The Jeffrey Epstein files reveal the convicted child sex offender was fascinated by magicians, and detail a years-long relationship between Epstein and David Blaine as well as an FBI investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by David Copperfield.
In May, 2015, Epstein wrote to David Blaine, famous for his illusions and stunts of endurance, to ask him to provide a letter of support for a visa application to the United States for a woman whose name is redacted.
“Would you feel comfortable sending something like the enclosed? I’d appreciate it,” Epstein wrote, according to a copy of the email that was released by the US department of justice among millions of files accumulated during investigations into sex trafficking by the disgraced financier.
Blaine quickly agreed and the two exchanged a series of draft versions of the letter.
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“I met Ms. S [redacted] a few years ago through mutual friends and I was highly impressed with her. Aside from being an amazing fashion model, she has a strong passion for children and education,” reads the final letter, signed by Blaine and printed on “David Blaine” headed paper.
Being mentioned in the Epstein files is not an indication of wrongdoing. Blaine did not respond to requests for comment.
The favour is one instance of an apparently close relationship between Blaine and Epstein, reflected in regular meetings for dinner between 2012 and 2016 at a time when Blaine was a hugely famous magician and Epstein had already been convicted and served prison time for soliciting sex with minors.
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Epstein was regularly organising visa applications for young women at the time, the files show.
Though there is no indication that Blaine was aware of it, Epstein had scouts at work around the world who would approach young women to offer them modelling opportunities in New York. The scouts would send Epstein photographs of the women and sometimes their body measurements, emails and messages show.
‘Your French girl’
Messages exchanged between Epstein and Blaine suggest a bantering familiarity.
“Is your French girl in town,” Epstein wrote to Blaine in an email inviting him to meet in 2013.
“I will stop by. She just landed so jet lagged,” Blaine replied.
In a 2014 email, Epstein suggested Blaine could find him a new assistant while on tour in South Africa. “In joberg not Capetown,” Blaine replied. Epstein replied “ouch”.
Some messages relate to organising plane and car travel for Blaine. Others suggest meeting in Paris. One series of emails shows Blaine asking Epstein when he can return to his house to finish filming a project there.
Woody Allen was frequently a fellow guest at their meetings, according to the emails.
“David Blaine WILL be bringing another magician with him tonight to the dinner ... he says he made this guy change his flight so he can make it ... you will love him David says ...” read an email to Epstein ahead of a 2015 dinner with Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn.
“We should plan on a magician night for woodys 80th birthdya [sic]” Epstein wrote to Blaine in 2015.
An email from Epstein’s former girlfriend and co-accused Ghislaine Maxwell that appears to be dated April 12th, 2003, states that Blaine would be a guest at a dinner at Epstein’s house along with financier Leon Black.
“You should know that the people who are going to be serving along w/my staff are 5 models,” Maxwell wrote.
In 2013, Epstein said he had “great fun” at a gathering with Blaine and Terje Rød-Larsen, a Norwegian former diplomat currently being investigated by Norway’s financial crimes squad for suspected complicity in gross corruption due to his Epstein links.
Epstein appears to have been a major fan of Blaine and tried to get him to give him a sneak preview of a 2013 “special” that was due to air on US television, emails show. When that failed, he set a reminder to himself to record the broadcast.
“david blaine is coming. the wolrds greatest magician,” [sic] Epstein wrote in an email about his evening plans in 2016.
Abuse allegations
Among the files are message pads noting multiple calls to Epstein in 2004 and 2005 from David Copperfield, one of the world’s most successful illusionists, who is sometimes recorded as “Magic David”.
The files contain documents relating to an FBI investigation into Copperfield that began in 2007 after a woman alleged the magician had raped her after luring her to his private Bahamian island on the promise of modelling work.
FBI notes state there was “a clear connection” between Copperfield and Epstein, and that more evidence is required to establish whether the two “engaged in referring possible victims to each other”.
The investigation was dropped in 2010 without leading to any charges and Copperfield has said he was exonerated. His lawyers have denied he was ever a friend of Epstein’s, describing him as an acquaintance at most who met Epstein a handful of times.
In 2017, British model Natasha Prince accused David Blaine of having raped her in 2004. In 2019, New York police said they were investigating the magician over allegations by two women of sexual assault in the 1990s.
Charges were never filed and representatives for Blaine have always strongly rejected the accusations.
“My client vehemently denies that he raped or sexually assaulted any woman, ever, and he specifically denies raping a woman in 2004,” Blaine’s lawyer Marty Singer said in 2017. Blaine has not responded to requests for comment.
‘He manipulates minds’
Epstein’s communications reveal that the disgraced financier was fascinated by magicians. His close associates sent him recommendations, and the files contain hundreds of messages about organising tickets to see magic shows and discussions of their work.
“Feel free to read the attached articles on Keith Barry, how he manipulates minds and what we can learn from his tricks,” one correspondent wrote in an email sent to Epstein, in reference to the Irish magician. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Barry or that he and Epstein had any contact. Barry did not respond to a request for comment.
One sequence of emails record Epstein’s successful efforts to get a magician to perform at his home while he was under house arrest in Florida in 2009 for soliciting sex from minors.
Epstein explained that the “press would be unattractive” if it was public knowledge that he had hired a magician to perform “while on house arrest”. Instead of being hired as entertainment, the magician should come for lunch and then “demonstrate his work”, Epstein suggested.
Las Vegas magician Simon Winthrop agreed, replying “sounds like fun”.
Nevertheless, the plan was rumbled: a subsequent email from Epstein records that Winthrop received a call from “someone from the NY Times ... asking him if he had performed at a party” for Epstein a few weeks later.
“Simon said no he hadn’t then hung up,” Epstein wrote. Winthrop did not respond to a request for comment.
Having magicians at his social events was part of what made his life “fascinating”, Epstein wrote to the author Michael Wolff in 2018. The email sketched out a flattering presentation of his life: something Epstein described as ideas for a potential magazine profile of himself by a sympathetic journalist.
“Sitting around the dinner table in sweat suit hosting utterly weird combinations for dinner – a scientist, a politician, a representative from a foreign government, a magician,” he wrote.
“The properties and elaborate houses ... All this paints a fabulously interesting picture of an amazing and totally unique life.”
