The vast majority of Los Angeles City Council members have expressed some serious displeasure with Casey Wasserman remaining in charge of the upcoming 34th Olympic Games, but LA28 doesn’t seem to care.
On Friday night, local Los Angeles politicians voted 12-0 on a resolution questioning Wasserman’s status at the Olympics due to his decades-old ties to now-deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell. The focus remains on hosting a fiscally responsible, privately funded Olympics that protects taxpayers and benefits Los Angeles.”
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“We are on track to host a successful Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028.”
The Los Angeles City Council doesn’t see it that way.
During the twice-delayed vote, the committee, which includes mayoral hopeful Nithya Rahman, publicly said they were “concerned about the potential conflict between the values of the Olympic movement and Kathy Wasserman’s ties to the Epstein dossier, and called for a thorough and transparent review of his involvement in the ongoing investigation of these issues.”
Lacking the ability to actually fire Wasserman, the resolution, drafted by Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez, from the city’s Sixth and Seventh Wards respectively, urges “the LA28 Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee to ensure that all leadership positions are filled by individuals who consistently embody the Olympic Movement’s commitment to integrity, accountability and respect for all.”
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Council members Bob Blumenfield, Curren Price and Adrin Nazarian did not attend today’s vote at DTLA.
Wasserman has long been viewed as simply a charitable acquaintance of the evil and well-connected Epstein, who died under mysterious circumstances in a New York jail in 2019, after a trove of documents dumped by Donald Trump’s Justice Department in late January revealed lustful 2003 correspondence with Maxwell. Wasserman issued a statement of “deep regret” about his involvement with Epstein and Maxwell, and made it clear he wanted the whole thing to end.
But that’s not the case, and the Los Angeles City Council plans to oust Wasserman in the coming weeks as the IOC and other sports bodies, led by Kirsty Coventry, begin to shake up.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who developed a connection with the tradition-driven Wasserman early in her administration, recently called on the LA28 president to resign. The poll raises a challenge for Bass, who has close ties to Wasserman through megadonor Jeffrey Katzenberg, who joins the West Hollywood City Council, two Los Angeles County boards of supervisors and multiple local elected officials, among others, in publicly wanting to see the grandson of Hollywood tycoon Lew Wasserman exit the $7.7 billion and growing gaming scene.
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While nearly everyone outside of the IOC and the handpicked LA28 board wants Wasserman gone and a new Games chief to take his place, today’s statement reads like a 2.0 version of the credible vote that board members cast on the executive during a virtual emergency meeting on February 11.
The Epstein scandal has ensnared many in corporate Europe and the United States (though not Epstein’s big friend Trump just yet), but Wasserman hasn’t lost his chance to perform at the Olympics just yet. However, as Wasserman announced on February 13 as the Winter Olympics concluded, he was selling his long-standing agency The Team (formerly Wasserman) because he had become “distracted” and clients were leaving.
I’m told WME, CAA, UTA, Range Media Partners and some of the big Wall Street swing firms like Goldman Sachs are all in watch mode as NDAs are signed and potential team buyers line up to take a look under the hood.
Wasserman hopes that by the time Games XXXIV comes around, all this will be old news. The third Olympic Games in Los Angeles will be held from July 14 to 30, 2028, with or without Casey Wasserman as host city.
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