An overwhelming number of Los Angeles City Council members have some serious issues with Casey Wasserman remaining in charge of the upcoming Games of the XXXIV Olympiad, but LA28 doesn’t seem to care.
“With the Board’s position on leadership established, LA28’s focus remains on delivering a fiscally responsible, privately funded Games that protects taxpayers and benefits Los Angeles,” an LA28 spokesperson said late Friday after local politicians voted 12-0 on a resolution calling Wasserman’s Olympics position into question out of his association decades ago with now deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell.
“We are on track to deliver a successful Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028.”
That’s not how the LA City Council sees it.
In the twice delayed vote, the Council, including mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman, put on the record that they had “concern regarding the potential conflict between the Olympic movement’s values and Casey Wasserman’s association with the Epstein files, and calls for a thorough and transparent review of his involvement in the ongoing investigations into these matters.”
Lacking the ability to actually fire Wasserman, the resolution crafted by Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez, of the city’s sixth and seventh districts respectively, urges “the LA28 Organizing Committee, and the International Olympic Committee, to ensure that all leadership roles are held by individuals who consistently reflect the Olympic movement’s commitment to integrity, accountability, and respect for all people.”
Council members Bob Blumenfield, Curren Price and Adrin Nazarian were not in attendance for today’s vote in DTLA.
Wasserman was long presumed to be a mere philanthropic acquaintance of the vile and very well connected Epstein (who died in mysterious circumstances in a NYC jail in 2019), the massive document dump by Donald Trump‘s DOJ in late January revealed in a carnal 2003 correspondence with Maxwell. Wasserman issued a “deeply regrets” statement on his association with Epstein and Maxwell, and clearly hoped the whole thing would go away.
It has not, and the L.A. City Council planned to start shaking some trees at the Kirsty Coventry-led IOC and other sporting bodies in the next couple weeks to oust Wasserman.
After establishing ties with the legacy-driven Wasserman in the early days of her administration, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass recently called for the LA28 chair to resign. The poll-challenged Bass, who shares a close contact with Wasserman via big donor Jeffrey Katzenberg, joins the likes of the West Hollywood City Council, two of L.A. County’s Board of Supervisors, and various local elected officials in publicly wanting to see the grandson of Hollywood kingpin Lew Wasserman exit stage left from the $7.7 billion and growing games.
While almost everyone but the IOC and the hand-picked LA28 board want Wasserman to leave and see a new Olympics boss in his place, today’s statement reads like the 2.0 of the solid vote of confidence the exec received from fellow board members on February 11 in a virtual emergency meeting.
The Epstein scandal, which has brought down many in Europe and in corporate America (though not big Epstein pal Trump, yet) hasn’t cost Wasserman his Olympics gig yet. However, as Wasserman unveiled on February 13, as the Winter Olympics concluded, he is selling his long curated The Team (previously Wasserman) agency because of the “distraction” he has become and the clients that were heading for the doors.
As NDAs are inked and prospective Team buyers line up to look under the hood, WME, CAA, UTA, Range Media Partners and some big Wall Street swingers like Goldman Sachs are all in take-a-look mode, I hear.
Wasserman is hoping this is all old news by the time the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad come around. With or without Casey Wasserman L.A.’s third Olympics as host city runs from July 14 -30, 2028.