The Real Winner in Weinstein Case Is His Lawyer, Arthur Aidala

Arthur Aidala had an unexpected confession in his final message to jurors: His wife doesn’t always want to have sex with him.

“If you think every time I go, ‘Honey, let’s go,’ she’s ready for action?” he said, pointing out that his wife was in the courtroom. “No.” But, he said, “she acquiesces, ‘Okay fine, let’s go.’ This is surreal I’m talking about this.”

Aidala, the lawyer representing disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein at a rape retrial that ended in a mixed, partial verdict Thursday, was attempting to say in his summation that reluctant sex isn’t rape. Then he segued into a story about his own mother’s sexual appetite. An objection was sustained, but Aidala continued anyway.

“My dad said, ‘If the only time your mom and I ever fooled around is when your mom was ready to go, you and your sister would not be here,’” Aidala said. As jurors looked somewhere between aghast and amused, Aidala added a punchline: “It’s not true—my mom was always ready to go.”

After a six-week trial in Manhattan criminal court, Weinstein remains a convicted felon with decades of prison time hanging over him. But the ex-producer once known for helping actors win Oscars established a new leading man in Aidala, whose folksy showmanship at the trial amplified his profile.

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Amid the Weinstein case, Aidala’s influence expanded to TV, politics, and social media, paving the way for his continued presence in and out of court. He appeared as a CNN talking head on legal issues, became a top campaign cash bundler for New York mayoral frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, and capitalized on the trial headlines by posting them on social media, alongside his own "#FedoraFriday” selfies.

He’s squeezed that in while representing his other current high-profile client—ex-Eric Adams mayoral aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin, on bribery charges; becoming a regular on Megyn Kelly’s Sirius XM podcast, and hosting his own New York radio show.

The Weinstein trial “garnered the most publicity of any case I have ever tried,” Aidala told Bloomberg Law. “A client like Mr. Weinstein wants an outward-facing lawyer to tell his side of the story. He has been so bashed all over the place. He wanted someone to make sure the public knew some of the facts in his favor.”

Courting Controversy

Aidala has built a reputation for taking on controversial clients. He defended Steve Bannon in a Manhattan fraud case that ended in a guilty plea with no jail time, and Alan Dershowitz in a defamation case. But since this Weinstein case kicked off, his status has grown thanks to his hot takes in the courtroom and knack for self-promotion.

“He has a willingness to say things other people aren’t,” said Geraldo Rivera, the legal pundit and Aidala’s friend. “He is as big as he needs to be and can be without going over the line of being admonished.”

Aidala’s now part of a small set of New York attorneys who work for high-profile criminal defendants. There’s Quinn Emanuel’s Alex Spiro, who represented Eric Adams in a since-dropped corruption case. Or Karen and Marc Agnifilo, the legal power couple representing Sean Combs and Luigi Mangione.

Theatrical Moments

Born and raised in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood, Aidala projects an informal style. The summation on his sex life was one of many theatrical moments during the trial.

When a juror declined to come to court before deliberations, saying she was sick, and the judge sought to replace her, Aidala suggested the juror was pregnant and it wasn’t right to throw her off. (When the court inquired with the juror by phone, the juror responded, “Oh no, I hope I’m not pregnant!”) When the jury foreperson said he felt threatened by another juror, Aidala said 911 should be called and “a crime is being conducted in the jury room.”

“Most lawyers would have given a more clinical, antiseptic argument,” said former New York State Judge Barry Kamins, now Aidala’s law partner. “Arthur is a rarity.”

The two are named partners at Aidala Bertuna & Kamins, a boutique firm comprised of some 20 trial attorneys. Aidala cut his teeth as a prosecutor for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office before private practice.

“When I lecture to students, I always tell them they have to be themselves,” Aidala said. “My actions and performance in the courtroom is just me being me.”

“Not a Circus”

Aidala’s style has its critics. Nicole Blumberg, the assistant district attorney who tried the Weinstein case, began her summation, after Aidala’s riff on his sex life, saying, “This is not a circus—or it shouldn’t have been.” At another point, she noted his penchant for what she described as speculating.

During an argument outside the jury’s presence, Blumberg said she wouldn’t “take lessons” on handling sex crimes from him, to which he responded that he was litigating sex crimes “while you were in college.” (The two hugged it out after the verdict.)

And the verdict—one conviction, one acquittal, and one mistrial—leaves who was more effective an open question.

Yet even Blumberg appeared to adopt some of Aidala’s style by the trial’s end. During Aidala’s summation, he compared reasonable doubt to the time his grandmother dropped a bottle near the sauce she was cooking. She didn’t serve the “gravy,” he said, because of the chance a shard may have gotten in.

Blumberg’s parting words to the jury in her summation? “There is no glass in the sauce.”