Weinstein, Diddy Boys-Will-Be-Boys Tack Turns #MeToo on Its Head

Sean “Diddy” Combs was a bad-tempered womanizer. Harvey Weinstein was a cheater who dangled jobs for sex.

And this is from their attorneys.

It’s an unapologetic line of defense common to the New York courtrooms where the ex-industry titans are on trial simultaneously for alleged sex crimes: #MeToo be damned, boys will be boys.

The strategy is trying to capitalize on backlash over #MeToo that’s crept into the cultural currents. “Five years ago you really had to be careful,” Arthur Aidala, Weinstein’s attorney, told Bloomberg Law in reference to Weinstein’s first trial. This time, he said, “we don’t have to walk on eggshells.”

Their clients’ conduct, defense attorneys suggest, is something to roll an eye at—not criminalize. It’s not all admirable, the attorneys concede—but it’s not unfamiliar.

“Combs is one of those men, I submit, we all know,” Combs attorney Teny Geragos said in opening remarks Monday. “He is a many-woman man.”

Weinstein may have run a “casting couch,” Aidala said in his opening, but so have men “since the beginning of time.”

To be sure, the cases and defenses are different.

Weinstein is charged with sexually assaulting two women and raping one, all of whom were trying to make it in Hollywood. At the heart of Weinstein’s defense is that the sex was consensual.

Combs is charged with sex trafficking, racketeering, and transporting prostitutes—using his music industry power to run a crime ring that coerced women into drug-fueled sex parties. His attorneys have conceded domestic abuse but said the rapper’s been overcharged.

The strategies are familiar, though. “The defense attorneys are really not just defending but going on the offense as well,” said Gloria Allred, the famed feminist attorney who’s been attending both trials and brought civil suits against both men. “They’re treating this as some kind of male privilege.”

If both men are convicted, it could scare lawyers off the tactic and back toward defenses more focused on the prosecution’s high burden. After all, at every trial the judge tells jurors the defense isn’t obligated to put on a case at all.

But the spectacle of high-powered attorneys in simultaneous trials touting men behaving badly, rather than running from it, has already left a cultural mark.

There’s a vibe in the courtrooms and on the crowded streets of spectators outside of highly fragmented opinions based on hazy views of the facts, not just the he-did-or-he-didn’t view of a case like O.J. Simpson’s. That plays out in the social and entertainment media, where accomplished attorneys representing or allied with the two men appear on Megyn Kelly’s podcast and TMZ instead of traditional outlets for lawyers.

There, the discussion is about things other than the evidence—something that could work to the defense’s benefit. A TikTok and YouTube host who goes by Ms. Pleasant and runs “Da Pop Off Show” has been in and out of the federal courthouse, livestreaming from a bench outside and polling her audience for their thoughts. They’re split 50/50 on Combs’ innocence or guilt.

Provocateur podcasters like Joe Rogan and Candace Owens have taken to the airwaves in recent weeks to support Weinstein.

On a TMZ show earlier this month, Mark Geragos—the father of Combs’ attorney and himself an accomplished lawyer who represented the Menendez brothers in their resentencing—referred to the US attorneys prosecuting Combs as a “six pack of white women.”

That got him admonished by the judge presiding over Combs’ case, who called the remarks “outrageous,” according to a transcript obtained by Bloomberg Law. But it ended with a laugh after Judge Arun Subramanian said he’s “going to be listening” to Geragos’ TMZ show.

“As long as you subscribe,” Geragos said.

New York criminal defense attorney Ron Kuby was skeptical that the defense’s hard-charging tone would overcome the evidence against the two men. Defense attorneys for R. Kelly tried similar tactics but they didn’t work, he said. “They’re using it again because it’s all they have.”

Allred, who for decades has represented women accusing men of misconduct, is more circumspect: “It feels like we’re turning back the clock.”