Attorney Dev Sen leaves court after testifying in Harvey Weinstein's trial on charges of rape and sexual assault, Jan. 30, in New York. Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP

A partner at Boies Schiller Flexner testified Thursday that the firm signed a contract with Black Cube, a private investigations firm with links to Israeli intelligence, on behalf of former Hollywood producer and former Boies Schiller client Harvey Weinstein.

Attorney Dev Sen, who has been with Boies Schiller for about five years and focuses on corporate law, took the witness stand during the second week of testimony in Weinstein's criminal trial in Manhattan.

Defense attorneys representing Weinstein, who has pleaded not guilty to predatory sexual assault, rape and criminal sex act, objected to Sen's testimony on the grounds that Weinstein is entitled to attorney-client privilege in his communications with Boies Schiller attorneys.

Judge James Burke decided prosecutors could not question Sen in detail about the contents of the Black Cube contract, including a "success fee" clause that assistant district attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said Weinstein promised to Black Cube if the firm was able to prevent publication of stories about Weinstein's behavior toward women.

Sen said Boies Schiller did sign a Black Cube contract on Weinstein's behalf in July 2017, which is several months before The New York Times and the New Yorker magazine each published major investigations into Weinstein's history of alleged sexual misconduct.

After Sen testified, jurors were allowed to see a brief email from Weinstein's personal email address to someone with a Black Cube email address.

"Red flags r the ones of interest," the email from Weinstein said. A second page showed what appeared to be a list of names, all redacted except for the name Annabella Sciorra in red text.

Sciorra has testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted her at her apartment near Gramercy Park in the early 1990s, and prosecutors hope her account will help them prove a pattern of misconduct for Weinstein's predatory sexual assault charge.

During her testimony, Sciorra said that around the time she became aware that reporters were working on the 2017 investigations, she was contacted by someone claiming to be a journalist but believed that the person was actually employed by Weinstein.

The New York Times has reported that Black Cube agreed to use someone posing as an investigative journalist as part of the firm's work for Weinstein.

Another of Weinstein's alleged victims is expected to testify Friday, prosecutors said.

Lawyers for both sides continued to disagree over minor matters Thursday. Defense attorney Damon Cheronis told Burke that Illuzzi-Orbon was talking too loudly during his cross-examinations and that jurors, seated a few feet away from the prosecutors' table, might be able to hear her.

Illuzzi-Orbon replied that she'd been relying on note-passing to keep quiet and objected, as she had on previous days, to how loudly Weinstein spoke with his lawyers at his table.

Burke dismissed Cheronis' complaint, agreeing that Illuzzi-Orbon seemed to be communicating with her colleagues by quietly passing notes.