It’ll be the trial of the century. After all, there’s no way this dirtbag cops a plea. From the prosecution’s end, letting him plead out in exchange for leniency would be a political disaster. They’d prefer to do that, I’m sure, given how hard rape is to prove and how formidable Weinstein’s defense team is likely to be but he’s simply too infamous now to go easy on him. From Weinstein’s end, any sort of plea to a crime as serious as rape would still mean years in prison, where he’d be brutalized. It’d also require him to admit his guilt, which would render him completely toxic in the industry (to the extent that he isn’t already). He’s better off going the O.J. route and hoping against hope that there are no other recent victims with enough evidence to make a second, or third, or 20th prosecution feasible even if he’s acquitted in the first case.

The sheer number of women who’ve accused him means this turd could conceivably be on trial in one forum or another for years.

Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Friday that investigators have interviewed actress Paz de la Huerta, who publicly accused Weinstein of raping her twice in her apartment in 2010.

Boyce said detectives found the “Boardwalk Empire” actress’ story believable and corroborated portions of her account…

The factors that made her story credible included: “The ability to articulate each and every minute of the crime, where she was, where they met, where this happened and what he did,” he said.

We would have arrested Weinstein immediately if the case was recent, said Boyce, but since it allegedly happened seven years ago there’s homework to do before getting a warrant. The NYPD detective who’s leading the Weinstein investigation told Vanity Fair that based on his interviews with de la Huerta, he thinks they already have enough to arrest him. Here’s what she claims Weinstein did after they ran into each other a bar in Manhattan; they had first met when she was a child actress but at this point she was 26. See if it sounds familiar:

Weinstein offered de la Huerta a ride home to Tribeca. In de la Huerta’s account of the night, Weinstein arrived at her apartment demanding to come inside and have a drink. “Things got very uncomfortable very fast,” the actress, now 33, told Vanity Fair in a phone interview on Wednesday.

“Immediately when we got inside the house, he started to kiss me and I kind of brushed [him] away,” de la Huerta said. “Then he pushed me onto the bed and his pants were down and he lifted up my skirt. I felt afraid. . . . It wasn’t consensual . . . It happened very quickly. . . . He stuck himself inside me. . . . When he was done he said he’d be calling me. I kind of just laid on the bed in shock.”

De la Huerta described a second assault that allegedly happened in late December 2010, when Weinstein showed up in her building lobby after she came home from a photo shoot. The actress said she had been drinking, and was frightened by Weinstein, who had been repeatedly calling her, despite her asking him to leave her alone. “He hushed me and said, ‘Let’s talk about this in your apartment,’” de la Huerta said. “I was in no state. I was so terrified of him. . . . I did say no, and when he was on top of me I said, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ He kept humping me and it was disgusting. He’s like a pig. . . . He raped me.”

That’s strikingly similar to what Annabella Sciorra claims Weinstein did to her. Same M.O.: Weinstein chivalrously offers an actress a ride home, then suddenly demands to come inside. Once he’s through the door, he’s on top of the them and then inside them. And then, not content to have raped them once, he pesters them again later. Sciorra remembers Weinstein descending upon her hotel three years later in hopes of another encounter. De la Huerta says he came back after just a month. Note well: The alleged Sciorra and de la Huerta rapes were 18 years apart. How many other actresses were offered a ride home by Big Harv in the interim?

As for how they’re going to prove it was rape, Vanity Fair claims the NYPD has a letter from de la Huerta’s therapist attesting to the fact that she was told about the incidents at the time. De la Huerta apparently also told a journalist in 2014 what had happened — and the conversation was recorded. It’s clear that she didn’t concoct her story recently, after the Weinstein stories began to break. (A useful lesson from this in case you’re ever victimized: If you’re not comfortable telling the cops immediately, tell *someone*. Contemporaneous accounts are key to establishing credibility later.) Whether that’s enough to get the prosecution to “beyond a reasonable doubt” I’ll leave for legal eagles to opine on. Considering how unlikely it is that physical evidence survives from Weinstein’s alleged crimes, it may be that if you can’t convict him based on the sort of evidence de la Huerta has, you can’t convict him, period.

Exit question: Why would the NYPD announce that they’re moving towards an arrest? This degenerate could be on a private jet to a non-extradition country tomorrow, never to set foot in the U.S. again.