Of all the seemingly odious, apparently guilty-as-sin guys in the #MeToo realm, Harvey Weinstein has long been king of the hill. Or has certainly appeared this way. He’ll always wear this yoke, but recent developments indicate that the legal consequences may not be as stern as expected. Who knows?

I’d read about dicey handling of witnesses and evidence by New York Police Department detective Nicholas DiGaudio — one instance concerning Lucia Evans, and a second about DiGaudio having allegedly encouraged a Weinstein witness “to delete information from her phone before turning it over to the D.A.” There’s also a dispute about a Weinstein accuser,qba! Mimi Haleyi, having allegedly “sought to meet up with him seven months after [an] alleged assault.”

Weinstein’s attorney Ben Brafman is now claiming that “the entire prosecution has been tainted by police misconduct.”

Brafman is naturally required to be as aggressive as possible in trying to persuade New York authorities to drop the charges, but that’s standard grandstanding. What surprised me (or what I’d somehow been ignorant of) is an inside opinion, passed along today by Variety‘s Gene Maddaus, that the case against Weinstein “has been on the ropes since last month.” There are five remaining counts.

I know nothing, but what a shock to read that the case is apparently as wobbly as Brafman is claiming. Allegedly, I should say.