Cuomo orders a review of Vance's handling of Weinstein investigation

Vance said at the time that there was insufficient evidence, a defense he repeated last year after an outpouring of accusations against Weinstein reopened scrutiny of the decision, and also cast light on Vance’s acceptance of campaign donations from Weinstein’s lawyers.

“We are confident that any review will confirm that our office has pursued its investigation without fear or favor, based on the merits alone,” Danny Frost, a spokesman for the district attorney, said in a statement Monday evening. He said the office would provide the attorney general with “any necessary information.”

Cuomo’s announcement of the investigation, which will be conducted by Eric Schneiderman, came hours after Time’s Up, the star-powered organization dedicated to fighting sexual harassment in Hollywood and beyond, wrote a letter to the governor calling on him to open an investigation into Vance’s decision.

“It is of great concern that sexual assault cases have not been pursued with full vigor by our criminal justice system,” Cuomo said in a statement. “It is critical not only that these cases are given the utmost attention but also that there is public confidence in the handling of these cases.”

The announcement also came the same day that Cynthia Nixon, an actress and education activist, announced her candidacy for governor; Nixon, a Democrat, is widely expected to challenge Cuomo from the left.

Vance’s office is investigating other claims against Weinstein, including that he twice raped actress Paz de la Huerta. Cuomo’s statement said the review of Ambra Battilana’s case would not interfere with those open investigations, which he said would conclude within about 45 days. Afterward, the statement said, Schneiderman would review the entire matter and decide if further action was warranted.

“We are deeply familiar with Harvey Weinstein’s years of egregious sexual abuse and recently filed a civil rights lawsuit against him alleging severe and persistent abuse of employees at The Weinstein Co.,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “We are committed to pursuing a full, fair and independent review of this matter.”

Reports of possible conflicts of interest between Vance and Weinstein have circulated since October, when a deluge of accusations against Weinstein, once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, sparked an international reckoning around sexual abuse. Two of the lawyers Weinstein retained after being brought in for questioning about his encounters with Battilana had personal and financial ties to Vance: Elkan Abramowitz was a former law partner of Vance and a donor to his campaign, and Daniel S. Connolly was a former prosecutor turned white-collar defense lawyer.

Weinstein’s lawyers also brought on Linda Fairstein, a former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor and close friend of the head of the district attorney’s sex crimes bureau, as a consultant; she facilitated an introduction between Abramowitz and the bureau head, Martha Bashford.

And David Boies, a lawyer for Weinstein who hired a private investigative firm to dig up information in an attempt to stop The New York Times’ exposé on his client, has given $55,000 to Vance over the years. Boies has said he never spoke to Vance about any criminal investigation of Weinstein.

In Battilana’s case, Bashford determined after two weeks of investigation that she could not prove the crime of forcible touching or third-degree sexual abuse had been committed, even though she had the audio tape, Vance has said. Prosecutors judged it would be hard to prove Weinstein touched Battilana for sexual reasons because the advance came as the two were talking about Battilana becoming a lingerie model and whether her bosom had been surgically enhanced.

Prosecutors have wide discretion in deciding whether to pursue charges, and it is not uncommon for assistant district attorneys not to see eye-to-eye with detectives on the strength of a case. But the tensions over Vance’s decision in the case have exploded in recent months into an open feud between some detectives in the Police Department’s special victims unit and the district attorney.

For detectives, assembling enough evidence to establish that it is probable someone committed a crime — known in law as “probable cause” — is enough to make an arrest. Prosecutors, however, must take things further and prove every element of the crime in court, and that can often be a much higher bar.

“The police have a job to do, and we have a job to do, and they are very different jobs,” Vance said in an interview Monday night. “Our job is to ensure that any case that we bring has proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard we have to meet in court. Any other course of action only serves to hurt the victims of sex crimes. If you are trying cases where you don’t have the proof, that’s not going to be a satisfactory outcome for the survivor.”

Vance also issued a joint statement with the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, in which he called his office and the Police Department “fully committed partners in the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault.”

“From time to time we’ll have our disagreements, but we will never allow them to undermine this shared endeavor,” the statement said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Cuomo orders a review of Vance's handling of Weinstein investigation

Vance decided not to prosecute Weinstein even though his accuser, an Italian model, had provided police officers with a recording of Weinstein apologizing when she asked him why he had groped her breasts the day before.

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