Famed American magician David Copperfield dined with Epstein, did ‘magic tricks’: Court docs

This article contains details of sexual abuse and testimonies of sexual assault survivors that some readers may find disturbing.

The unsealed court documents that identified the acquaintances of the late Hollywood sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein who killed himself in 2019, show that the popular American illusionist David Copperfield had dinner with the financier and some of his victims.

Epstein’s former accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and their accuser Johanna Sjoberg, in 2016 were asked by attorney Sigrid McCawley if they had ever met with the famed magician Copperfield. In her response Sjoberg was quoted in the court document, a part of the deposition from May 2016, as saying “yes.”

The documents, that were previously a part of the unsealed trove, identified 200 names that include Epstein’s victims, accusers, prominent businesspeople and bureaucrats, politicians, actors among others. This is the first time that the confidential material, comprising of excerpts from Maxwell, were made public by the court through a legal system. Magician Copperfield, among dozens of other names, was one of the associate of Epstein—the wealthy financier who killed himself whilst awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in the prison.

The first 40 documents in the court-ordered release contains Epstein’s “clients” or “co-conspirators” who are mostly the powerful and influential men. The records were obtained over two decades of the newspaper pieces, TV documentaries, interviews, legal cases and books during the Epstein scandal. It also contains transcripts of interviews of Epstein’s accusers and victims who revealed the sex offender’s connection with the famed and powerful figures.

In the records that were collected as part of the lawsuit filed in 2015 by one of Epstein’s victims Virginia Giuffre, mentioning Epstein’s past friendship with former American leader Bill Clinton, his estranged aide Doug Band and Britain’s Prince Andrew, magician Copperfield was also named.

Copperfield ‘did some magic tricks’

Sjoberg testified that the famed personality had dinner with Epstein as papers shed light on the high profile connections of Epstein’s sex trafficking network. "Someone called me from the house and said that he would be there, and if I wanted to come have dinner, then I could meet him," Sjoberg testified in the court documents. "So when I arrived at the house, he wasn't there yet, and there was another girl there which I had never met and never seen. She seemed young,” the latter continued. Copperfield, previously accused of sexual assault by a teen model in 1988, "did some magic tricks,” said Sjoberg, adding that he was, in fact, a close friend of Epstein.

When interrogated by the attorney whether she was aware that the young girls “were getting paid to find other girls,” Sjoberg responded “no.” "Did he tell you any of the specifics of that?" the attorney enquired, but the defendant denied knowing any such details.

Epstein accuser Sjoberg also testified that she met legendary American pop star Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, residence. There was nothing ‘untoward’ about the meeting with the icon, she claims. The drive of material was kept confidential since Giuffre’s lawsuit was settled in 2017. But the court, in December, released some of the blacked-out documents, which were kept sealed mainly due to concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims.

Women who worked for Epstein to groom other young girls, says court memo, were reluctant to serve the subpoena, while two invoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Epstein domestic staff told attorney in disposition that he felt “uncomfortable” with the number of women and girls that were brought to Epstein’s residence but that he was threatened to “remain quiet” by Epstein’s accomplice Maxwell.

Clinton not accused of ‘illegal acts’; Trump connection surfaces

Some of the names on the court documents were not accused of any illegal behaviour, such as the former American president Clinton who was named as the “key person who can provide information about his close relationship” with Maxwell and Epstein. Maxwell’s lawyers argued that Clinton’s testimony was “not relevant.”

Sjoberg testified that she heard Epstein once remarking to her that “Clinton likes them young,” referring to young girls. Clinton had previously claimed that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, and that he had not remained in touch with the sex offender since his conviction.

Sjoberg told the court in her testimony that during an April 2001 trip to New York with Sjoberg on a private jet, British Prince Andrew “touched her breast while they posed for a photo at Epstein’s Manhattan town house.” She then recalled, that Maxwell summoned her upstairs to a closet where they pulled out a puppet of Prince Andrew that was designed for television program. [It looked like Andrew] and [Maxwell] brought it down and presented it to him; and that was a great joke, because apparently it was a production from a show on BBC,” she said, according to the court records.

“They decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch. They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo,” Sjoberg noted.

While returning, said Sjoberg, Epstein’s jet diverted to Atlantic City, New Jersey and spent few hours at former US President Donald Trump’s casinos. While it remains unclear that Epstein met Trump that night, Sjoberg recalled Epstein as saying, “Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to his casino.” The latter denied that she was asked to give Donald Trump a massage.

Giuffre, on the other hand claimed in her testimony that when she turned 17, she was “lured away” to work as the spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, in order to become “masseuse” for Epstein. The job required performing sexual acts, she testified. The latter settled sexual abuse lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022.