The NFL Owners and Olympic Organizers in Epstein’s Inbox
The sports media is ignoring the story, but wealthy sports figures are all over the Epstein files.
Chairman of the 2028 LA Olympics organizing committee Casey Wasserman speaks as President Donald Trump looks on during an executive order signing ceremony on August 5, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Win McNamee / Getty Images)Child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein did not want to ingratiate himself only to billionaires. He wanted to spend time with people who shaped the culture, and as we saw during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, nothing shapes the culture quite like the athletic industrial complex.
The website Front Office Sports went through the latest tranche of hurriedly redacted Epstein files, and it is shocking just how many NFL franchise owners are in these e-mails and assorted documents. They include—and this is a partial list—Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots; Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants and first cousin of Jessica Tisch, the current New York City police commissioner; Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins; Zygi Wilf, owner of the Minnesota Vikings; and Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons. There are more NFL owners in the Epstein files than attended the Super Bowl.
Denials have already been sputtered, and the owners’ public relations machines are working in overdrive to deny that they are anything more than incidental acquaintances of Epstein. But how many were actually friends with Epstein is less relevant than the fact that everyone who associated with Epstein ignored and excused what was often happening in plain sight around them. And as hard as their PR mavens are working to deflect attention, the sports media is working just as hard to ignore it all.
After all, who could possibly imagine that Kraft would be involved in anything illicit when it comes to exercising power over young women? ESPN has essentially not covered the sports figures involved with Epstein. There are scant few articles under the byline “ESPN News Services,” which draws from the Associated Press. There has been no investigative journalism or televised commentary on one of their yak-fests. When one considers that the NFL now owns a portion of ESPN, not to mention that the NFL is central to much of its programming, the network’s blasé attitude toward the story is odious.
Even more damning in the released files is the repeated presence of LA 2028 Olympic chairman Casey Wasserman. He says he did nothing wrong, though two Los Angeles supervisors and two members of the City Council have now called for him to resign from his role with the Olympic organizing committee. LA City Council member Monica Rodriguez said that Wasserman represents “a threat to the integrity of the games.”
Wassermans’s clients are already leaving his talent agency in protest. Olympian Abby Wambach and popstar Chappell Roan have dropped Wasserman and are calling for him to step down from the agency that bears his name.
Of course, by any moral marker, Wasserman should not be allowed within 500 yards of the Olympics (or a school). His e-mails to Epstein’s partner in child trafficking, Ghislaine Maxwell, date back 20 years and include unredacted tidbits like, “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?” LA Mayor Karen Bass, however, has not joined the call for him to disappear from the 2028 Games, already being called “The Epstein Olympics.”
The unconvincing excuses for keeping Wasserman at his post include the difficulty of replacing the chair of the LA28 Olympic organizing committee at this late of a date, as well as his ability to raise corporate cash. After what the organizing committee described as an “internal investigation,” Wasserman, whose grandfather Lew Wasserman was one of Hollywood’s most powerful people, is staying on as chair. We need to fight to see every page of the Epstein files with only the names of the survivors and victims redacted—but that is not enough. To paraphrase journalist Nolan Higdon, it is becoming more and more difficult to “shield the architects of the second Gilded Age”—and they deserve no such protections.
The Epstein files have exposed that global elites have never been wealthier and more influential, but they’ve become drunk on power after decades of plunder. This second Gilded Age isn’t ending until the exposure is total and its criminal offenders are frog-marched out of the owners’ boxes.
Support The Nation’s June Fundraising Campaign
With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.
As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Nation elevates progressive ideas, movements, and elected officials achieving real change across the country into the national conversation. At the same time, our journalists are exposing how crypto and AI-funded super PACs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to knock out candidates they oppose, reporting on the devastating impact of the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, and sounding the alarm on attempts by red states to quickly redraw electoral maps, disenfranchising Southern Black voters.
We can play this critical role because of support from readers like you. This June, we’re raising $20,000 to power The Nation’s independent journalism in the run-up to November’s immensely consequential elections.
It’s in our power to build a more just society, and your support at this critical moment brings us closer to that bold vision. I hope you’ll donate today.
Onward,
Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
