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In this image taken from court video, Harvey Weinstein attends a hearing from Wende Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison, near Buffalo, N.Y, on April 30, 2021.The Associated Press

For a year, Harvey Weinstein has been fighting attempts to extradite him from a prison near Buffalo, New York, to Los Angeles, a city where he was once feted as a visionary film producer and now faces multiple charges of rape and sexual assault.

On Friday, a New York judge said that Weinstein could be taken into custody by California authorities May 30, unless his lawyer comes up with a new argument or Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York decides to weigh in to halt the extradition.

Weinstein’s lawyer pledged to file a new motion to challenge the transfer. There has been no indication that Cuomo plans to intervene, and a spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The judge, Kenneth Case of Erie County Court, said that if there were no further delays, California authorities could arrange Weinstein’s transfer in 30 days.

If Weinstein is transferred, he will be held in the jail ward of a Los Angeles County hospital while he awaits trial.

Weinstein, 69, was convicted of felony sex crimes in New York in 2020.

The producer was first charged in California in January 2020 after two women said he assaulted them in 2013. One woman, an Italian model and actress, said Weinstein raped her in a Beverly Hills hotel, while another woman, also a model, said he trapped her in a bathroom while he groped her and masturbated.

In April, prosecutors added another charge, accusing Weinstein of sexually assaulting another woman, and in October, they added six additional counts of forcible sexual assault.

Weinstein faces a total of four counts each of forcible oral copulation and forcible rape, two counts of sexual battery by restraint and one count of sexual penetration by use of force, for crimes dating from 2004 to 2013 involving five women.

If convicted of the most serious charges, Weinstein faces additional decades in prison, which he would serve after the 23-year sentence he is serving in New York. Earlier this month, Weinstein filed an appeal, asking for that conviction to be reversed.

Weinstein’s lawyers have mounted a furious battle to delay his transfer to California. Friday’s hearing came just over two weeks after another at which his extradition was delayed. His lawyers have consistently cited the pandemic as well as what they say is Weinstein’s ill health in their attempts to slow the process.

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