A newly hired contributor to CBS News may soon be out of the job after some really embarrassing emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein became public over the weekend.
Last week, the network announced the names of 19 contributors who would be appearing as experts on its various platforms, including Dr. Peter Attia, who focuses on longevity.
However, Attia’s network gig appears to be short-lived after the latest Epstein files dump showed that he had a longstanding relationship with the disgraced financier that began about eight years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.
A spokesman for Paramount, CBS’s parent company, told The Wrap that the network will likely end Attia’s position as a contributor before it officially begins.
Attia’s emails verge on sycophancy, including one where he says the “biggest problem” about being friends with Epstein is “the life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”
In another email, Attia tells Epstein that “p―-y is, indeed, low carb,” and adds, “still awaiting results on gluten content, though.”
In addition, Attia found his connection to Epstein so crucial to his career aspirations that he stayed in New York to meet with him while his son and wife battled a serious medical emergency in another state.
Attia’s removal as a CBS contributor hadn’t been officially announced as of Monday afternoon, but he attempted to explain away his Epstein connection on Monday in a lengthy post on X.
After apologizing that he “did not get this out sooner,” because he wanted to be thorough, Attia insisted that he is not one of the individuals in the Epstein files who “participated in criminal activity, enabled it, or witnessed it. I am not in any of those categories, and there is no evidence to the contrary.”
To be clear:
1. I was not involved in any criminal activity.
2. My interactions with Epstein had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone.
3. I was never on his plane, never on his island, and never present at any sex parties.That said, I apologize and regret putting myself in a position where emails, some of them embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible, are now public, and that is on me. I accept that reality and the humiliation that comes with it.
Attia then addressed an email exchange with Epstein with the subject line “Got a fresh shipment,” that included a photo of metformin, “a medication I had just received from the pharmacy for my own use.”
The subject line referred to the picture of the bottles of medication, but Epstein responded with the words “me too” and a photo of an adult woman.
“I responded with crude, tasteless banter. Reading that exchange now is very embarrassing, and I will not defend it,” Attia said. “I’m ashamed of myself for everything about this. At the time, I understood this exchange as juvenile, not a reference to anything dark or harmful.”
Attia claimed that at the moment he met Epstein, he hadn’t been around that level of prominence, and admitted, “that level of access was novel to me.”
Everything about him seemed excessive and exclusive, including the fact that he lived in the largest home in all of Manhattan, owned a Boeing 727, and hosted parties with the most powerful and prominent leaders in business and politics.
I treated that access as something to be quiet about rather than discussed freely with others. One line in that exchange, about his life being outrageous and me not being able to tell anyone, is being interpreted as awareness of wrongdoing.
That is not how I meant it at all. What I was referring to, poorly and flippantly, was the discretion commanded by those social and professional circles–the idea that you don’t talk about who you meet, the dinners you attend and the power and influence of the people in those settings.
What I wrote in that email reads terribly, and I own that.
Attia said that he met Epstein in 2014 while raising funds for scientific research, and said the financier “was widely known in academic and philanthropic circles as a funder of science and moved openly among credible institutions and public figures.”
He also admitted he met with Epstein in New York seven or eight times between the summer of 2014 and spring of 2019, but “I never visited his island or ranch, and I never flew on any of his planes.”
Attia claims being surrounded by so many high-profile people led him “to make assumptions about him that clouded my judgment in ways it shouldn’t have.”
Although Attia directly asked Epstein about the 2008 conviction shortly after they met, Epstein minimized the prostitution-related charges.
He also insists he never witnessed any illegal behavior or any underage people while around Epstein, but was “repulsed by what he learned” after reading a Miami Herald expose in 2018.
Attia said he told Epstein to his face that he “needed to accept responsibility for what he did,” and claims he tried to get Epstein to pay for residential care and lifelong therapy for his victims.
“In hindsight, even attempting to facilitate accountability was a mistake and, once again, reflected just how naive I was at the time. Once the full scope of his actions was clear, disengagement should have been the only appropriate response,” he wrote.
Although Attia insisted he didn’t want “a pass” from his followers, and he wasn’t asking for people to ignore his emails, or defend his actions. but said, “the man I am today roughly ten years later, would not write them and would not associate with Epstein at all.”