Dr. Peter Attia appears on the red carpet at the “Limitless with Chris Hemsworth” premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on November 15, 2022 in New York, New York.
Gabriele Holterman | AP
Longevity guru Dr. Peter Attia has resigned as a contributor to CBS News in the aftermath of the publication of his past email correspondence with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Dr. Attia’s role as a contributor is newly established and has not yet meaningfully gotten off to a meaningful start,” a spokesperson for Mr. Attia told CNBC in a statement Monday.
“As such, he has stepped back to avoid interfering with the important work being done at CBS,” the spokesperson said. “He wishes the network and its leadership every success and has no further comment at this time.”
The Hollywood Reporter first reported Attia’s departure from CBS.
CBS did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Mr. Attia has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Mr. Epstein.
But in early February, just days after the Justice Department released emails between him and Epstein, along with millions of documents related to the criminal investigation of Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, CBS removed the “60 Minutes” segment featuring Attia from reruns of the news program.
Mr Attia’s resignation was revealed on the same day that London police arrested Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the US, on suspicion of corruption in office. Mandelson himself is under investigation in connection with confidential information he shared with Epstein, as is former British prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was arrested last week on the same charges.
Many other celebrities quit their jobs after their communications with Epstein were made public by the Justice Department. Nothing in the Justice Department file is evidence of wrongdoing, and no one in the file has been criminally charged since it was made public.
Mr. Attia was among a group of new CBS News contributors hired by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who himself was hired in October, two months after the station became its parent organization. paramount skydancehas completed the merger of its two previous components, Paramount Global and Skydance Media.
File photo: Bari Weiss speaks at the 2022 Milken Institute World Congress in Beverly Hills, California, USA on May 3, 2022.
Mike Blake | Reuters
In a Feb. 3 post on X, Attia said she told her team and patients that “I am not involved in any criminal activity.” “My interactions with Epstein had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone,” and, “I never flew on his plane, never came to his island, never attended a sex party.”
“That being said,” Atia added. “I apologize and regret putting myself in a position where the emails, some of which were embarrassing, dry, and inexcusable, became public. That is my responsibility. I accept that reality and the humiliation that comes with it.”
In his tweet, Attia referred to an email he sent to Epstein in June 2015 with the subject line “Fresh package received,” in which the doctor also attached a photo of a bottle of the drug metformin.
Epstein “replyed with the words ‘me too’ and attached a photo of an adult female,” Attia wrote. “I responded with a vulgar and tasteless joke.”
“When I read that exchange now, I’m extremely embarrassed and I’m not going to defend myself. I’m ashamed of myself for everything that happened. At the time, I understood the exchange to be juvenile and not a reference to anything dark or harmful,” he added.
Attia also wrote that she met Epstein in 2014 “through a prominent women’s health leader while fundraising for scientific research.”
Epstein was released from a Florida prison nearly five years ago after serving a 13-month sentence for soliciting sexual acts from a minor.
“From the summer of 2014 to the spring of 2019, I met with him about seven or eight times at his home in New York City, to talk about his research and to meet people he introduced me to. I had never visited his island or ranch, nor been on his plane,” Attia wrote to X.
“When I was at his home, I met him in person, with small groups of scientists, doctors, and business leaders, and once in 2015 at a dinner with many guests, including prominent heads of state.”
“Immediately after meeting, I asked him directly about his 2008 conviction, which he characterized as a prostitution-related charge,” Attia wrote. “In 2018, I learned this was extremely disrespectful…I was incredibly naive about him. I misinterpreted his social reception in the eyes of trusted people who met him as acceptability. That was a grave error in my judgment. To be clear, I never witnessed any illegal activity, and I never saw anyone who appeared to be underage in his presence.
Epstein committed suicide in a New York prison in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
