CBS doctor Peter Attia resigns after 1,700+ emails with Jeffrey Epstein surface

BWBari Weiss was hired as CBS News Editor-in-Chief in October 2025, two months after Paramount completed its merger with Skydance. She had previously founded The Free Press, an opinion outlet, and was known as a vocal critic of cancel culture. One of her stated goals at CBS was to widen the aperture of the stories we tell and the voices we hear.

In January 2026, Weiss introduced roughly a dozen new contributors including Attia, historian Niall Ferguson, and wellness influencer AHAndrew Huberman. CBS promoted Attia in a social media post as one of the sharpest minds on the topics that matter most. The contributor slate was designed as the public face of the CBS News editorial reinvention under Weiss.

Days after Attia's announcement, the DOJ released 3 million Epstein-related documents. Attia's name appeared more than 1,700 times. The emails showed he met Epstein in 2014 through what he described as a prominent female health leader while seeking research funding, and maintained contact from 2014 to 2019 — after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution, though before the Miami Herald's 2018 exposé that reignited public attention.

In a Feb. 2 post on X, Attia said he was ashamed of the emails. He acknowledged specific exchanges including one where he wrote that the biggest problem with being Epstein's friend is that the life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can't tell a soul. In a 2016 email, he made a crude sexual joke using Epstein's initials.

CBS News pulled an October 2025 60 Minutes segment featuring Attia from a repeat broadcast in early February 2026, without public explanation. Despite the pullback, Weiss was reported by multiple outlets — including The Wrap — to be actively resisting pressure from Paramount executives to let Attia go, citing her anti-cancel-culture principles.

On Feb. 22, JOJohn Oliver devoted a segment of Last Week Tonight to pointing out that Attia had already been removed as chief science officer of David Protein — a company he had invested in and helped fund — but remained employed by CBS News. Oliver's segment framed the inconsistency as an editorial double standard.

Attia's departure is part of a broader wave of professional consequences from the DOJ's Epstein file releases. Britain's former ambassador to the United States, PMPeter Mandelson, was arrested in London on Feb. 23 on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former British prince, had been arrested on the same charge the week prior. Both were connected to the Epstein investigation.

DEDavid Ellison's Paramount Skydance owns CBS News. Ellison hired Weiss. Weiss hired Attia. Attia then became untenable after the DOJ files. The episode exposed tensions between Weiss's editorial autonomy and Paramount's corporate risk management — a tension made more complex by the fact that Paramount is simultaneously competing against Netflix for control of Warner Bros. Discovery while seeking its own merger approval from the DOJ.