Peter Attia, the celebrity doctor and podcast host recruited just weeks ago as part of CBS News' much-publicized contributor overhaul, has resigned from the network effective immediately. His departure follows the release of a cache of Jeffrey Epstein files by the Justice Department earlier this month, in which Attia's name appears frequently.
A spokesman for Attia said the contributor role "was newly established and had not yet meaningfully begun." The spokesman added:
"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 staff were informed Monday by the network's booking department, according to a source familiar with the matter.
According to the files reported on by NBC News, Attia and Epstein traded jokes, arranged times to meet, and chatted about Epstein's health throughout the 2010s. In a message in February 2016, Attia made a crude joke that female genitalia was "low carb."
This matters because of who Jeffrey Epstein was. He was convicted in Florida in 2008 on a child prostitution charge. He died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The 2010s correspondence between Attia and Epstein falls squarely between those two dates. Attia wasn't exchanging banter with some ambiguous figure. Epstein was already a convicted sex offender.
On Feb. 2, Attia posted a lengthy statement on X addressing the situation. He insisted his "interactions with Epstein had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone" and stated plainly:
"I was not involved in any criminal activity, never on his plane, never on his island, and never present at any sex parties."
He also offered something rarely seen from public figures caught in an Epstein-adjacent spotlight: an actual admission of fault.
"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."
Credit where it's marginally due: he didn't blame the release, didn't claim the emails were taken out of context, and didn't lawyer his way around the word "indefensible." But acknowledging humiliation is not the same as answering the harder question. Why was a health-focused physician maintaining a joking, casual rapport with a man convicted of child prostitution?
Attia's departure lands awkwardly for a network in the middle of a deliberate reinvention. Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison hired Bari Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief with a mandate to "invigorate" the network's news division. Weiss recruited a stable of contributors in January that included Attia alongside historian Niall Ferguson and wellness influencer Andrew Huberman. The intention was clear: bring in voices from outside the legacy media ecosystem to signal a new direction.
That strategy just absorbed its first public hit before it ever gained traction. The contributor role, by Attia's own spokesman's admission, "had not yet meaningfully begun." A hire meant to signal fresh credibility became a liability before the ink dried.
This is the risk of building a brand around personalities rather than process. Weiss made her name challenging institutional groupthink, and the contributor roster reflected that instinct. But vetting matters more than vibes. When you're trying to rebuild trust in a news organization, the names you attach to it carry weight. Every single one needs to be clean.
The broader pattern here extends well beyond one CBS contributor. The Justice Department's release of these files continues to send shockwaves through circles that spent years hoping Epstein's connections would stay buried. Every new batch of names and correspondence forces the same uncomfortable reckoning: a staggering number of prominent, credentialed, successful people found it perfectly acceptable to maintain friendly relationships with a convicted child sex offender.
Not one of them can credibly claim ignorance. The 2008 conviction was public. The nature of the charges was known. And yet the emails kept flowing, the meetings kept happening, the jokes kept landing.
The public has every right to demand a full accounting. Not just of who appeared in the files, but of who knew what and when, and why proximity to a child predator carried so little social cost among the elite for so long. The Epstein story was never about one monster. It was about the ecosystem that sustained him.
Peter Attia may have never set foot on the island. The emails that are public may represent the full extent of his involvement. But "I didn't commit any crimes" is a remarkably low bar for a man who just weeks ago was positioned as a trusted voice on a major American news network. And every name that surfaces from these files reminds the country that the powerful operated by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
That reckoning isn't close to finished.
