Magician David Copperfield did magic tricks for sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a newly released trove of documents connected with the alleged sex trafficker and the legal cases against him and associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking.
The names made public in the documents released Wednesday do not constitute a client list, but as legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, a former lawyer for Epstein who has fought back against allegations he was a client, told NewsNation on Tuesday, being named in the documents in effect forces public figures to explain their connections to Epstein.
As of Thursday morning, Copperfield had made no public statement on the appearance of his name in the documents, where Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg told attorney Sigrid McCawley in a May 2016 deposition that she had met the magician, according to Fox News.
“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 said, according to the documents released Wednesday.
Although Copperfield was mentioned six times in the documents, the references all related to that one instance.
“So when I arrived at the house, he wasn’t there yet, but I waited,” Sjoberg said, noting that she waited with another Epstein victim and a girl who seemed young.
“And so I thought she could be younger than college age, but I had to assume for my own sanity that she was a daughter of one of his friends,” she said in the deposition.
Asked what took place at the dinner, she said Copperfield “did some magic tricks.”
“Did you observe David Copperfield to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s?” Sjoberg was asked.
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She said, “Yes.”
“Did Copperfield ever discuss Jeffrey’s involvement with young girls with you?” she was asked.
“He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” Sjoberg said of the magician.
“Did he tell you any of the specifics of that?” she was asked.
“No,” she replied.
“Did he say whether they were teenagers or anything along those lines?” Sjoberg was asked.
“He did not,” she said.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska last month ordered the materials to be released after the first of the year, according to NBC News.
Preska held back some names of individuals who have objected to the disclosure.
The material being released was part of a defamation lawsuit Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre filed against Maxwell in 2015, which has since been settled.
The documents include mentions of Britain’s Prince Andrew as well as former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
