A CBS News contributor brought on by MAGA-curious boss Bari Weiss has reportedly departed the network after his ties to Jeffrey Epstein came under scrutiny.
Peter Attia, 52, has tendered his resignation effective immediately amid the firestorm over his friendship with the late sex offender, according to The Hollywood Reporter. CBS News staff were informed of his decision on Monday in a note from the network’s booking department.
“Dr. Attia’s contributor role was newly established and had not yet meaningfully begun,” a spokesperson for Attia said in a statement to The New York Times. “As such, he stepped back to ensure his involvement didn’t become a distraction from the important work being done at CBS. He wishes the network and its leadership well and has no further comment at this time.”
CBS News did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
The anti-aging guru, handpicked by Weiss, joined CBS News in January, when the network welcomed more than a dozen new contributors across a variety of fields to “expand its knowledge base.”
After the Trump administration released a fresh trove of Epstein files earlier this month, however, Attia’s name was spotted more than a thousand times.
Dozens of email exchanges showed an apparently playful relationship between Epstein and Attia, with the longevity influencer making grotesque sexual remarks.
In 2016, Attia wrote to Epstein, “P---y is, indeed, low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.” In June 2015, Attia lamented how the “biggest problem” of being Epstein’s friend is that “the life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”
Another email thread revealed that when Attia’s infant son was hospitalized in the ICU in 2017, he ignored his wife’s pleas for him to fly home from New York to San Diego, and instead made plans the next day to meet with Epstein.
In his book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Attia wrote, “I stayed in New York, busy with my ‘important’ work. Ayrton’s cardiac arrest happened on a Tuesday, but I did not come home to San Diego until Friday of the following week. Ten days later.”
The emails set off a firestorm inside CBS News, with Weiss standing behind her new hire and staff furious with management. The New York Post previously reported that Weiss had been agonizing over what to do with Attia “partly because she believes contrarian voices like his are crucial to revamping the stodgy, left-leaning network’s business model.”
“We’re p-----d off about it,” one CBS News staffer told The Guardian.
Attia tried to explain away his relationship with Epstein, writing in a lengthy social media post that he was apologetic while maintaining that he was not involved in any criminal activity and that his ties to the notorious pedophile “had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone.”
“I was incredibly naïve to believe him,” Attia wrote. “I mistook his social acceptance in the eyes of the credible people I saw him with for acceptability, and that was a serious error in my judgment.”
“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,” he continued. “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.”
