Embattled Hollywood agent had wife falsely arrested, new court filing says

The once high-flying Hollywood agent Adam Venit allegedly admitted to having his wife Trina arrested under false pretenses, according to a court filing Thursday in Los Angeles federal court.

The filing includes a January 2019 letter to his estranged wife Trina in which Venit explains the circumstances that led to her arrest and apologizes for his conduct.

“We were arguing and it was heated, but I STUPIDLY involved our kids and made the mistake of running scared and doing the UNTHINKABLE of having you arrested,” the letter said. “One of the two greatest failures and regrets in my life. I AM SO SORRY.”

A representative for Adam Venit could not be reached for comment.

The letter was included in a motion filed this week by attorneys for Trina Venit in U.S. Central District Court in Los Angeles. She sued the former WME partner in June, accusing him of sexual assault, battery and false imprisonment over a period of several years.

Venit alleged that during a 2019 altercation her husband chased her around their home in an attempt to find her phone and threatened to report her for domestic violence, throwing himself down “in the hopes of manufacturing an injury to support his concocted abuse claim,” according to her lawsuit. Police arrested Trina Venit for domestic violence and released her the following morning, she said.

Earlier this month, Adam Venit asked the federal court to dismiss her complaint, arguing the matter should be resolved in family court. He said in a filing that Trina Venit’s allegations of domestic violence were “entirely fabricated” and that she is attempting to “misuse this federal forum as part of her ongoing quest to obtain more than half of the parties’ marital estate.”

But on Thursday Trina Venit filed an opposition to that motion to dismiss her case, including the letter allegedly written by Venit in which he describes psychological issues that led up to their dispute and her arrest.

“In the letter, Defendant admits that he called the police on Plaintiff — conspicuously not because of any actual or threatened violence by her toward him — but rather due to among other things Defendant’s ‘confused psychology’; ‘tension and [Plaintiff’s] threats to write a book [and] call [Defendant] gay,’” Trina Venit stated in her complaint. “This letter constitutes a clear admission that Defendant’s version of events was fabricated from the beginning.”

Venit, whose clients included stars like Adam Sandler, caught public attention in 2018 when he stepped down from WME following allegations by Terry Crews that Venit groped him at a party in West Hollywood in 2016. The lawsuit was settled and Venit apologized to Crews for the incident.

In March 2021, Adam Venit filed for divorce after 22 years of marriage. Trina obtained a temporary domestic violence restraining order against her estranged husband, with evidence of multiple instances of abuse. The Los Angeles Police Department “confiscated at least eight firearms and voluminous ammunition belonging to Adam from the family’s former residence on April 17, 2021,” she said alleged in her lawsuit.

Two months later, Venit filed his own domestic violence restraining order against Trina, from Hawaii, where he currently resides, according to her complaint.

Both restraining orders were subsequently dropped.