Today, the New York City Police Department announced that its investigators were collecting information in an effort to arrest Harvey Weinstein, after the actor Paz de la Huerta told the agency Weinstein had raped her in New York City in October 2010.
Also today, the NYPD released a copy of a harassment complaint filed against Weinstein by Andrew Goldman, a journalist then working for the New York Observer, in November 2000. Rebecca Traister memorably described the violent incident in The Cut, nearly 17 years later. Jezebel filed a records request with the NYPD in the wake of the New York Times’ exposé of Weinstein, and after reading her account.
Traister writes:
The night before the 2000 election, I was working on a story — perhaps my first seriously reported story — about O, the violent reimagining of Othello that Miramax’s Dimension division was then sitting on, perhaps out of deference to the cringey clean-media message of the Al Gore–Joe Lieberman campaign, which Weinstein was publicly supporting; already there was talk of Weinstein’s ambitions in Democratic politics.
After Weinstein failed to respond to my calls for comment, I was sent, on Election Eve 2000, to cover a book party he was hosting, along with my colleague Andrew Goldman. Weinstein didn’t like my question about O, there was an altercation; though the recording has alas been lost to time, I recall that he called me a cunt and declared that he was glad he was the “fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town.”
When my colleague Andrew (who was also then my boyfriend) intervened, first calming him down and then trying to extract an apology, Weinstein went nuclear, pushing Andrew down a set of steps inside the Tribeca Grand — knocking him over with such force that his tape recorder hit a woman, who suffered long-term injury — and dragging Andrew, in a headlock, onto Sixth Avenue.
The text below comes from the NYPD’s records, and reproduces the “details” section of Goldman’s complaint against Weinstein, which can be found in its entirety at the end of this post. The complainant, referred to as “COMPL,” is Goldman. The perpetrator, referred to as “PERP,” is Weinstein.
[Complainant] states he was invited to a party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel at the above location, when his guest, [REDACTED], asked [the perpetrator] a question and [the perpetrator] started yelling at her, [complainant] states he informed [the perpetrator] she was his guest. At which point [the perpetrator] grabbed [the complainant] by the neck and pulled him outside and started yelling at [the complainant], and told [the complainant] that he was going to kick his ass. [The complainant] also states that [the perpetrator] put him in a head-lock before fight was broken up. No visible injuries.
For context, here’s how the Times covered the incident (but not the complaint itself) the next day, on November 8, 2000:
Harvey Weinstein, the chairman of Miramax, had words with Andrew Goldman, a reporter for The New York Observer, at a party on Monday at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel. ... It began when another reporter from The Observer, Rebecca Traister, questioned Mr. Weinstein about an article that had nothing to do with [the book author] Ms. Duffy or the party.
Mr. Weinstein “realized it really wasn’t appropriate and was upset,” a Miramax official said. “He and she resolved that he wasn’t going to continue the interview; that was fine. But then Andrew stepped in.”
The Miramax official and another witness said that Mr. Goldman’s tape recorder slammed into the head of another guest. ... The Miramax official said that Mr. Weinstein asked Mr. Goldman to apologize, and Mr. Goldman refused. Yesterday, Mr. Goldman would say only that he had filed a harassment complaint with the police.
You can find the full complaint below: