ask to massage me. So yes, things got physical very quickly as well.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.