Long Beach\u2019s state senator, three Los Angeles City Council members and Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn were among the elected officials this week calling on LA 2028 Olympics committee chair Casey Wasserman to resign over a string of racy emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, who\u2019s been convicted of sex trafficking for her role in a widespread sexual abuse scandal involving the late Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
Hahn, who is among the Los Angeles County and city officials working with LA28, the organizing committee for the Games, told the Los Angeles Times Tuesday that Wasserman needs to step down.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving him represent us on the world stage distracts focus from our athletes and the enormous efforts needed to prepare for 2028,\u201d Hahn told The Times.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, also called on Wasserman to resign.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles City Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez issued a statement Tuesday echoing the sentiments.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the same time as Ghislaine Maxwell was orchestrating one of the most notorious sex-trafficking operations in our country\u2019s history, she was allegedly romantically involved with the person now serving as chair of LA28,\u201d Soto-Martinez said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cCasey Wasserman should step aside immediately. Anything less is a distraction and undermines efforts to make sure the Games truly reflect the values of a city that is for everyone,\u201d Soto-Martinez added.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles is scheduled to host the most Olympic events, with Long Beach hosting the second most.<\/p>\n
Wasserman\u2019s name surfaced when the latest batch of Epstein documents was made public Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of its investigation into Epstein, who died in a jail cell in August 2019 of a reported suicide as he awaited trial on federal charges.<\/p>\n
The former financier was accused of procuring underage girls to perform sexual favors for various highly influential millionaires and billionaires at a private island.<\/p>\n
The documents revealed multiple salacious email exchanges between Wasserman and Maxwell, Epstein\u2019s associate, who was convicted in 2021 on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping Epstein procure girls and young women.<\/p>\n
In a statement to various media outlets, Wasserman said, \u201cI deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The newly released emails are from 2003. They feature flirtatious remarks from both parties, including Wasserman writing that he wanted to see Maxwell in a \u201ctight leather outfit,\u201d and Maxwell offering to give him a massage that can \u201cdrive a man wild.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old Wasserman is the founder and CEO of Wasserman, a sports marketing and talent agency, and grandson of legendary Hollywood agent Lew Wasserman.<\/p>\n
He is in Milan, Italy, this week with the LA28 delegation for the Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach\u2019s state senator, three Los Angeles City Council members and Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-164021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}