The case against Harvey Weinstein suffered a massive blow when prosecutors had to admit the lead detective on the case advised one of the alleged victims to delete information from her phone.
Prosecutors sent a letter Wednesday to Weinstein's attorney, Ben Brafman, informing him that NYPD Det. Nicholas DiGaudio had a conversation with the alleged rape victim about the contents of her phone before she turned it over to the D.A.'s Office.
According to the letter, the woman was concerned about prosecutors seeing things on her phone. It's unclear if that info was relevant to the case -- but the problem for prosecutors is, according to the letter, Det. DiGaudio told her to delete anything she was concerned about, and added ... "we just won't tell [the assistant D.A]."
It's a huge setback for the prosecution, especially on the heels of the Lucia Evans bombshell. As we reported, DiGaudio failed to disclose a witness statement to prosecutors -- and, as a result, the sexual assault charge against Weinstein was dropped.
The D.A.'s Office says it's still moving forward with the case against Weinstein.
Brafman tells TMZ, "Only those totally uninformed would suggest that these are 'technical' issues. Nothing is further from the truth. The fact is that these issues undermine the fundamental integrity of the judicial process. This case is falling apart because it is a fundamentally bad case and bad cases eventually fall apart even when law enforcement officials try and stack the deck against the accused."