One of the jurors who convicted Harvey Weinstein of rape and sexual assault this week said the #MeToo movement played no role in the five tense days of deliberations that culminated with Monday's guilty verdicts.
"Absolutely zero," said Drew Malbin in an interview aired Friday on "CBS This Morning."
Why?
"Because it's not the job and it's not what we were asked to do," he continued. "It would have been an adulteration of the process to take outside factors and have that weigh on our decision-making process and eventual findings."
Weinstein, 67, was convicted by a jury of seven men and five women that acquitted him on the two highest counts of predatory sexual assault. Malbin declined to go into the specifics of the deliberations that left several on the panel looking angry and frustrated during their next-to-last day of debate.
"This is how we found on these counts, and I see no upside to pulling back the curtain," he said.
Malbin shrugged off evidence presented at trial that Weinstein hired investigators to scrutinize some of his sexual abuse accusers, including prosecution witness and actress Annabella Sciorra.
"If I was rich and powerful and I heard that people were talking about me, I would hire an investigation firm to find out what they were talking about," Malbin said. "And that's really all we deduced from that."
Weinstein remains in Bellevue Hospital recovering from health issues while awaiting his transfer to Rikers Island pending a March 11 sentencing date. His defense team announced plans to appeal the convictions, and Weinstein faces a second sex crimes trial in Los Angeles at an unspecified date in the future.
Malbin demurred when asked about Weinstein's sentence: "That's not for me to say."
The disgraced former movie producer faces a jail term for his criminal sexual act conviction of five to 25 years, and a possible maximum of four years on his third-degree rape conviction.
