Pressure built Tuesday on Casey Wasserman as head of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing team after the city’s mayor urged him to leave over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend.
LA Mayor Karen Bass told CNN late Monday “my opinion is that he should step down” despite Wasserman getting support last week from the LA 2028 organizing board to stay.
The issue has been a distraction for the International Olympic Committee this month since Wasserman’s flirtatious emails from 2003 with Ghislaine Maxwell were published in a release of US government files days before the Milano Cortina Winter Games opened.
The IOC had consistently deflected questions in Milan about Wasserman, saying it was a matter for the LA28 board, though its language shifted slightly Tuesday.
“I understand there are many conversations happening at this moment but I will not make any further comment,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said Tuesday at the Olympic body’s daily news conference in Milan.
“This is obviously a matter for the board of LA28 still at this stage,” Adams said.
Mayor Bass noted of Wasserman that “I cannot fire him” in a studio interview with CNN’s Dana Bash but publicly stated she thought he should leave.
Wasserman has looked more embattled since the entertainment and sports agency he founded and bears his name lost clients, including pop star Chappell Roan and Abby Wambach, the former world’s best player in women’s soccer, in the fallout from the emails release. He is now in the process of selling the agency.
Scrutiny on Wasserman has escalated despite the LA Olympics board last week backing him to stay based on a review, which he cooperated with, by outside legal counsel of his contacts with Epstein and Maxwell.
“I think that decision was unfortunate. I don’t support the decision. I do think that we need to look at the leadership,” Bass said.
“However, my job as mayor of Los Angeles is to make sure that our city is completely prepared to have the best Olympics that has ever happened in Olympic history,” she told CNN.
The mayor and California governor Gavin Newsom have key roles to play in the success of the LA Olympics and Paralympics by ensuring all layers of government support the complex logistical challenges that will take over the city in July and August of 2028.
Wasserman has been a driving force of the LA Olympics since the bid was launched in 2015. Questions about his status have swirled since before he arrived in Milan two weeks ago to meet with IOC members and attend the Winter Games opening ceremony.
The LA organizing team gave IOC members at their annual meeting an update of the hosting plan.
Wasserman and other officials were quizzed on issues such as visa processing for global visitors to the US, though not on personal matters. They did not meet later with international media while officials from other future Olympic hosts did.
Wasserman has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and Maxwell.
In a statement issued before coming to Milan, Wasserman said “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell”, which was “long before her horrific crimes came to light”.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on five counts of sex trafficking and abuse of minors, and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Epstein’s death in a New York jail cell in 2019 was ruled a suicide and came a month after he was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges.
