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Why Harvey Weinstein didn’t take the stand at his rape trial

Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein didn’t take the stand at his own trial — after a judge ruled that prosecutors could question him about 25 prior acts of bad behavior, his lawyers said. The disclosure came during an interview with the disgraced producer’s attorneys Arthur Aidala and Barry Kamins on the New York State Bar Association’s …

Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein didn’t take the stand at his own trial — after a judge ruled that prosecutors could question him about 25 prior acts of bad behavior, his lawyers said.

The disclosure came during an interview with the disgraced producer’s attorneys Arthur Aidala and Barry Kamins on the New York State Bar Association’s podcast “Miranda Warnings” about the grounds of his upcoming appeal.

“They were going to let them (prosecutors) get into every argument he had with his secretary, every argument that he had with his first assistant, that he punched his own brother in the nose over a fight,” said Aidala on the podcast that aired Tuesday. “By the time they went through all 25 things, even though they were all petty — none of them had to do with an arrest or a criminal act — nobody would have believed anything out of this man’s mouth.”

Aidala said that the ruling by Justice James Burke, who presided over the Manhattan Supreme Court trial, made it impossible for Weinstein to testify on his own behalf.

He said the admission of what’s known as prior bad acts would have made Weinstein “sound like a lying devil” before he uttered a word to the jury.

Lawyers for Weinstein — who was sentenced last year to 23 years in prison after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of predatory sex assault, rape and forcible oral sex — are planning to appeal the verdict in the coming weeks.

Aidala and Kamins said on the podcast that the appeal would focus on the “flawed jury selection process.”

The fallen Hollywood titan, currently locked up at the Wende Correctional Facility in Erie County, faces another sex crimes case in Los Angeles.

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