While the world's attention is currently focused on the various performances, admissions of infidelity, and blood-soaked mascots of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the guy running the next Summer Olympics is coming under intense pressure for popping up in the latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein emails. That would be Casey Wasserman, founder/CEO of an eponymous talent agency and chair of the Los Angeles 2028 organizing committee. He retains those positions for now, though an increasing number of clients are leaving the agency or calling for him to step down. When you have to split hairs about exactly how associated you were with Jeffrey Epstein, that makes sense.
Wasserman founded the agency in 1998 and quickly expanded it by acquiring as many competitors as possible, including legendary basketball agent Arn Tellem and the powerful soccer agency SFX. You need money and connections to do stuff like that, and every part of running the agency was made easier by the fact that Wasserman's grandfather was Lew Wasserman, one of the most powerful people in 20th-century Hollywood. Lew took Casey under his wing as a teenager, giving the younger Wasserman access to his extensive network of connections and vast fortune, which swelled after Lew sold his agency, MCA, to Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic) in 1990 for $6.5 bilion.
The Wasserman agency primarily represents athletes and musicians, and Casey Wasserman has made himself synonymous with mogulhood. His public persona is that of a power player connecting the worlds of sports and entertainment to globally powerful people; to that end, his 50th birthday party was attended by Robert Kraft, Bob Iger, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, and Doug Emhoff. (Imagine Dragons headlined; even this guy can't buy taste!) In 2014, L.A.'s then-mayor Eric Garcetti appointed Wasserman to spearhead the city's push to bring the Olympics to town, and three years later, L.A. was awarded the 2028 Games.
(In the interest of fully scoping out the connections between Epstein and the Olympics, I snooped around the latest email releases. I found this strange 2011 cover letter that appears to be from an unnamed snowboarder at the 2006 Games; an email from someone asking for Epstein's help getting an unnamed Syracuse journalism student an internship covering the 2012 London Olympics; someone asking for Epstein to help cover the cost of sending a sailor from the Virgin Islands to the 2016 Rio Olympics; and a ridiculous number of emails from Quora, which alone make scanning the emails 75 percent more tedious. The word "Cortina" does not appear in the latest tranche, nor for that matter does the word "stoat.")
Naturally, aspiring sports-and-pop-culture mogul Bill Simmons is a big Wasserman guy, and continues to have him on Ringer podcasts. We covered this many years ago, to the pointed ire of Wasserman's people.
Whom does Wasserman currently represent? Kendrick Lamar, Connor McDavid, and Evan Mobley, to name a few. Finding a full client list at present is slightly harder than usual, as the agency recently removed the relevant pages from its website. That is because of the content of emails released by the Justice Department on Jan. 30. Those emails document Wasserman, who was married to fellow entertainment executive Laura Ziffren at the time, corresponding with Epstein's primary procurer and close associate Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003, asking her such questions as "So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?" Maxwell—currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted of sex trafficking a minor, among other counts—offered Wasserman the sort of massage that can "drive a man wild."
In 2002, Wasserman joined Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Ron Burkle, Chris Tucker, "about four women ages 20 to 22," and Epstein himself on a two-week trip to Africa aboard Epstein's infamous Boeing 727, nicknamed the Lolita Express. Spacey told the Los Angeles Times that the purpose of the trip was to "raise awareness and funds for HIV/AIDS" and "spend an unforgettable day with Nelson Mandela." Wasserman and Maxwell's emails date to a few months after that trip. I will simply note here a 2024 Daily Mail story alleging that the now-divorced Wasserman is a "serial cheater" with a "chronic condition of sleeping with people who work for him," and will also note that he is currently dating Jenny Chandler, who first worked as a flight attendant on his private jet.
Wasserman issued an apology days after the emails came to light, saying "I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell," while emphasizing that he had no relationship with Epstein beyond the one international trip aboard the plane that the now-deceased financier and sex criminal used to traffic young girls across international lines. One thing uniting the two men is their steadfast support for Israel: Wasserman gave $525,000 to the Friends Of The IDF in 2019, and paid Benjamin Netanyahu a visit in Israel two months ago and got a nice photo-op out of it.
The response to Wasserman's associations with Maxwell has been swift and outraged. Singer Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast was the first artist to make a public statement, followed by Chappell Roan, Wednesday, Orville Peck, and Beach Bunny, among others. "I hold my teams to the highest standards and have a duty to protect them as well," Roan said in a statement. "No artist, agent, or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values." Of the many athletes Wasserman represents, only former USWNT great Abby Wambach has publicly announced their departure as of this writing.
Many of those leaving have called for Wasserman to step down from his positions atop the agency and the LA2028 committee. The latter reportedly held a big meeting Wednesday and decided that everything is fine. "LA28 takes allegations of misconduct seriously, and our Board is committed to thoroughly reviewing any concerns related to the organization’s leadership," the group said in a statement. They claim to have had outside counsel review Wasserman's associations with Maxwell and Epstein, and left satisfied that those "did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented."
Which is to say, they are confident that either this story will disappear or they will be able to handle questions about their chairperson's associations with both Epstein and his right-hand woman. That all gets a lot harder if people continue leaving the agency.
