TV producer Eric Weinberg has $5-million bail revoked after judge labels him danger to society after jailing him without bail for 25 days for filming a protest in a hospital without a permit.
Weinberg was arrested this morning when police raided his rented studio on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
US District Judge William Shubb dismissed his bail appeal and threw out his criminal contempt case, ruling he did not need bail – and in a sign of the increasingly fraught relationship between the two sides, refused to extend bail to Weinberg’s lawyers.
Shubb said Weinberg was a “danger to society because he would be able to do anything he wanted” and ordered him jailed until the end of the trial, which could take six months.
A court clerk said Weinberg is not due in front of the judge until early September.
The 33-year-old former TV producer – seen on the left with his former co-star and future fiancee, actress Anna Faris, in the new season of MTV’s Fashion Cops – had been filming for four days without a permit at a Los Angeles hospital he had been visiting with Faris.
He said it was to show support for his fiancee’s cancer battle, as she was treated there last year.
The judge ruled it was a “clear and present danger” and he said it was a clear case of contempt of court he would not let happen again.
Shubb issued an order stating Weinberg would be jailed pending an appeal, stating, “It appears that on appeal, the order to commit will be overturned by this court.”
Weinberg’s lawyer, Brian Wolfgarten, said in a statement of his client’s intent, “Today my client intends to vigorously pursue his right to appeal the court’s decision.”
He has been at the centre of a criminal probe into a plot by Weinberg to blow up three Los Angeles landmarks. The judge in that case, William H. Shubb, also issued an order finding Weinberg a “danger to society.”
The criminal probe was based on the complaint filed by a man with no criminal record named David Miller. It accused Weinberg of plotting to bomb as many as three Los Angeles landmarks, including a nuclear power plant and an
