ANTERSELVA, Italy — For organizers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Milan Cortina was supposed to be a fairly straightforward trip.
The formal “up-next” handover had taken place in Paris in 2024 as Tom Cruise rappelled from the roof of the Stade de France and grabbed the Olympic flag from Simone Biles. LA28’s leaders, including Casey Wasserman, the sports and entertainment impresario who is the chairman, founder and driving force of the organization, had spent the previous three weeks watching and learning from Paris 2024.
Wasserman and his team came to Italy to meet with their partners at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), provide updates on their progress in California, and glad-hand sponsors who have already signed on and those they would like to have support what is shaping up to be a financial juggernaut of Olympic proportions.
And then, just days before the start of the Games, the U.S. Justice Department released more than 3 million documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution in 2008 and died while in custody on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
Nothing has been the same since, and it remains unclear whether the man who created the Los Angeles bid to return the Summer Games to the U.S. for the first time since 1984 and has become synonymous with the event, will still be there when the Olympic flame is lit in two years, or even when the ones in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo are extinguished next Sunday.
Wasserman speaks in Milan during the IOC session before the 2026 Milan Cortina Games earlier this month. (Andreas Rentz / Getty Images)
Wasserman’s name appeared in those documents, in two emails from 2003 with Ghislaine Maxwell, a companion of Epstein’s who helped recruit girls and young women into Epstein’s orbit and is now serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges.
Wasserman, who appears to have been blindsided by the ensuing firestorm, has maintained that he had no contact with Maxwell or Epstein in the past 20 years. All of his associations with them, which included flirtatious emails with Maxwell and a two-week humanitarian trip to Africa with President Bill Clinton on Epstein’s plane in 2002, occurred before anyone knew about his criminal behavior.
“I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light,” Wasserman said in a statement after the release of the documents. “I am terribly sorry for having any association with either of them.”
Still, nothing has been the same for Wasserman and LA28 since, as he and the organizing committee have tried to ride out the storm and survive with some measure of credibility. Wasserman has privately expressed confusion about why he has been singled out when so many other wealthy and powerful people who continued to associate with Epstein and Maxwell after his criminal conviction have escaped largely unscathed.
Wasserman and LA28 did not return messages seeking comment Saturday.
Wasserman, at a press conference during the 2024 Paris Olympics. (Mike Egerton / PA Images via Getty Images)
At this point, it’s hard to imagine the 2028 Los Angeles Games without Wasserman. He took up the cause of returning the Olympics to Los Angeles more than a decade ago, seeking the 2024 Games.
The USOC originally selected Boston in 2015 as its candidate to host the Games in 2024. That bid fell apart amid public opposition during the next six months. All the while, Wasserman remained in the background, negotiating with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s (USOPC) leaders to have Los Angeles replace Boston.
When he saw that the IOC would likely select Paris over Los Angeles, he used his plane to shuttle back and forth from Los Angeles to Switzerland to negotiate a compromise, ending the 2024 bid but receiving approval for the 2028 Games at the same time the IOC approved Paris for 2024, an unprecedented dual awarding.
So far, the results of Wasserman’s efforts at damage control have been mixed at best. He has largely refrained from speaking publicly about the situation, and the last three days have brought two opposing reactions.
On Wednesday, the executive board of LA28, the organization’s main decision-making body, announced it had hired O’Melveny & Myers LLP, a top law firm, to review Wasserman’s conduct and past interactions with Epstein and Maxwell. Wasserman cooperated with the review.
After lawyers presented their findings, the board released a statement that it “determined that based on these facts, as well as the strong leadership he has exhibited over the past ten years, Mr. Wasserman should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful Games.”
Despite that vote of confidence, during the next 24 hours, numerous high-profile clients of Wasserman’s eponymous entertainment and representation agency announced they would leave him. The figures included the singer Chappell Roan and Abby Wambach, the retired soccer star.
On Friday, in a message to the 4,000 employees of his company, Wasserman announced that he would sell his interests in the business.
“I’m deeply sorry that my past personal mistakes have caused you so much discomfort,” he wrote to his employees, according to a report in The New York Times. “It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to the clients and partners we represent so vigorously and care so deeply about.”
Wasserman said stepping away from the company will allow him to focus on LA28 and the delivery of a successful Olympics. Kirsty Coventry, the IOC president, said last week that she did not plan to insert herself into the internal politics of the LA28 organizing committee.
“How they are structured is not something we are going to get involved into,” Coventry said. “He has put out a statement, and there is really nothing else for me to add.”
Wasserman is not the only Olympic figure caught up in the Epstein saga.
The name Johan Eliasch, an IOC member and the president of the world governing body for skiing and snowboarding, also appears in the Epstein emails. Eliasch has maintained he did not have personal contact with Epstein, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German news organization.
Wasserman shakes hands with USOPC chairman Gene Sykes during the IOC session in Milan. (Andreas Rentz / Getty Images)
The U.S. Olympic Committee has also, so far, deferred to the LA28 executive board. Both Sarah Hirshland, the president and chief executive of the USOPC, and Gene Sykes, a close ally of Wasserman’s who serves as the USOPC chairman, are members of the LA28 executive board.
A person familiar with the workings of the LA28 executive board, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject, said the group was not aware when delivering its vote of confidence that Wasserman intended to sell his private company.
Shortly after news of Wasserman’s association with Maxwell and Epstein broke, a handful of California politicians called for Wasserman to step down from LA28. They include two county supervisors, two city council members and a state senator.
Wasserman left Italy and returned to California in recent days. He appeared Friday on a panel at a media and technology conference that is part of the events connected to the NBA All-Star weekend. Wasserman has deep connections with the top sports leagues in the U.S. and has long been close with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
He partnered with the NFL in its successful push to include flag football in the Los Angeles Olympics. He has been in negotiations with Major League Baseball to allow its players to participate in the Games, which will use Dodger Stadium as its baseball venue. His agency has represented athletes in nearly every sport.
Whether he will be there to see it all come together remains unknown.