Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino Calls For Wasserman CEO To Resign Over Epstein Files Revelations

Millions of pages from the Esptein Files were released last week, revealing more about the horrifying sex trafficking network led by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. In 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. Several of these new documents included flirtatious email exchanges between Wasserman Group CEO Casey Wasserman and Maxwell. Artist Bethany Cosentino, best known as the frontwoman of indie rock group Best Coast, has shared a statement calling for Wasserman to step down and change the company's name.

The emails that were released involving Wasserman and Maxwell cover a time period from 2001 to 2003. They are bad and upsetting! Wasserman released a limp statement following this new public information. "I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light," his statement read. “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."

Cosentino has been represented by Wasserman Group since 2021. She called bullshit on his statement, advocating for actual accountability. "Staying quiet isn't something I can do in good conscience - especially in a moment when men in power are so often protected, excused, or allowed to move on without consequence. Pretending this isn't a big deal is not an option for me," she wrote.

She continued: "Casey's response, that these emails are 'deeply regretted,' is not enough. Regret without accountability is just damage control — an attempt to move on while the rest of us are expected to sit with the discomfort of our careers being publicly tied to him. Artists are tired of swallowing scandals like this. We are tired of learning, over and over, that men who control access, resources, money, and so-called safety in our industry are given endless grace."

It should also be noted that Wasserman Group is freaking massive. The marketing and talent management company began in 2002 as a sports marketing agency, but has rapidly expanded into the entertainment industry, acquiring the Paradigm agency’s North American live music operations in 2021 and its UK business the following year. They work with everyone: Bon Iver, Beach House, Geese, fakemink, Oneohtrix Point Never, PinkPantheress, Frank Ocean, Lorde, and more. The list is truly insane. (Notably, Billie Eilish dropped Wasserman in 2024 over a different scandal of his.) Now all these artists and their teams are adjacently associated with this man, and instead of Wasserman taking on responsibility for the thousands of people that work under him, all he can claim is regret? C'mon dude.

Cosentino put it much more eloquently, writing: "I do not want my name on the website of a man who was ever a personal friend of an accomplice to a literal pedophile, or associated with Jeffrey Epstein himself. I have worked with my agent, Sam Hunt, for over 15 years who has done incredible work in representing me. I am in the Sam Hunt business. I am not in the Wasserman business. I have asked to remove my name and band's name from the company site. The position Casey Wasserman has put his agents in is inexcusable. This is a call for him to step down and a change of business name be imminent."

To get an even more upsetting sense how powerful this guy is, Wasserman is also the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics Organizing Committee Chairperson. Since last week many LA politicians have asked for him to step down. The US Olympics committee is doing fuck all about that. "He has put out a statement, and there is really nothing else for me to add,” International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry said.

Since taking on this role, Casey Wasserman was able to meet with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December. Many artists that are part of the "No Music For Genocide" campaign, geo-blocking their music from streaming services in the country, are Wasserman clients. He has been noted as a big donor to pro-Israel and pro-IDF causes, but not publicly in the past few years.

You can read Cosentino's full statement below:

My name is Bethany Cosentino. I am a singer/songwriter, an activist, a mother, and the frontwoman of the band Best Coast. I have been represented by Wasserman Music since its expansion into music in 2021. It has come to my attention that the founder and CEO of my agency, Casey Wasserman, had a documented romantic relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell between the years of 2001 and 2003, and multiple documented connections and communications with Jeffrey Epstein confirmed by emails now part of public record. Ghislaine Maxwell is not a neutral character in a messy story — she is a convicted sex trafficker who helped facilitate the abuse of minors. As an artist represented by Wasserman, I did not consent to having my name or my career tied to someone with this kind of association to exploitation. Staying quiet isn't something I can do in good conscience — especially in a moment when men in power are so often protected, excused, or allowed to move on without consequence. Pretending this isn't a big deal is not an option for me.

Casey's response, that these emails are "deeply regretted," is not enough. Regret without accountability is just damage control — an attempt to move on while the rest of us are expected to sit with the discomfort of our careers being publicly tied to him. Artists are tired of swallowing scandals like this. We are tired of learning, over and over, that men who control access, resources, money, and so-called safety in our industry are given endless grace. We are tired of being asked to treat proximity to something horrific as an unfortunate situation we should simply move past — especially when the person involved still holds all the power. And we are tired of watching harm minimized or brushed off as “a long time ago,” while the impact of that harm is still very real, especially for women and survivors of sexual assault.

Artists are not interchangeable assets. We are people. Many of us are women. Many of us, myself included, are survivors. We deserve systems that let us work without asking us to compromise our values in exchange for opportunity.

This letter is my public refusal to accept that this is "just how things are." It is a refusal to continue lining the pockets of people so closely tied to shady business and toxic, deeply harmful people. I do not want my name on the website of a man who was ever a personal friend of an accomplice to a literal pedophile, or associated with Jeffrey Epstein himself. I have worked with my agent, Sam Hunt, for over 15 years who has done incredible work in representing me. I am in the Sam Hunt business. I am not in the Wasserman business. I have asked to remove my name and band's name from the company site. The position Casey Wasserman has put his agents in is inexcusable. This is a call for him to step down and a change of business name be imminent.

“With kings of convenience we ended up with wasserman music, because our agent's company sold itself to paradigm and then to wasserman,” Erlend Øye commented on the United Musicians & Allied Workers Union’s post above. “We will look into this and if it means we should change our set-up. Where do i find information about this?”