CBS News’ new, controversial editor-in-chief built her career railing against cancel culture. Now, she’s fighting it again—this time to protect her newest “star” contributor, who has deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Bari Weiss is reportedly battling to keep the self-styled “longevity expert” Peter Attia at CBS after he was found nearly 2,000 times in the latest tranche of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice on Friday—just days after Weiss unveiled him and several other controversial figures as contributors meant to “elevate” the network.
Attia, 52, maintained a long and at times sexually explicit correspondence with the disgraced financier, until Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges and later died by suicide in 2019.
While CBS has yet to comment publicly on the revelations, Weiss is reportedly locked in a standoff with CBS’s parent company, Paramount, over Attia’s future at the network, according to The Wrap.
“It’s Bari versus everyone right now on Attia,” a Paramount insider told Sharon Waxman, editor-in-chief of The Wrap, Monday afternoon.
“Update on the Peter Attia situation: We’re hearing there is a battle royale between Paramount corporate and CBS News’ Bari Weiss,” Waxman wrote on X. “She does not want to cut ties w/ Attia and sees it as givin in to the mob. Paramount sees it as an HR matter and that Attia can’t give expert advice.”
New York Post and Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino, who is well-connected to the MAGA-curious Weiss, also reported Weiss “hates cancel culture and doesn’t want to cut [Attia] lose from his contributor’s gig.”
“But there is a counter-argument being discussed about the optics of a guy dispensing medical advice, who had some weird exchanges with Epstein after he plead to the first charge of sex with a minor,” Gasparino wrote on X.
Just hours earlier, reports indicated CBS was preparing to sever ties with Attia, who offers longevity advice through a $2,500 subscription service. Attia has a medical degree, and is licensed as a physician, but is not board-certified.
The fight is on brand for Weiss, 41, who theatrically resigned from The New York Times in July 2020, publishing a widely circulated open letter accusing colleagues of “bullying” her over her so-called anti-woke views.
Weiss went on to become a champion fighter against “the mob.”
“It is our duty to resist the crowd in this age of mob thinking. It is our duty to speak truth in an age of lies,” she wrote in an essay penned for Deseret Magazine in 2021, one of many such interventions. “It is our duty to think freely in an age of conformity.”
Attia’s free thinking included telling Epstein that “p---y” was low carb, and that the financier’s lifestyle was so “outrageous” that he could not tell other people about it.
Records released by the DOJ also revealed that Attia chose to meet with Epstein in New York in 2017 while ignoring pleas from his wife to come to the hospital where their infant son was being treated.
Attia admitted in his book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, that he ditched his family in their hour of need rather than cancel plans with Epstein.
After her resignation, Weiss launched the anti-woke Substack The Free Press, which was acquired by billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance—backed by his father, Oracle founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison—for $150 million last October. Weiss was later installed as CBS News editor-in-chief, a move widely viewed as an attempt to placate Donald Trump. Last year she greeted the president with a kiss.
The dispute over Attia, however, puts her at odd with David Ellison’s corporate advisors for the first time.
For his part, Attia issued a lengthy statement Monday offering justifications, explanations, but little apology, for his relationship with Epstein. He described being awed by Epstein’s elite social connections, his private plane, and his ownership of “the largest home in all of Manhattan,” saying the financier’s lavish lifestyle ultimately led him to overlook Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution—charges Attia said Epstein downplayed at the time as “prostitution-related charges.”
“At that point in my career, I had little exposure to prominent people, and that level of access was novel to me. Everything about him seemed excessive and exclusive,” Attia wrote in an X post.
“In retrospect, the presence and credibility of such venerable people in different orbits led me to make assumptions about him that clouded my judgment in ways it shouldn’t have.”
Meanwhile, Weiss has repeatedly been accused of engaging in the very censorship she decries during her short tenure at CBS. Last year, the Columbia graduate sparked outrage after making an eleventh-hour decision to pull a 60 Minutes segment detailing conditions at a notorious El Salvador megaprison housing Venezuelan men deported under Trump-era policies.
Her wife, Nellie Bowles, also appeared in the Epstein files, ingratiating herself with Epstein while she was a junior tech reporter at the New York Times. Bowles said she used their meeting in subsequent reporting.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Attia and CBS News for comment.
