As the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan head toward their conclusion later this week, the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics have been suddenly thrown into turmoil with the city’s mayor calling this week for organizing committee boss Casey Wasserman to resign.
The LA28 executive committee voted last week to support Wasserman after the entertainment industry mogul was engulfed by scandal for the second time in two years.
The current scandal sees Wasserman’s name turning up in the Epstein files, the massive trove of documents and emails connected to the deceased power broker and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The release of millions of pages has swept up dozens, possibly hundreds, of well-known political, business and entertainment industry figures whose names appear in the files.
Simply being named somewhere in the files is not, in itself, an indication of wrongdoing or illegality. Wasserman has not been connected to any alleged crimes.
Mayor Karen Bass Calls for Wasserman Resignation
Nonetheless, the 51-year-old Wasserman, whose personal net worth is estimated at about $400 million, has become embroiled in the scandal and, as a result, announced last week that he would resign from the sports and entertainment agency that he founded, and sell his shares in the company, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
Now, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Monday called for Wasserman to quit his role at the head of the city’s Olympic organizing effort as well
“My opinion is that he should step down. That’s not the opinion of the board. The board made a decision. I think that decision was unfortunate. I don’t support the decision,” Bass said in a Monday television interview.
Bass went on to note that as mayor, she has no authority to fire Wasserman. Only the Olympics board can remove him.
“I do think that we need to look at the leadership. However, my job, as mayor of Los Angeles, is to make sure our city is completely prepared to have the best Olympics that have ever happened in Olympic history,” Bass said.
Los Angeles has hosted the Olympics two times previously, in 1932 and again in 1984.
Who Is Casey Wasserman? What Is the Scandal About?
Wasserman is the grandson, on his mother’s side, of Lew Wasserman, one of the most powerful moguls in Hollywood history who headed Universal Studios from 1962 until 1990. But the Olympics head was born with the name Casey Meyers, taking his maternal grandfather’s name as his own at age 18.
He founded Wasserman Media Group in 2002, quickly building the talent and management firm into one of the most powerful operators in entertainment and sports. It was Wasserman’s firm that negotiated the record 12-year, $375 million contract for Los Angeles Dodgers World Series-winning pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
The Epstein files release revealed that Wasserman in 2003 exchanged suggestive emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion who in 2022 was convicted of helping Epstein procure his sex trafficking and sexual abuse victims, some as young as 14 years old, according to the United States Justice Department.
Wasserman’s Emails to Ghislaine Maxwell
In one email seen in the released files, Wasserman writes to Maxwell, “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”
In another, he asks the daughter of deceased media mogul and corporate fraudster Robert Maxwell, if he could visit her when the weather was so foggy that “you can float naked down the beach and no one can see you unless they are close up?”
Wasserman has also acknowledged accepting a flight on Epstein’s private plane on a humanitarian trip. He has denied any “personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” and said that he is “terribly sorry for having any association with either” Epstein or Maxwell. He also stressed that his email exchanges with Maxwell happened “long before her horrific crimes came to light,” according to an ESPN.com report.
Wasserman was ensnared in a sex scandal once before, in 2024, when it was alleged that he had engaged in improper relationships with his own employees, and would “love bomb” his targeted conquests “with Louboutin shoes, La Perla lingerie, handbags, and even Range Rovers – but when his interest waned, he callously dropped them like a hot potato, sources claimed,” according to a report by The Daily Mail.
LA28 Boss Casey Wasserman Under Pressure as Mayor Calls for Resignation