LA28 chairman Wasserman is just one more storm cloud hanging over an already tempestuous event

First, let’s credit Casey Wasserman, the sports and entertainment power broker outed in newly published investigative files as a former associate of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, for issuing what, by 2026 standards, is a frank and forthright apology for his reckless emailing, and startling lack of due diligence concerning his circle of friends.

“I’m deeply sorry that my past personal mistakes have caused you so much discomfort,” he wrote in a recent memo to staffers at Wasserman announcing that he planned to sell the outfit that bears his name. 

We’re used to conditional contrition, with famous people apologizing “if” their deeds caused some harm, implying that they’re not sorry if they did something wrong but managed not to inflict damage, or employing passive voice to distance the act from the actor. And we’ve grown accustomed to public apologies so wordsmithed and spin-doctored that it’s not clear who the “mea” is, and whether they’re even admitting any “culpa.”

Just so we’re all on the same page: the person in question here is Wasserman, chairman of the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for the  2028 Olympic Summer Olympics. The most recent document dump by the U.S. Department of Justice included several salacious emails from the early 2000s between Wasserman, who was married at the time, and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s girlfriend.

The escapades and messages in question are more than two decades old, but the Epstein stain doesn’t wash off. Those emails, plus the revelation that Wasserman was among the VIPs who accompanied Epstein on a humanitarian trip to Africa in 2002, prompted the singer Chappell Roan, and other entertainers, to decide that they no longer wanted to play for TeamWass.

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