NEW YORK (AP) — A former fashion model testifying in Harvey Weinstein ’s retrial on sexual assault charges was confronted on the stand Tuesday with a private journal in which she wrote about people who sexually abused her, but notably left out the disgraced former Hollywood mogul.
Michael Cibella, a lawyer for Weinstein, noted that the journal by Kaja Sokola names at least two people who had sexually assaulted her. Neither one of them, she acknowledged to the jury in Manhattan, was Weinstein.
Instead, the “Pulp Fiction” producer is mentioned in the writings for altogether different reasons. Under an entry for “Harvey W” Sokola wrote that he was “promising me help,” but “nothing came out of it.”
“The trauma that Harvey Weinstein inflicted on you was that he made promises that he didn’t keep, even as you accused two other men of sexually assaulting you,” Cibella said.
The Polish model, now a 39-year-old psychotherapist, pushed back at the characterization.
“That’s your interpretation and I’ll leave that with you,” Sokola responded from the witness stand. “Harvey made promises he didn’t keep -- and he sexually assaulted me.”
Earlier in the day, Sokola had argued that the journal, which she wrote in Polish in 2015, shouldn’t be discussed in open court at all.
She said the writing has been part of her treatment for substance abuse. One of the steps of the program, she explained, was to list all the people and things with which she held resentment.
“This is very inappropriate,” Sokola pleaded as one of Weinstein’s attorneys began to cite portions of the text to the jury. “Please don’t read that. This is my personal things. I’m not on trial here.”
Judge Curtis Farber assured Sokola that he would only permit limited questioning around the document. He also said he had concerns about the journal’s completeness and authenticity and wondering how defense lawyers had obtained what appeared to be private medical records.
“This might backfire tremendously” for the defense, Farber said at one point, as prosecutors also strongly opposed inclusion of the journal as evidence in the trial. “That’s the risk they’re willing to take.”
Weinstein's lawyers, in their cross-examination of Sokola that began Friday, have sought to cast Sokola as a wannabe actor who tried to leverage her consensual relations with the former studio boss.
Cibella, to that end, quizzed Sokola on Tuesday about what she told prosecutors during a 2020 interview.
He contended that a prosecutor’s handwritten notes from the meeting don’t include any mention of Weinstein using force or tearing off her clothes, as she’s described the incident to jurors in her testimony.
“Is it a fact that you never made an allegation in 2020 that Mr. Weinstein used force?” Cibella asked.
“That is a lie,” Sokola fired back.
Cibella also questioned Sokola about her communications with Weinstein in the years after she claimed he had sexually assaulted her in 2006.
Among them were phone messages, text messages and emails in which she tried to meet up in person with the co-founder of the production company Miramax or asked him for help on various movie industry opportunities.
Sokola, who is expected to return to the stand on Wednesday, testified last week that Weinstein exploited her dreams of an acting career to subject her to unwanted sexual advances, starting days after they met in 2002, while she was a 16-year-old on a modeling trip to New York.
Some of those allegations are beyond the legal time limit for criminal charges, but Weinstein faces a criminal sex act charge over Sokola’s claim that he forced oral sex on her in 2006.
Prosecutors added the charge to the landmark #MeToo case last year, after an appeals court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction. The guilty verdict pertained to allegations from two other women, who also have testified or are expected to testify at the retrial.
Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty and denies ever sexually assaulting anyone.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who allege they have been sexually assaulted, but Sokola has given her permission to be identified.
Associated Press reporter Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this story.
Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.
Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in state court in Manhattan in New York, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (Justin Lane/Pool Photo via AP)
Kaja Sokol arrives at Manhattan criminal court before the start of Harvey Weinstein's trial in New York, on Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (Bing Guan/Pool Photo via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”
The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.
With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next?
“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”
Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.”
Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.
Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.
Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”
Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.
“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.
Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.
Trump on Sunday mocked Denmark’s efforts at boosting Greenland’s national security posture, saying the Danes have added “one more dog sled” to the Arctic territory’s arsenal.
Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON."
“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark's chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump's influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.
The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.
The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Rubio, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside, to make sure there are no traitors.”
Trump said that “a lot” of Cuban guards tasked with protecting Maduro were killed in the operation. The Cuban government said in a statement read on state television on Sunday evening that 32 officers were killed in the U.S. military operation.
Trump also said that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, is in tatters and will slide further now with the ouster of Maduro, who provided the Caribbean island subsidized oil.
“It's going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It's going down for the count.”
Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”
Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.
“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.
Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”
“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.
AP writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba, and Darlene Superville traveling aboard Air Force One contributed reporting.
In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)
