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Michael R. Sisak, Tom Hays and Jennifer Peltz of The Associated Press wrote:Warning: This story includes graphic language of a sexual nature.

NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein was sentenced Wednesday to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault, a sight the Hollywood mogul's multitude of accusers thought they would never see.

Weinstein, who has been accused of violating scores of women, was convicted last month of raping a woman in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on another woman at his apartment in 2006. He faced a maximum of 29 years in prison.

Both women that Weinstein was convicted of assaulting — a once-aspiring actress and a former TV and film production assistant — spoke in court Wednesday before Judge James Burke announced the sentence, confronting Weinstein again after their testimony helped seal his conviction at the landmark #MeToo trial.

Burke also heard from Weinstein’s lawyers, who pleaded for leniency because of his age and frail health, and prosecutors, who said the man once celebrated as a titan of Hollywood deserved a harsh sentence that would account for allegations of wrongdoing dating to the 1970s.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below:

Harvey Weinstein told a court Wednesday that the men facing allegations in the #MeToo movement are being accused of “things that none of us understood,” saying he was confused by the rape case that was about to put him in prison.

“Thousands of men are losing due process. I’m worried about this country,” the disgraced Hollywood mogul said after two of his accusers confronted him in court.

Weinstein faced at least five years and up to 29 years behind bars in the landmark #MeToo case. He was convicted of raping an aspiring actress in 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on former TV and film production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006. A second criminal case is pending in California.

Onlookers applauded the two women whom Weinstein was convicted of assaulting as they arrived in court.

Haleyi broke into tears as she told Judge James Burke that the 2006 attack scarred her deeply, made her rethink her career in the entertainment business and left her feeling paranoid and afraid of retaliation. She said she avoids dating because she doesn’t want to hurt people, have them feel embarrassed or distance themselves when they find out what happened to her.

“I believe that if Harvey Weinstein was not convicted by this jury, it would happen again and again and again,” Haleyi said.

The once-aspiring actress that Weinstein was convicted of raping in 2013 recalled the moment during the trial when she left the witness stand in tears and then could be heard screaming from an adjacent room.

“The day my screams were heard from the witness room was the day my voice came back to its full power,” she said.

“Rape is not just one moment of penetration. It is forever.”

She said she was a victim of “rape paralysis” caused by a physically imposing assailant “who had every advantage over me." Like many of Weinstein’s accusers, she said he used his Hollywood prestige to befriend her, dangling professional prospects to gain her trust.

“It takes a very special kind of evil to exploit connections to leverage rape,” she said.

The Associated Press has a policy of not naming people who have been sexually assaulted without their consent. It is withholding the rape accuser's name because it is not clear whether she wishes to be identified.

Prosecutors asked for a sentence at or near the maximum.

Weinstein, who has maintained that any sexual any sexual activity was consensual, said he had fond memories of his accusers.

Looking back during the trial at emails they exchanged, he said, he thought they had a good friendship: “I’m not going to say these aren’t great people. I had wonderful times with these people. I’m just genuinely confused. Men are confused about this issue.”

Weinstein’s lawyers are seeking the minimum sentence of five years in prison because of his age and frail health. Attorney Arthur Aidala told the court the ex-mogul was a “broken-down man.”

Weinstein, who turns 68 next week, used a walker throughout the trial following recent back surgeries and arrived in the courthouse Wednesday in a wheelchair. After his Feb. 24 conviction, he split time between a hospital and a jail infirmary unit, and had a stent inserted last week to unblock an artery.

Four other women who testified against him, including Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra, sat side-by-side in the courtroom audience but weren't permitted to speak at his sentencing under state law.

One of those witnesses, Tarale Wulff, who accused Weinstein of raping her in 2005, said in a statement Tuesday that she hoped that the sentence “sends a clear message that times have changed.”

The executive behind such Oscar-winning films as Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction became Exhibit A for the #MeToo movement after years of whispers about his alleged behavior burst into public view in The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017.

More than 90 women, including actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Salma Hayek and Uma Thurman, eventually came forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual assault and sexual harassment. The takedown energized the #MeToo campaign of speaking up about sexual assault and holding perpetrators accountable.

One of Weinstein's lawyers, Donna Rotunno, told the court he faced an uphill fight from the start of the trial, with media coverage of his allegations and the #MeToo movement making it impossible for him to get a truly fair shake.

“How can we deny the fact that what happened before we walked in here had an impact?” Rotunno asked.

Weinstein was convicted on two counts: criminal sex act for the 2006 assault and rape in the third degree for the 2013 attack. He was acquitted of first-degree rape and two counts of predatory sexual assault stemming from Sciorra’s allegations of a mid-1990s rape.

Newly unsealed documents show the 67-year-old former film producer sought help from billionaires Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg as sexual misconduct allegations against him piled up in October 2017, and that he considered issuing a statement at the time claiming that he was suicidal. There is no evidence to suggest either man responded.

After sentencing, Weinstein will be transferred to the state prison system.

Martin Horn, a former city corrections commissioner, said Weinstein’s celebrity status could make him a target for another inmate looking to make a name for himself, while the gravity of his convictions and sentence could raise suicide concerns.

“They're going to make sure that nothing happens to him while he's in their custody. Not because he's important, but just from a public relations point of view, it would be awfully embarrassing," said Horn, who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Just as jury selection was about to get under way in the New York case in January, Weinstein was charged in California with raping a woman at a Los Angeles hotel on Feb. 18, 2013 and sexually assaulting a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel suite the next night.

CBS News Staff wrote:Former Fox News employees are demanding to be released immediately from non-disclosure agreements over sexual harassment claims. Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky are among six former employees reportedly pushing to share their stories publicly. The signed agreements, also known as NDAs, often trade silence for money.

NBC News released former employees from their NDAs last week, which inspired the push at Fox News. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, women are calling them unfair silencers that sweep sexual misconduct claims under the rug.

CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan asked the women why they're pushing for this now.

"Because I think this is the latest phase in the revolution. We've made so much progress over the last three years," Carlson said.

"We want to speak for ourselves. We had a voice for a very long time," Roginsky said.

Carlson and Roginsky aren't allowed to talk publicly about alleged sexual harassment working at Fox News.

"The way in which we continue to subjugate women and keep them down is through NDA's and silencing them. It's really a harasser's best friend," Carlson said.

But now they said they're tired of being silent.

"I want to do it for the thousands of women in our country who maybe don't have the national platform to speak out," Carlson said.

Carlson was the first of numerous women silenced after settling lawsuits against Fox News and its then-president, Roger Ailes, for claims of sexual harassment and discrimination. Ailes died in 2017.

"Some would say a company didn't make you sign a settlement. What do you say to that?" Duncan asked.

"I say that that's the way we have decided as a culture to resolve sexual harassment cases and it's wrong," Carlson said.

In a lawsuit, Carlson alleged Ailes "sabotaged her career because she refused his sexual advances." Court documents alleged Carlson was terminated from the network in 2016.

Roginsky said Ailes and Fox News denied her a regular spot hosting The Five after she refused to have a sexual relationship with the former network chief.

"You all were awarded money, compensated financially – you can't even say that?" Duncan asked.

"No," Carlson said, shaking her head.

The women also aren't allowed to discuss the way they're being portrayed in recent movies. Carlson is played by Nicole Kidman in the movie, Bombshell, which tells the story about the takedown of Ailes.

"We would've liked to have been able to tell our sides of the story, so that's strange and frustrating," Carlson said.

"If Fox is not going to release these women from their NDAs, are they going to go public anyway? Well, if they do, they know what the consequences are, and they are big in terms of dollars," CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman said.

Roginsky said she doesn't know what the consequences would be if she spoke out, and "I don't want to find out," she said.

"The onus shouldn't be on us to try and find out. The onus should be on the companies to release us. This is not an issue that's only emblematic of one industry or one political persuasion, its emblematic of an entire culture and a society that tells women that they need to keep quiet… and that has to end," Roginsky said.

Fox News had no comment about releasing people from NDA agreements. Many companies, including CBS, have used non-disclosure agreements. When we asked CBS about its use of them, the network said it previously released people from confidentiality provisions in order to allow them to speak with investigators.

Annie Karni of The New York Times wrote:

WASHINGTON — The article was published without any great fanfare last week. “Trump’s Big Trade Opening” was the headline of the op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, which outlined how President Trump had created opportunities to advance free trade “more consequentially than his recent predecessors.”

More surprising than the content of a pro-Trump opinion column by a former administration official was the byline on it. The piece was written by Rob Porter, who resigned as the White House staff secretary in February 2018 amid domestic abuse accusations from both of his former wives. The Journal did not mention the circumstances that led to Mr. Porter’s departure.

Mr. Porter, who still lives in Washington and had been one of Mr. Trump’s most influential aides, has stayed out of the public eye since his resignation. Some saw his op-ed article as a first step toward re-entering the public arena after a year in the shadows.

But a response published on Thursday in The Washington Post by one of Mr. Porter’s former wives was the latest reminder that in the era of the #MeToo movement, a quiet comeback is complicated and a simple timeout, for many, is not viewed as enough.

“Rob’s sudden return to the public eye is deeply troubling to me,” wrote Jennifer Willoughby, who was married to Mr. Porter from 2009 to 2013, “because he has yet to candidly address the thing that should — that must — come first: his personal conduct during his two marriages.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/re-emergence-of-trump-aide-accused-of-abuse-is-deeply-troubling-ex-wife-says/ar-BBV4tx6

Betsy Klein, Allie Malloy and Kate Sullivan of CNN wrote:President Donald Trump0 mocked the #MeToo movement again at his rally in Pennsylvania on Wednesday night, citing the "rules of MeToo" as the reason he wasn't "allowed" to use an expression.

When talking about winning the state in the 2016 presidential election Trump said, "Pennsylvania hasn't been won for many years by Republicans, but every Republican thinks they're going to win Pennsylvania. ... I used an expression -- you know, there's an expression but under the rules of MeToo I'm not allowed to use that expression anymore. I can't do it."

"It's the person that got away," Trump continued. "See, in the old days, it was a little different," the President added, laughing as a rally attendee told him from the crowd to "do it anyway."

"I would do it, except for these people up there," Trump said, pointing at the cameras and press at the rally. "They would say, did you hear what President Trump said?"

He continued, "So there is an expression, but we'll change the expression: Pennsylvania was always the person who got away, that's pretty good, right, the person that got away?"

It's another shot at the movement that began following the publication of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. The revelation of the allegations against the powerful Weinstein inspired many women to reveal their own stories of sexual assault, but Trump has recently taken shots at the #MeToo movement by expressing concern for men who are accused of sexual assault or harassment and saying, "Women are doing great."

"It is a very scary time for young men in America, where you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of," Trump said to reporters last week. "This is a very, very -- this is a very difficult time. What's happening here has much more to do than even the appointment of a Supreme Court justice."

Trump had earlier mocked the #MeToo movement at a rally in July. He did so while simultaneously mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and saying that should she win the Democratic nomination in 2020 and they were to debate, he would toss an ancestry test to her and dare her to take it.

"We'll take that little kit and say -- we have to do it gently because we are in the MeToo generation -- and we will very gently take that kit, slowly toss it" to her, Trump said, adding that he would offer $1 million to charity if she took the test and it "shows you are an Indian."

More recently, his attacks on California professor Christine Blasey Ford were seen as a direct pushback against the #MeToo movement. Ford accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when the two were in high school. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.

"Guilty until proven innocent," Trump lamented at a Mississippi rally October 2, to booing from the crowd. "That's very dangerous for our country. That's very dangerous for our country. And I have it myself all the time. But for me, it's like a part of the job description."

During the 2016 presidential campaign, at least 13 women accused Trump of misbehavior ranging from sexual harassment to sexual assault. They came forward in the wake of a 2005 Access Hollywood tape that was released in October 2016 in which he is caught saying on a hot mic: "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the p***y. You can do anything."

The President denies all the allegations against him.

The White House -- through press secretary Sarah Sanders and others -- has dismissed the allegations against him as old news that was litigated during the campaign.

Dominic Patten of Deadline wrote:

being designated a sexually violent predator, Bill Cosby has been sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison by a Pennsylvania judge after being convicted for the 2004 rape of former Temple University employee Andrea Constand.

Cosby will serve “no less than three years and no more than 10 years,” Judge Steven O’Neill said Tuesday, adding that the actor also must pay a fine and court costs.

See Cosby led away in handcuffs here from a pool camera in the Norristown, PA courthouse:

JUST IN: Bill Cosby led away from courtroom in handcuffs after judge denied him bail during pending appeals. https://t.co/Qh9dIopcxR pic.twitter.com/zI3RpdwkLK

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) September 25, 2018

The ruling comes nearly three years after the much accused actor once known as “America’s Dad” was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Constand. With Cosby sitting in the Norristown, PA courthouse, the long-expected decision comes six months after a jury found Cosby guilty of all three counts in a retrial.

Almost as soon as the sentence was read, Cosby’s lawyers moved to have a motion for bail pending appeal, which was denied. In a case that has seen frequent efforts by various defense attorneys to pause or stop the proceedings, the initial move seemed to annoy O’Neill and the Montgomery County D.A.’s office, the latter referring to it as “nonsense and show.”

After a short break, O’Neill officially ended the hearing and told the defense team they could file additional paperwork if they chose but there was no bail happening today.

With the sentence, Cosby must serve at least three years in state prison before he can hope to petition for some form of supervised release. However, under Pennsylvania law, having the ability to seek supervised release is no assurance he will get it.

“No one is above the law,” O’Neil said today from the bench to Cosby, who was seated just in front of him in the courtroom, adding it’s no matter their “wealth, fame, celebrity or even philanthropy” — a clear dig at the latter element Cosby’s lawyers frequently brought up regarding their client’s character.

Proclaiming he felt feel a duty to “the public, the Commonwealth and the defendant,” O’Neill said there would be “no probation, no limited confinement” such as home arrest. “I am compelled to consider the guidelines,” O’Neill told the court of the prison time, which could have been up to four years under legislative rules.

“This is a court of law and I plan to sentence you under the law,” O’Neill said.

As attorneys for Cosby file their appeal, their client will have to cool his heels in prison while that case moves up to the state Supreme Court. His prison time will start immediately in a state facility; he had been under house arrest and out on $1 million bail.

Reading poetry of a great fall and noting “who he is and who he was,” O’Neill also told Cosby while reading his sentence that he will have to participate in sex offenders treatment while behind bars.

More than 60 women have come forward in the past few years with accounts of Cosby drugging and assaulting them, but the Pennsylvania action was the only criminal case in the country due to the Keystone State’s longer-than-usual statute of limitations for sex crimes. Constand and several other alleged victims were in the jam-packed courtroom this afternoon.

While Cosby looked shocked after the sentence was handed down, Constand and her family seemed calm. Once a short break had been called, the ex-Temple basketball coordinator stood and chatted, the relief on her face obvious.

Cosby is the first major conviction of the #MeToo and Time’s Up era that has seen the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, ex-CBS boss Les Moonves and others investigated, dethroned and, in the case of Weinstein, charged with crimes in the past year.

Having gone through a battalion of defense lawyers since being charged, Cosby sat in court yesterday and today as his current team tried to convince O’Neill to spare the 81-year-old prison time based on his age and health. But with more than 80 inmates older than Cosby in Pennsylvania’s prison system, and a recently opened $400 million facility for seniors with health issues like the actor, the argument never gained traction with either the judge or the D.A.

“You were old then,” the judge said while reading the sentence today, decimating the belief that Cosby is too old and sick for prison.

The guilty verdict at the April retrial held a combined sentence of up to 30 years, but on Monday the Montgomery County D.A. and the defense agreed to collapse the three counts into one with a 10-year maximum sentence. In recently filed paperwork and in closing arguments, D.A. Kevin Steele advocated for a sentence close to a decade plus fines and court costs. However, O’Neill indicated Monday he was looking at a sentence closer to the state guidelines of 22-36 months.

Surrounded by his legal team, including an already hired appeal lawyer, Cosby was in apparently intense conversation with the attorneys before the final stage of the sentencing hearing began Tuesday. Unlike when he became a convicted felon this spring, he did not verbally lash out at the prosecution with shouts of “a**hole.”

Today’s earlier ruling labeling Cosby a sexually violent predator means he must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and check in with state police monthly. With the prison time, Cosby will also be required to attend counseling and provide details of any change in residence once he is released.

As sources told Deadline today, Cosby will be handcuffed in the courtroom and led out by Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department deputies. He will then be taken to the lower part of the courthouse to complete paperwork before being transported to the nearby PA Department of Corrections’ SCI Phoenix facility to be further processed.

Even as Cosby has admitted in depositions in a civil suit more than 10 years ago to giving Constand several Benadryl pills on the night of the alleged assault in his Philadelphia-area mansion in 2004, Cosby has unsuccessfully insisted through various investigations and two trials that the encounter with the ex-Temple University employee was consensual.