Weinstein is serving 23 years in prison after being convicted on two out of five sexual assault and rape charges in a criminal trial in New York. New York’s highest court granted his legal team an appeal in that case, but decades of prison time loom if he is convicted on the seven charges he is facing in Los Angeles.

“It may be, since he’s going to prison for a long time, they decided to go for broke,” said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford law professor who has followed the trials, and Weinstein’s defense team may be hoping that these attacks “would work better in Los Angeles” as a “more cynical place about the transactional relationships among people” in Hollywood.