Juda Engelmayer, a former owner of Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys on the Lower East Side, first met Harvey Weinstein in early 2018.
A few months earlier, Mr. Weinstein had been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women. The list of his accusers ultimately ballooned to more than 80.
As Mr. Engelmayer tells the story, Mr. Weinstein asked him to come on as his spokesman and made him a promise: “He said, ‘You know, Juda, I’m going to make you the most powerful P.R. person in Hollywood.’”
This, to Mr. Engelmayer, sounded delusional. “I said to him: ‘You know what, Harvey, you have problems to deal with. We can worry about me when we get through yours.’”
The five days a week Mr. Weinstein has spent in Manhattan Criminal Court for the past month serve as a pretty good indication the issues are still being worked through.
When they started, Mr. Engelmayer did have experience in the field of crisis communications. In the 1990s, he worked for Democratic politicians. He later represented a range of Israeli and Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Congress. But he knows that he got the job with Mr. Weinstein because no one higher on the call sheet said yes.
One of the strange things about crisis communications is that its most successful practitioners worry almost as much about their own reputations as the reputations of their clients. They take on work that is challenging, but winnable.
Yet by agreeing to represent Mr. Weinstein, Mr. Engelmayer carved out a niche for himself virtually unparalleled in modern public relations, becoming the go-to guy among a particular subset of alleged fraudsters and predators, the sort whose travails were tailor-made for Netflix. Which is exactly where many of their stories wound up.
He may not be the most powerful publicist in Hollywood, but he is at least the most powerful former bialy shop owner who represents people no one else will touch.
“Working for Harvey put me on the map and gave me access when I went out on my own that I wouldn’t have had on as one P.R. guy among many,” Mr. Engelmayer said. “Is that a bad thing to say? I don’t know. It’s the truth.”
The People Who Pay $10,000 a Month
Mr. Engelmayer, 56, is 6-foot-3, bald, and has the demeanor of a very droll dragon. He smiles barely at all and can be testy with his clients, who never stop calling. Yet he seems to enjoy his work a lot.
The job is a “long game,” said Mr. Engelmayer. “You’re rarely going to hit it out of the park, particularly with people as polarizing as the ones I represent. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of hand holding and a lot of brutal honesty.”
On a recent afternoon, this divorced father of three was ambling around his yellow shingled house in Teaneck, N.J., where the walls were covered in photographs of him with various New York Democrats, such as Carl McCall and Sheldon Silver, both of whom he worked for in the 1990s.
There was even a framed cartoon of a woman surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Scrawled in the corner was the artist’s signature: Anna Delvey, who brought Mr. Engelmayer on board in 2022 to help craft her public relations strategy. In 2019 she was convicted, as Anna Sorokin, of eight theft-related charges in New York State, including grand larceny and theft of services.
Don’t ask Mr. Engelmayer how she paid his fee. “I have no idea,” Mr. Engelmayer said, though he and Ms. Sorokin agree it was around $10,000 a month. (Other, more “time consuming” clients may pay as high as $25,000 to $30,000 a month, Mr. Engelmayer said.)
“Juda’s specialty is crisis, and he’s very comforting to talk to,” Ms. Sorokin explained by phone recently. “Every time I would need someone to vent to, he was the perfect person to speak to. He, like, knows New York. He’s not wide-eyed, he’s not impressionable, and it helps to have someone who is seasoned and used to dealing with the courts and the prison system.”
As of 2025, he now counts Nicole Daedone, the orgasmic meditation guru currently on trial in Brooklyn for conspiracy to commit forced labor, as a client.
Prosecutors say Ms. Daedone, the founder of OneTaste, a company that in its heyday was a distinctively San Francisco blend of tech and counterculture, sought to control her employees’ lives by withholding wages and instructing them to perform sex acts.
She said she sought Mr. Engelmayer out in 2018 after reading a single Hollywood Reporter piece that seemed to question whether one of Mr. Weinstein’s accusers was credible. Ms. Daedone calls Mr. Engelmayer a “fierce litigant” who instead of telling her to “duck and cover,” like other people did, advised her to face the accusations straight on.
Mr. Engelmayer also works with Charlie Javice, the founder of a college loan app who was convicted of fraud in March. And his client list includes a recent success: Carlos Watson, the former MSNBC commentator and media entrepreneur, who in July 2024 was convicted of defrauding investors in his company, Ozy Media. Mr. Watson managed to avoid the nearly 10 years in prison he was set to serve when President Trump commuted his sentence in March.
According to Mr. Engelmayer, Mr. Watson was introduced to Alice Marie Johnson, Mr. Trump’s pardon czar, by a prison activist named Topeka Sam. At the center of these unlikely introductions? Mr. Engelmayer. He brokered the connection through another client — Ms. Daedone.
‘Everyone’s at Diddy’
When Mr. Weinstein’s retrial began in April, it had been nearly impossible to get a seat. But on a recent Wednesday morning, plenty were available.
“Everyone’s at Diddy,” Mr. Engelmayer said from his second-row seat as an attorney for Mr. Weinstein cross-examined Kaja Sokola, a former model who claims that Mr. Weinstein assaulted her in 2006.
Mr. Engelmayer listened to the testimony, snickering repeatedly at the witness, until the proceedings wrapped around 1 p.m.
“Enjoy your lunch, Harvey,” said Mr. Engelmayer as someone wheeled Mr. Weinstein out of court.
Mr. Weinstein gave Mr. Engelmayer a blank stare and said nothing in response.
“Whatever,” said Mr. Engelmayer, who had dressed for court in a black cotton H & M jacket, a pair of black jeans and a pair of Skechers. On his lapel was a yellow ribbon in support of Israelis being held hostage by Hamas.
Earlier that day, The Hollywood Reporter had published an article about Ms. Sokola with the headline “Anonymous No More: Inside the Complicated Life of Harvey Weinstein’s Key Accuser.”
Mr. Engelmayer spotted the writer, Phoebe Eaton, in the courtroom and approached to provide Mr. Weinstein’s take on it: “He said it was fantastic.”
“I’m not out to please him,” she said.
“OK, I’ll just ignore you in the courtroom,” Mr. Engelmayer said, before heading out to the hallway and toward the elevator.
Thirty minutes later, Mr. Engelmayer sat inside a fourth-floor conference room in a Brooklyn courthouse with people from Ms. Daedone’s team, all of whom were cheerful, as if there were no greater privilege than being paid handsomely to wage war against people they see as woke and whiny.
Cellphones were banned in the courthouse but someone, Mr. Engelmayer said, had managed to get his in. He was now using it to attend to other business — a video call with a potential new client: Moshe Glick, who was recently charged with beating an Indian Muslim man with a flashlight at a pro-Palestinian rally in New Jersey.
Mr. Engelmayer peppered Mr. Glick with questions.
How many people had attended the event at which the altercation took place? Were police officers there? Was there footage? Did Mr. Glick have access to it, and if so, how did he obtain it?
Throughout, Mr. Engelmayer did much arching of his eyebrows. He did much cocking of his head to the left and the right. This typically preceded his getting annoyed with Mr. Glick. Which was shown largely in his face, as it got redder.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Mr. Engelmayer said, at one such point. “But they’re probably getting just as much pressure from the other side. … No. We do know that. Don’t assume we don’t know that.”
After about 30 minutes, he dispensed his prescription: “I think at this point you want to flood the market,” he said. “Leave no questions unanswered. Get your narrative out there.”
Then, he ended the call, stood up from his chair, and announced that he was going to the courtroom to watch the proceedings.
“I had dinner with my dad on Friday,” Mr. Engelmayer said on the way there. “He said, ‘Whatever comes out in the article, know that I love you.’ I just started laughing.” He explained that people rarely offer that disclaimer unless they’ve said something nasty.
The Path to Harvey
Sanctimony grates at Mr. Engelmayer, who acknowledges having heard the criticism that Mr. Weinstein is bad for the Jews. “He is!” he said. “But not everything I do is going to be for the good of the Jews or Israel.”
Mr. Engelmayer grew up on the Lower East Side in the Hillman Cooperatives, where one of his earliest memories is of seeing the dead body of a burglar in his hallway. The person who took him to see it was his mother, Rosalyn, an executive secretary at a Jewish day school.
“She was funny that way,” he remembered.
His father, Sheldon, was a journalist who worked at United Features Syndicate. After getting divorced from his mother while Juda was a little boy, the elder Mr. Engelmayer became a rabbi.
At Queens College, Mr. Engelmayer majored in English and minored in journalism. Shortly before graduation, he got an internship with the office of Sheldon Silver, the Lower East Side’s powerful (and later disgraced) state assemblyman.
In 1992, Mr. Silver referred Mr. Engelmayer to Carl McCall, who was on his way to becoming the New York State comptroller. He hired Mr. Engelmayer as an executive assistant.
Mr. McCall said in a phone interview that Mr. Engelmayer over the next seven years proved himself to be a “smart young fellow” who was “well connected in the Brooklyn Orthodox community.”
He also said he had been surprised to learn recently of the cast of characters Mr. Engelmayer now represents. “I don’t want to call them notorious,” he said. “I don’t want to sound judgmental. It’s just not what I would have expected.”
In 1998, Mr. Engelmayer formed a partnership with his brother-in-law to buy Kossar’s on the Lower East Side. The idea, as he describes it now, was for the shop to provide stable income while he pursued a career in politics. (That worked for a while, although his now ex-wife and his former brother-in-law made more than bialys together: They now live together in Delray Beach, Fla., public records show.)
Mr. Engelmayer went on to work for the firm Rubenstein Associates for a variety of clients, and eventually joined 5WPR in 2006.
One client of Mr. Engelmayer’s clients at 5W was Agriprocessors, which was a leading kosher slaughterhouse, and the source of controversy among Jewish leaders for its labor practices and accusations of mistreating animals. Its chief executive, Sholom Rubashkin, is an Orthodox Jew.
In May 2008, several virulent anti-Orthodox messages were posted on a blog called The Failed Messiah and signed by someone purporting to be Morris Allen, a conservative rabbi who had been one of the slaughterhouse’s biggest critics. An investigation by the blog determined that the IP addresses where the comments were posted from included the 5W offices and Mr. Engelmayer’s home in Teaneck.
Whoever had written them seemed to be trying to smear Mr. Allen.
Mr. Engelmayer claimed publicly that “an intern” was to blame and maintains to this day that this was true. Ronn Torossian, the chairman at 5W, didn’t seem to care either way. In an interview, he sang Mr. Engelmayer’s praises, saying he was a passionate and competent P.R. executive who worked for him for roughly a decade and had great success with the firm, handling difficult clients in thorny situations.
‘How Much Good Work Can Be Done?’
Mr. Weinstein’s first choice to represent him in 2017 was Matthew Hiltzik, who had been his spokesman at Miramax Films until 2005 and has since become a leading crisis manager, with clients who have included Brad Pitt, Alec Baldwin and Johnny Depp. Alas, Mr. Hiltzik turned him down, according to Mr. Weinstein.
“It was a shocker to me,” Mr. Weinstein said in a brief phone interview from his prison hospital last weekend. “I had great things to do with his career. But it was a tough time, and a lot of people ran away.”
Sallie Hofmeister, a veteran Los Angeles Times reporter who had gone into crisis communications, took the job, then parted ways with Mr. Weinstein after just three months.
The defense attorney Benjamin Brafman referred Mr. Weinstein to 5WPR, whose chairman decided Mr. Weinstein was just not worth it. “If you’re talking about an arch criminal or an axis of evil, how much good work can be done?” Mr. Torossian said. “I don’t know.”
He then collected a finder’s fee for referring Mr. Weinstein to Mr. Engelmayer, who by then had his own firm, with around a dozen employees.
Mr. Engelmayer agreed to take Mr. Weinstein on after hosting a Shabbat dinner with his three adult children, where, according to his daughter Arielle, 31, they voted unanimously that it would be fine.
Never mind the subsequent objections of her grandfather.
“In many ways, Juda is far more successful than I ever was,” Rabbi Engelmayer said. “A father has to take pride in that. And I do. I would take more pride if his clients were different people.”
When told of his father’s remarks, Mr. Engelmayer hurled an expletive at him. “This is my source of contention with him. He has no tolerance for anything or anyone he doesn’t like.”
“I’m very, very cynical about the world,” he continued. “I am realistic and I am cynical and I’m good at compartmentalizing. I don’t look at people holistically. You can’t. I have a relationship with my father, but if I looked at him holistically, I wouldn’t.”
This worldview now informs the work he does.
“One of the reasons wokeism isn’t something I adhere to is because you can’t look at someone and say they’re awful because of one thing,” he said. “If I looked at things that way, everyone in my life I would have had to walk away from. I try to keep myself morally centered while I help other people who are not.”
Reporters who deal with Mr. Engelmayer say they are sometimes surprised by the fact that he does a fair amount of smack talking about his clients. But Mr. Engelmayer says that it’s tactical. “It humanizes them,” he said of people such as Mr. Weinstein and Ms. Sorokin.
That makes it easier when he needs to spin.
“It makes reporters feel better,” he said.
Candace Owens Is on the Case
Even with Mr. Engelmayer’s Android device pressed against his ear, it was easy to identify the voice on the other end, thanks to the gravelly Queens accent.
“What’s going on,” Mr. Weinstein said.
“Harvey, what’s up? said Mr. Engelmayer, giving the kind of eye roll one makes upon receiving a call from an aged relative who yet again needs help operating the remote control.
Of course, that wasn’t the problem.
The actual problem was that a freelance journalist had written a 17,000-word article defending Mr. Weinstein and then, when no one would run it, submitted it to Mr. Weinstein hoping he might be able to help him get it published. This seemed even less likely.
“I don’t have a place for that yet,” Mr. Engelmayer said to Mr. Weinstein. “I know. I know … and I will get it by hook or by crook. Well, not by crook. Just by hook.”
Mr. Weinstein inquired about leaking its contents to someone who views him favorably.
“Claudia,” he said.
“You don’t mean Claudia,” Mr. Engelmayer replied. “You mean Candace.”
Candace was Candace Owens, the right-wing firebrand who was connected a few years ago to Mr. Weinstein by a mutual friend no one will name. In late May, Ms. Owens conducted the first lengthy interview of Mr. Weinstein since allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him in The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017.
She believes that although Mr. Weinstein may be guilty of being a bad person, he was convicted largely because “someone” from the #MeToo era had to be “hung in the public square,” as she put it in a phone interview.
Initially, Mr. Engelmayer believed granting an interview to Ms. Owens would not help Mr. Weinstein curry favor with the media titans whose opinions still matter most to him, the “Tina Browns and Graydon Carters of the world,” he said.
But with Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan also now questioning whether Mr. Weinstein deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, Mr. Engelmayer largely believes that having champions in the right-wing media ecosystem helped change the tone of mainstream news coverage.
In the past decade, Mr. Engelmayer has had his own political conversion. He voted for Donald Trump three times. Asked what led to that, he repeated the Ronald Reagan adage: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.”
By phone, Mr. Weinstein likened his P.R. guru to Judah Maccabee — partly because of the name, but also because he was something of a guerrilla warrior, fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds.
“Juda has reached a number of reporters who have been fair,” he said. “That’s all you can ask for. People have been responsible and fair. Before he came on it was a crisis. It was just absolute murder.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Jacob Bernstein reports on power and privilege for the Style section.
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