Harvey Weinstein will surrender Friday in New York on sex-crime charges, officials say

Harvey Weinstein may finally be ready to face the music.

The disgraced studio chief is planning to turn himself in Friday to the New York Police Department and Manhattan District Attorney's office to be charged with sex crimes, according to the Associated Press. New York Daily News was the first outlet to report the story.

Weinstein will face charges in connection with raping one woman and forcing another to perform oral sex on him, The New York Times reported Thursday night. One case involves charges of first-degree and third-degree rape and the second includes a charge of first-degree criminal sex act, the Times reported.

The victim in the case involving the rape charge has not been publicly identified, but the criminal sex act charge is connected to the case of Lucia Evans (formerly Lucia Stoller), the Times says.

Evans met Weinstein at a New York club in 2004 when she was an aspiring actress. She declined his offers to meet until his assistant called to schedule a meeting during the day.

Evans told The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow that when she arrived at Miramax's New York offices, she was escorted to a room where she was left alone with Weinstein. He both flattered her and recommended she lose weight if she wanted to be cast on Project Runway, which was owned by his studio at the time. “After that is when he assaulted me,” Evans told the magazine. “He forced me to perform oral sex on him. I said, over and over, ‘I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t.' ” In the end, she said, “He’s a big guy. He overpowered me.”

The reports of Weinstein's surrender come nearly eight months after the Times exposed three decades of alleged sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to rape brought by more than 85 women, including Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Salma Hayek, Lupita Nyong'o and Gwyneth Paltrow. Soon afterward, Weinstein decamped to Arizona to seek treatment. 

A representative for the New York D.A.'s office declined to comment to USA TODAY on Weinstein's reported surrender plans. He has been under investigation for months in New York, Los Angeles and London.

Weinstein has maintained all along that he never had non-consensual sex with any of his accusers. Several of the actresses who have made allegations against Weinstein, including Rose McGowan and Annabella Sciorra, applauded his impending arrest on social media.

Defense attorney Benjamin Brafman, who represents Weinstein in New York-related cases, and Weinstein's publicist, Juda Engelmayer, did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. 

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that Brafman had been advised Weinstein was a "principal target" of an investigation being conducted by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. 

"I am trying my very best to persuade both the federal and state prosecutors that he should not be arrested and or indicted because he did not knowingly violate the law," Brafman told the court in a declaration related to The Weinstein Company's bankruptcy proceedings. He added that allegations Weinstein forced himself on women were "entirely without merit."

"As the court can appreciate, saving someone from unwarranted criminal prosecution is far more significant than having a baseless prosecution implode months or years from now after Mr. Weinstein's life and the lives of his family have been irreparably destroyed," he added.

Weinstein became a larger-than-life figure in Hollywood as co-founder of the "mini-major" studios Miramax (started in 1979) and The Weinstein Company (2005), producing and distributing awards-friendly films like Oscar best-picture winners The Artist and The King’s Speech.

The domineering studio head amassed tremendous influence with his strong personality, his ability to identify and champion artistic projects, and his track record of Oscar success — the latter cemented when Weinstein's Shakespeare in Love was a shock best-picture winner over Steven Spielberg's heavily favored Saving Private Ryan in 1999.

The Weinstein scandal has triggered a cascade of accusations against Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and Morgan Freeman, among others. 

Contributing: Bryan Alexander, Bill Keveney and The Associated Press