Actress Rose McGowan is seeking to have drug charges against her in Loudoun County, Virginia, thrown out, in part because she has been targeted for accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of rape.
After McGowan came to Washington, D.C., for the Women's March in January 2017, cocaine was found in a wallet she left on a plane at Dulles International Airport and a warrant was issued for her arrest.
In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for McGowan argue that the five hours between the plane landing and the wallet being found make it impossible to prove the cocaine was hers.
Moreover, defense attorney Jessica Carmichael writes, McGowan's case is "complicated by the Harvey Weinstein machine."
She noted that Weinstein hired private investigators to stop McGowan and others from coming forward with sexual assault allegations against him, according to multiple news reports. Before the warrant was public, Weinstein held a meeting with his private investigators focused on the charge, Carmichael said.
McGowan tweeted at United Airlines that she had forgotten her wallet on the plane, which Carmichael notes let hundreds of thousands of people know where it was.
"There were individuals specifically employed to target Ms. McGowan," Carmichael wrote. "It is possible, if not likely, that the cocaine was placed in the wallet well after Ms. McGowan lost possession of it."
A spokesperson for Weinstein did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
More technically, Carmichael argues that even if McGowan did possess the cocaine at some point, it's impossible to prove whether she still did when the plane landed at Dulles. If the crime was committed in the air, it would be a federal rather than a state concern.
McGowan has asked for a hearing on the matter on March 12.