Casey Wasserman, a outstanding leisure and sports activities agent and the chair of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, is placing his eponymous talent agency up on the market after dealing with backlash over his look in recordsdata the US Justice Department released final month associated to its investigations into convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In an inner memo despatched to agency employees on Friday, which was obtained by NCS, Wasserman mentioned he has “become a distraction” to the corporate’s “efforts.”
“That is why I have begun the process of selling the company, an effort that is already underway,” Wasserman wrote.
Wasserman confronted strain from his talent to step apart in current weeks, in addition to calls to step down from the Olympics coordinating committee, after the recordsdata confirmed he held a deeper and extra intimate relationship with Esptein’s confederate, Ghislaine Maxwell, than had been beforehand identified.
Wasserman has not been accused of prison wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. NCS has reached out to a disaster communications agency representing him.
Wasserman rode on Epstein’s aircraft and exchanged suggestive messages with Maxwell, the recordsdata the DOJ launched present.
Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, was convicted of intercourse trafficking and different crimes in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking costs.
In Friday’s memo, Wasserman mentioned he solely had “limited interactions with those two individuals,” referring to Epstein and Maxwell.
“It was years before their criminal conduct came to light, and, in its entirety, consisted of one humanitarian trip to Africa and a handful of emails that I deeply regret sending,” Wasserman mentioned. “And I’m heartbroken that my brief contact with them 23 years ago has caused you, this company, and its clients so much hardship over the past days and weeks.”
Sources shut to the enterprise instructed NCS that Wasserman’s buyers have been upset over the state of affairs and pushed him to make this transfer.
In an earlier assertion reported by the Associated Press final month, Wasserman clarified that his change with Maxwell “took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”
“I never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. As is well documented, I went on a humanitarian trip as part of a delegation with the Clinton Foundation in 2002 on the Epstein plane. I am terribly sorry for having any association with either of them,” his assertion learn.
Details of Epstein’s alleged secret life first emerged in 2005 when a number of underage women accused him of providing to pay for massages or intercourse acts at his Palm Beach mansion. Epstein pleaded responsible to two state prostitution charges in 2008 and served 13 months in jail.
Since the discharge of the newest recordsdata, singer Chappell Roan introduced she was leaving Wasserman’s agency. Singer Orville Peck rapidly adopted, after which singer-songwriter Weyes Blood, amongst others.