- Dick Cavett was scheduled to dine with Jeffrey Epstein in February 2012.
- Their mutual friend Woody Allen, Soon-Yi Previn, and a Bill Gates advisor were also listed as attendees.
The legendary talk show host Dick Cavett had a scheduled dinner with now-dead pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2012, according to email records obtained by Insider.
The dinner was included on Epstein's schedule for February 16, 2012, in emails from Lesley Groff, his personal assistant at the time. Woody Allen, his wife Soon-Yi Previn, and Bill Gates advisor Boris Nikolic were also scheduled to be present, according to the email.
Insider obtained the scheduling emails between Groff and Epstein through an information request to the office of the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands. The office is currently involved in a lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase in Manhattan federal court over the bank's ties with the financier. In December, the Virgin Islands government settled a separate civil sex-trafficking case with Epstein's estate.
It's not clear if Cavett attended the dinner with Epstein. Cavett didn't respond to requests for comment.
Cavett, now 86 years old, regularly hosted talk shows on TV between the 1960s and 1990s, most prominently with "The Dick Cavett Show" on ABC between 1968 and 1974.
He may have been invited to the dinner through Allen, who frequently dined with Epstein's home and held screenings for the now-dead pedophile, according to the scheduling emails Insider obtained.
Allen and Cavett have a long friendship. Allen was a guest in a 1971 episode of Cavett's show, and the talk show host had a cameo playing himself in Allen's 1977 movie "Annie Hall." Cavett has talked about spending time with Allen in media interviews.
On Twitter in recent years, Cavett has defended Allen's work in the face of backlash following renewed claims of childhood sexual assault by Dylan Farrow, which Allen has denied.
In 2018, Cavett applauded a university for "not bowing to pressure to oust their Woody Allen film course from the curriculum despite those petitions," comparing the complaints to "book-burning." After Allen's memoir "Apropos of Nothing" was dropped by Hachette Book Group and had to find a new publisher, he praised the book and urged his followers to get their hands on it. In January, Cavett cheered Allen's book of humor writing "Zero Gravity" as "a dose of joy" created "despite those lowlifes still determined to lay him low."
At the time of the scheduled dinner, Epstein had registered as a sex offender following his guilty plea, in 2007, on prostitution solicitation charges in Florida. He died in jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan in 2019, at which point he was also the subject of numerous civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. A compensation program created by his estate identified about 150 victims overall.
Cavett's Twitter account doesn't show any statements about Epstein. The scheduling emails from Groff are the first publicly known indication that the two may have interacted.
Nikolic had numerous scheduled meetings with Epstein between 2012 and 2015, the email records show. At the time, Epstein was working with JP Morgan to set up a charitable investment fund that would be seeded with Gates's money. The plan never came to fruition. Nikolic has said he regretted ever meeting Epstein.
Representatives for Allen and Nikolic didn't respond to Insider's requests for comment. Groff, through an attorney, declined to comment.