Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said on Monday that Casey Wasserman should resign as the chairman of the 2028 Olympics in the city after his name surfaced recently in the Epstein files.
“I cannot fire him,” the mayor told CNN, noting that only the nonprofit board of directors that oversees the Los Angeles Olympics can replace him. “I do have an opinion. My opinion is that he should step down.”
Ms. Bass, a Democrat, is the highest-ranking elected official to call on Mr. Wasserman to step aside, and her rebuke runs counter to the position of Olympics organizers, who gave him a vote of confidence last week to have him remain as chairman.
The mayor’s remarks came three days after Mr. Wasserman, 51, a Los Angeles entertainment executive who helped craft the winning bid for the Games, announced that he was selling his business because his “limited interactions” two decades ago with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein had become a “distraction.”
In a memo to his 4,000 employees, Mr. Wasserman said he would relinquish day-to-day control of his namesake talent and sports marketing agency and focus on his civic role as the head of the 2028 Games.
Mr. Wasserman had previously apologized for his emails, which appeared in the latest trove of documents released by the Justice Department in the investigation of Mr. Epstein, a wealthy sex offender who had sprawling ties to powerful leaders.
The racy exchanges with Ms. Maxwell suggested no illegal conduct by Mr. Wasserman, who was then 29, or by Ms. Maxwell. Mr. Wasserman, who was married with a young family at the time, discussed a possible rendezvous with Ms. Maxwell and told her, “I think of you all the time.”
The executive committee for the Los Angeles Olympics issued a statement last week in support of Mr. Wasserman, saying that while it “takes allegations of misconduct seriously,” it had conducted an independent review of his past interactions with Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein and decided to keep him on as chairman.
The emails were from 2003, several years before Mr. Epstein was first arrested and accused of sexual misconduct, and nearly two decades before Ms. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other counts related to conspiring with Mr. Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls.
But some critics felt that the emails were part of a pattern. They followed a damaging tabloid report in 2024 that accused Mr. Wasserman of having numerous extramarital affairs, including with employees.
Over the past couple of weeks, dozens of Los Angeles leaders and clients of Mr. Wasserman’s firm, including high-profile performers and athletes, have condemned him for his association with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell and expressed concerns, both about being represented by his agency and about having him represent Los Angeles for the 2028 Games.
Mr. Wasserman’s decision to step back from his agency, announced late Friday night on the cusp of a holiday weekend, had seemed aimed at quelling public outrage.
The mayor’s remarks on CNN, however, indicated that the fallout might not have ended yet.
“The board made a decision,” Ms. Bass said. “I think that decision was unfortunate. I don’t support the decision. I do think that we need to look at the leadership. 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.”
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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