Bari Weiss’s CBS News Welcomes Contributor With Epstein Ties
Bari Weiss’s variant of CBS News has opted to keep Peter Attia on as a network contributor, despite his recently revealed ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.Attia was named as an on-air contributor in January—one of 19 that Weiss said she was “so excited” to introduce to the broadcasting behemoth’s lineup just three weeks ago. CBS has not made its position on Attia public, but staffers who spoke with The Guardian indicated that the network intended to retain him as an on-air analyst.“Everyone internally unofficially concluded he was staying as of about a week ago,” one CBS News staffer told The Guardian.The celebrity wellness influencer shared hundreds of messages with Epstein throughout the 2010s—after the financier pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution, according to files made public by the Justice Department late last month. A simple search for Attia’s name in the Epstein files trove returns 1,838 results. Some of the messages are superficially benign, relating to health guidance, while others hint at a darker truth.In a June 2015 email headed “fresh shipment,” Attia wrote to Epstein: “You [know] the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul … ” The email included an image, though its contents were redacted by the DOJ.In another crass exchange with the convicted sex criminal, Attia cracked about the various health benefits of giving oral sex to women. “Pussy is, indeed, low carb,” Attia wrote to Epstein in February 2016. “Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.”In a message to Epstein’s assistant dated January 2016, Attia said that he goes into “JE withdrawal” when he fails to see him. A year later, he chose to spend time with the convicted sex trafficker instead of visiting his infant son, who had been hospitalized after entering cardiac arrest.Staffers at CBS News were reportedly frustrated by the decision to keep Attia on the company payroll.“We’re pissed off about it,” another unidentified CBS employee told The Guardian.In a lengthy public apology posted to X earlier this month, Attia described his outed communications with Epstein as “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible.”Earlier this month, inside sources told the New York Post’s On the Money newsletter that Weiss had agonized over the decision of whether to keep Attia—in large part because she felt that “contrarian voices like his” were crucial to restructuring CBS News’s business model.