EXCLUSIVE: A $15,000 ticket that Jeffrey Epstein bought for Hollywood PR maven Peggy Siegel to attend the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Night Before gala in 2013 has become a prime focus of a long ongoing lawsuit that is now pulling besieged LA28 chair Casey Wasserman back into court.
Already facing fallout from disclosures and reactions to his interactions with convicted sex offender Epstein and sordid emails with primary procurer Ghislaine Maxwell that threatens his position as head organizer of the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, Wasserman has now been subpoenaed to sit for a deposition and produce documents for a second time in a 2019-filed lawsuit brought by the founder of the pizza chain Papa Johns.
“Following recent revelations about Casey Wasserman’s potential ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Schnatter’s team reviewed documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice,” Schnatter spokesperson Mark Serrano told Deadline this week.
“They learned that not only did Mr. Wasserman and his then-wife receive packages from Epstein and Maxwell in late-2002, but also that in 2013, Epstein purchased a ticket to a fundraiser for the MPTF, of which Mr. Wasserman is a longtime board member,” Serrano adds. “This new information has raised serious questions about Mr. Wasserman’s prior testimony as a witness in Mr. Schnatter’s lawsuit against Laundry Service.”
John Schnatter in 2019 sued the Wasserman and the creative ad agency he owned, then called Laundry Service, accusing them of leaking edited recordings to the media to destroy Schnatter’s reputation and harm the Papa Johns brand as revenge for the pizza mogul wanting to fire the agency.
Claiming Wasserman threatened to “bury the founder,” Schnatter has asserted in court filings that to halt the firing of Laundry Service, Wassermam tried to extort the pizza mogul for $6 million. When that didn’t work, Schnatter claims, Wasserman operatives leaked an edited version of his comments on a 2018 conference call — which included Schnatter being heard using the N-word — to smear him.
In a full-circle headlock, Laundry Service then announced they were ending the contract with Papa Johns in disgust over Schnatter’s words. Schnatter was eventually ousted as chairman.
Wasserman was deposed in the case in 2021 and failed in late 2024 to get a judge to dismiss the action, which is claiming breach of contract and malicious conduct.
The trial is scheduled to start June 15 in Kentucky federal court. Wasserman has until February 27 to turn over this latest set of documents and other material, though he is not compelled to show up in person for the expected 10-day trial. Footage of his previous deposition and potentially new sit-down with attorneys will almost certainly be shown in court in Wasserman’s absence.
Gala, FedEx & Emails
On a larger scale, Schnatter and his lawyers want to see whether Wasserman has been truthful in the lawsuit so far, calling into question his credibility and whether Wasserman knew that Epstein, who was convicted of sex crimes five years earlier, wanted to buy a ticket to the MPTF’s glitzy annual pre-Oscars fundraiser in 2013, and did he pull some strings?
There is also the matter of two packages sent by FedEx from Epstein and Maxwell in NYC to Wasserman and his now ex-wife in LA in late 2002. Both those deliveries came after the couple had joined Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Epstein and Maxwell on a well-publicized humanitarian trip to Africa. With charges of $21.06 and $17.02 respectively the October 9, 2002 and the December 11, 2002 packages, the latter which Maxwell signed for on sending, have not been brought up before. Their contents are unknown.
Not unknown is the batch of steamy emails from 2003 between the then-married Wasserman and Maxwell that were among the millions of pages from the Epstein Files released late last month by the Department of Justice. “So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?” Wasserman asked Maxwell at one point as the duo discuss meeting up. Also in the correspondence, Maxwell promised to give Wasserman a massage that would blow his mind. For his part, Wasserman imagined Maxwell coming out to the West Coast “so that you can float naked down the beach and no one can see you unless they are close up.”
The new, wide-ranging request from Schnatter and his various law firms includes material on Wasserman himself, Epstein, Maxwell, the “Triadic Relationship” the trio are alleged to have had, the MPTF, Siegel, Wasserman Media Group and various Epstein entities and employees.
As it stands, there is nothing concrete to prove Wasserman was aware — in either his MPTF role as one of nearly two dozen members of the board of directors or individually — that Epstein was purchasing a Night Before ticket. Back in 2013, it was then-MPTF board member, Wasserman pal and current LA28 board member Jeffrey Katzenberg who was running the show to keep the Night Before in healthy financial shape.
The ticket purchase occurred years after now-dead financier Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 of soliciting a prostitute and procuring a child for prostitution, and at least the tip of the iceberg of his crimes had been well-documented. To that, the correspondence between MPTF officials and the Epstein-retained Siegel leaves no grey area about who was buying entry to the Katzenberg-chaired shindig.
“Lesley Groff on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein,” states a February 15, 2013 email from Siegal to the MPTF’s Barrie Robinson, Jessica Milton and Nikki Berstein bringing Epstein’s assistant into the ongoing conversation. “Lesley: Barrie will email us the payment form for Jeffrey Katzenberg’s ‘Night Before’ party at the BHH on Saturday, Feb. 23rd. It’s a tax deductible donation which allows me to attend. Thanks so much. I will be at the BHH Thursday. xoxo Peggy.”
An email from the day before states: “Dear Barrie: Thank you so much for bending the rules and selling me a ticket….for such a worthy cause. I will work out the details tomorrow….xoxo peggy.”
The $15,000 check from Enhanced Education, a Virgin Islands-based front for the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, was mailed to (ironically) the MPTF’s Wasserman Campus. Siegel — known to many as a master of Oscar campaigns who had advised Epstein in a 2010 email to “take it slow and stay quiet” on his post-jail-release move back into elite circles and told him “your friends are there for you” — received an invoice from the MPTF at her NYC office on February 20, 2013.
Wasserman has still not been served the new subpoena, sources tell me. Reps for Wasserman and Siegal did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment. Reps for the MPTF had no comment when contacted about the organization selling a Night Before ticket to Siegel for Epstein.
Backlash & Calls To Quit
This latest twist for Wasserman comes after Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass this week called on her former ally to “step down” from the 2028 Olympics chairman role, even as the LA28 board unanimously backed Wasserman last week. Much more circumspect just a few days ago, Bass is facing a reelection challenge from L.A. City Council member Nithya Raman that could make Wasserman and the more than $7 billion 2028 Olympics a political hot potato.
(L-R) Casey Wasserman, LA28 Chairperson and President, & LA Mayor Karen Bass at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on August 10, 2024 (Photo:Getty)
Having even less ability to fire Wasserman than Bass, two members of the West Hollywood City Council on Tuesday said they will introduce a resolution in March calling for Wasserman to resign. “Casey Wasserman must resign, and I call upon every elected leader in Los Angeles County and across this nation because that’s what it’s going to take for him to resign,” councilmember John Erickson said in words stronger than most other L.A. politicians have used. “West Hollywood will lead the way.”
The subpoena news lands just less than two weeks after Wasserman’s greater than anticipated connection to Epstein and Maxwell (who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for her role in Epstein’s sex-crimes operation involving underage girls) came out in the U.S. Department of Justice’s massive document dump. Since then, with everyone and their dog is wondering what Wasserman pal and fellow Epstein files mentionee Donald Trump will do if Wasserman is knocked off his Olympics perch.
(L-R) 2028 LA Olympics organizing committee chair Casey Wasserman & Donald Trump at an executive order signing ceremony on August 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo:Getty)
Timing being everything in Hollywood, the subpoena also was filed just one day before Wasserman, under pressure from investment firm Providence Equity Partners, announced he would sell the sports, talent and music agency that bares his and his Hollywood kingpin grandfather Lew Wasserman’s name.
International Olympic Committee leaders and the LA28 board — which includes Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jeanie Buss, Jessica Alba and ex-House Speaker Keven McCarthy — may still be in Wasserman’s corner, but his business was starting to bleed with big stars like Chappell Roan, John Summit and U.S. soccer legend Abby Wambach exiting in a “moral values” conflict. Two years ago, Billie Eilish left Wasserman around the time an LA28 sex scandal swirled around the exec.
“I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light,” said Wasserman late last month when the correspondence with the UK Press Baron offspring emerged. “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.”
Wasserman offered a similar apology last week with the move to sell off his 40% stake in his agency.
“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 told staff in a companywide memo. “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.”
With Wasserman allies swearing less than a week ago that he would never sell his stake in the company, Wasserman himself is telling loyalists that Ari Emanuel is playing a part in his downfall.
The logic, as told to Deadline by well-placed sources, is that the Endeavor co-founder wants to bring down Wasserman in order to buy up parts of his lucrative empire (specifically the music agency) at fire-sale prices.
On the other side, sources reject this assertion, noting Emanuel is already in business with Wasserman through TKO’s experiential hospitality company On Location.
Having said that, with the Wasserman assets now on the market, WME, CAA, Range and others are likely candidates to consider a purchase of at least some of the business.
On another note, the scooping up of documents sought by Schnatter has a typo his lawyers might want to clean up. “Wasserman Campus refers to the Campus of Wasserman Media, located at 23388 Mulholland Drive, Woodland Hills, California 91364,” says the exhibit accompanying the subpoena notice of intent. As most around town know, Wasserman Campus is the name and location of the MPTF’s senior living community The headquarters of Wasserman’s agency is in Murdock Plaza on Wilshire Boulevard.