Weinstein Will Walk, Says Expert

Well, not exactly, but Brian McMonagle, who represented Bill Cosby in a 2017 sexual assault trial that ended in a hung jury, says the film producer and accused serial rapist’s case is “extremely defensible” despite the evidence and the loss of key attorneys from his defense team. According to McMonagle, many attorneys are drooling at the chance to take his case. “It’s become the centerpiece of the #MeToo movement,” he says, and of all the cases like Weinstein’s that are ongoing, his will be a watershed in terms of how such prosecutions go forward in the future. Weinstein’s legal team now includes two lawyers from Chicago, Donna Rotunno and Damon Cheronis, after attorney Jose Baez announced his departure earlier this month. A February 2018 issue of Chicago magazine described former prosecutor Rotunno as a “hero” to male clients accused of sexual assault, and said she’s handled more than 40 sexual misconduct-related cases over the past decade and a half. Rotunno told the magazine that she has the ability to “get away with a lot more in a courtroom cross-examining a female than a male lawyer does. He may be an excellent lawyer, but if he goes at that woman with the same venom that I do, he looks like a bully. If I do it, nobody even bats an eyelash. And it’s been very effective.”