‘i Think She Will Be Loyal’: Jeffrey Epstein’s Role In Peter Attia’s Rise

NEW YORK — Years before celebrity doctor Peter Attia became known as a longevity influencer with millions of followers, he sought Jeffrey Epstein’s help getting a new medical practice off the ground.

Attia was hiring for a head of patient experience in New York City, and he prioritized one specific qualification, according to an archived copy of the webpage: “Be. Fucking. Awesome.”

Attia found an unlikely candidate through Epstein, who invited the doctor to his Upper East Side mansion in April 2017 and introduced him to a foreign-born model, who had been scheduled to see Epstein half an hour before Attia’s appointment, according to POLITICO’s analysis of schedules and emails released by the Department of Justice. Attia later emailed the model a link to the job description, adding “great to meet you today.”

Several days later, the model was invited to meet Attia and “several friends” for drinks at the five-star Baccarat Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, alongside “two additional top candidates,” according to an email that she forwarded to Epstein.

“I think she will be loyal,” Epstein told Attia in an email about the model.

Brittany Henderson, an attorney for the model, said she is a victim of Epstein's abuse and declined requests to comment.

The previously unreported meeting is one of several examples of Attia turning to Epstein as he set up his then-fledgling medical practice. Emails show Attia asked Epstein for patient referrals in 2015, stayed in an empty Upper East Side apartment Epstein owned in 2016, discussed the 2017 job opening with Epstein and, over several years, provided him with health advice and testing. The interactions all unfolded years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for child prostitution, requiring him to register as a sex offender.

The records suggest Attia had a deeper relationship with the late convicted sex offender than he publicly acknowledged last month, when he claimed to have met with Epstein on “approximately seven or eight occasions at his New York City home” to discuss research studies and be introduced to other people, including scientists, doctors, business leaders or heads of state.

“To be clear, I never witnessed illegal behavior and never saw anyone who appeared underage in his presence,” Attia wrote in a 1,000-word statement last month addressing his appearances in the Epstein files, which he posted on X.

Attia, who is licensed to practice medicine but never completed his residency training, occupies a slightly different space as part of a growing class of physician influencers. The 52-year-old has attracted millions of followers for his health and wellness insights, which fit somewhere between supporters of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement hawking pseudoscientific supplements and hormones and mainstream health experts with extensive medical backgrounds. He counts FDA Commissioner Marty Makary as a “close personal friend.”

David Vermillion, a spokesperson for Attia, told POLITICO the influencer’s interactions with Epstein “did not result in a referred patient, an investment, or any support in building his practice” and that the model was never offered a position. He said Attia’s previous estimate of his meetings with Epstein was based on his memory and that they appeared to have met 11 times over four years.

“Your ongoing effort, a malicious narrative in desperate search of supporting facts, continues to rest on mischaracterizations contradicted in several instances by the documents you yourself have provided. Now you are attempting to impugn Dr. Attia’s statement and further attack his integrity,” Vermillion wrote in an email to POLITICO.

He added that “any interaction or introduction that may or may not have occurred” with the model at Epstein’s mansion in 2017 was not the purpose of Attia’s visit.

The revelations about Attia, a popular podcaster and best-selling author, add to a pattern of influential people who turned a blind eye to Epstein’s 2008 conviction and indulged him when they stood to benefit from his wealth and connections. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial. His longtime co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 on child sex trafficking charges.

Since the Justice Department released millions of Epstein-related files to comply with a law passed last year by Congress, some of Epstein’s friends and associates have sought to minimize their relationship with the sex offender. But the files continue to spur a reckoning over the ethical duties of doctors that treated Epstein and, in some cases, treated women at his request.

To some health experts, the Epstein connection added yet another reason not to platform influencers like Attia in conversations around health care. The mounting evidence of doctors from New York to Florida to Ohio associating with the sex offender after his 2008 conviction is now spurring calls for accountability.

“With doctors, there is a higher standard of behavior and of judgment because professional requirements mean physicians agree to do no harm. Doctors are given huge responsibility and status in our society for patient care and for guiding what could be life and death decisions,” said Jocalyn Clark, a doctor of public health, leading global health expert focused on gender equality and the international editor for the BMJ, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Clark argued in a BMJ article last month that Epstein’s association with prominent doctors helped burnish his reputation, enabling him to continue abusing women and girls. She said health leaders named in the files need to be fully investigated.

“All of this undermines trust in the medical profession as a whole,” Clark told POLITICO.

Vermillion declined to answer a list of nine questions about specific emails between Attia and Epstein, Attia’s introduction to the model and the get-together at the Baccarat, saying: “We cannot address your specific questions, which are based on faulty premises, until you address the fundamental problems we have repeatedly identified with your unsupported claims.”

‘A valuable friend’

Attia first met the disgraced financier through Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and longtime associate Eva Andersson-Dubin, a model who later went to medical school and then became a philanthropist with her husband, billionaire hedge funder Glenn Dubin, according to a 2015 email.

“He might literally be one of the—if not the—most interesting people I’ve ever met!” Attia appears to have emailed her in June of that year, thanking her for the introduction. The email’s recipient is redacted, but the files show Dubin forwarded the email to Epstein.

A spokesperson for Andersson-Dubin declined to comment.

Over the next couple months, Epstein introduced Attia to scientists and world leaders. Attia introduced the disgraced financier to psychiatrist Paul Conti, whom Epstein later paid to treat a female “friend” who “has trouble getting motivated, suffers anxiety, and is not doing well,” according to an October 2015 email.

Conti did not return requests for comment.

Attia appeared so eager to build a roster of elite clientele for his forthcoming Upper East Side clinic that he advised Epstein at no charge, according to a 2015 email thread. Attia did, however, ask Epstein in the same email for patient referrals for the “very boutique practice” he was opening later that year under the name Attia Medical. Vermillion, Attia’s spokesperson, said the two matters were unrelated.

Attia ended up moving into the same Upper East Side office suite as one of Epstein’s longtime doctors, Bernard Kruger, who maintained his own concierge medicine practice and later co-founded a members-only emergency care clinic that Epstein paid $15,000 for a year’s access to for him and five “girls,” according to the emails.

It is unclear how Attia met Kruger and came to share an office with him; the emails show he was aware that Kruger was one of Epstein’s doctors. After Epstein emailed Attia in July 2015 that he “told kruger you were a good guy,” Attia noted he had just met Kruger that day.

Kruger told POLITICO in an email that Epstein did not help facilitate his introduction to Attia. A spokesperson for Kruger, Mark Botnick, said the two doctors were introduced through a mutual medical colleague with no connection to Epstein. He said Attia leased office space from Kruger, but that the two doctors’ practices were not affiliated in any way. Kruger has not been accused of wrongdoing, and his spokesperson said Kruger never saw nor served in any capacity as a physician for any of the five women referred to in the email.

Over the next couple years, Attia continued pitching his medical expertise to the convicted sex offender, indicating it would benefit Epstein’s sex life. Attia also asked if he and one of his employees could stay at Epstein’s “place” for a couple nights while he was awaiting approval for a rental apartment, according to email correspondence from January 2016.

In one February 2016 email, Attia told Epstein he would love to add “5 years or more to your life … even if the only reason to do so is to have more sex." In another exchange several days later, Attia asked Epstein: “Have you decided if you're interested in living longer (solely for the ladies, of course)?”

Epstein responded by calling Attia “a valuable friend and resource” and saying he could pay to be one of Attia’s clients. Vermillion, Attia’s spokesperson, said Epstein did not seek treatment from Attia, and there was “no intake, no contract, and no payment.” He added that Attia advises all “middle-aged clients — male and female — on lifestyle changes that could improve sexual health.”

Nearly two years later, in December 2017, Attia told Epstein: “I want to make 2018 the year we get serious about your health. Heart, brain, insulin resistance, body. If for no other reason, at least you can keep up with the 23-year=old [sic] beauties.”

By then, Epstein and Maxwell had already been publicly accused of running a sex trafficking ring that involved underage girls. Prosecutors had identified 40 young women who could be considered victims of Epstein’s illegal acts.

‘My biggest concern is her visa’

As Attia was building out his staff in New York City, he was on the lookout for someone “awesome,” as an archived copy of his old website put it.

Then, in April 2017, Epstein introduced Attia to the foreign-born model who had asked for help finding a job, according to records initially released by the DOJ that identified the model’s first name and initials, allowing POLITICO to piece together her interactions with Epstein and Attia. As the two men messaged back and forth about the open job at his New York City clinic, Attia told Epstein his biggest concern about the referral was the model’s work authorization.

“We've got it down to 3 candidates for the role (and she is one of them). My biggest concern is her visa,” he wrote to Epstein on April 24, the same day that the model was scheduled to join Attia and two other top candidates at the Baccarat Hotel. An employee for Attia had characterized the meet-and-greet as “the *perfect* casual setting to spend time with Peter before another opportunity of interviewing with him one-on-one next week,” according to an email to the model that she forwarded to Epstein.

Epstein assured Attia that “O visas” like hers were easily renewed and that she would be “loyal” but told Attia to make his “own cold decision,” writing, “no favor to me one way or other.”

“Of course, but the fact that you know her says a lot, as I know you demand loyal people in your life. This is huge,” Attia replied. “I'm just nervous the modeling firm says "fuck it" and doesn't renew her O because they are pissed she stopped working for them.”

POLITICO does not name the victims in cases of alleged sexual abuse unless they have chosen to speak out publicly.

Vermillion, Attia’s spokesperson, said multiple candidates were evaluated at the event and a young man was hired.

Attia later offered to connect Epstein to the Baccarat Hotel’s owner, billionaire real estate investor Barry Sternlicht, who he identified as one of his patients. A spokesperson for Sternlicht told the Miami New Times that the billionaire attended a dinner at Epstein’s mansion in August 2018 at Attia’s urging and “left working” with the longevity physician shortly after that.

Spokespeople for Sternlicht’s company did not respond to a request for comment.

Later that year, the Miami Herald published a blockbuster investigation probing Epstein’s 2008 “sweetheart deal,” which granted him immunity from federal criminal charges related to the serial sexual abuse of women and girls as young as 14.

The backlash

In the decade since Attia asked Epstein for help with his burgeoning medical practice, he burnished his reputation as a “longevity guru.”

Attia has logged at least three appearances on Joe Rogan’s eponymous podcast — the top-ranked podcast in the country on streaming service Spotify and a particularly influential program among conservatives. He had his own segment this past fall on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program. Several months later, Bari Weiss, CBS News’ recently appointed editor-in-chief, named Attia as one of 19 new contributors who would make the network “fit for purpose in the 21st century.”

Concierge practices like Attia’s, since renamed Early Medical, have become popular among wealthy patients who will spare no expense for longer, healthier lives — even when evidence doesn’t fully support the optimizations they preach. Attia reportedly charges well into the six figures for a membership and recently co-founded a new venture, Biograph, for patients willing to pay $7,500 annually for extensive testing to “uncover risks early.”

The drumbeat of revelations about Attia’s yearslong relationship with Epstein has upended that meteoric rise.

Several exchanges between Attia and Epstein went viral in recent weeks, including Attia’s declaration that “p—y is, indeed, low carb.” In one widely shared back-and forth from 2015, Attia emailed Epstein that he “got a fresh shipment,” and Epstein responded “me too,” attaching a photo that was not released. Attia later said his email depicted a box of the medication metformin and that Epstein’s photo was of an adult woman.

The files also revealed Attia arranged to meet with Epstein in New York City while there for work in July 2015, leaving his wife in San Diego alone in a hospital ICU with their infant son after he “suddenly stopped breathing” and she had to resuscitate him with CPR — a story Attia recounted in his best-selling book, “Outlive,” with no mention of Epstein. Other emails showed Attia making plans to visit Epstein’s New Mexico ranch later that same year, though the trip was canceled.

Attia addressed the most widely shared excerpts with his 1,000-word apology posted on X, saying he was “naive” at the time and calling his messages to Epstein “juvenile” and “crude, tasteless banter.” Attia said his interactions with Epstein “had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone” and he was never involved in any criminal activity.

Attia said he was not Epstein’s doctor and only “answered general medical questions.”

“When I was at his home, it was either meeting with him directly, meeting with small groups of scientists, doctors, or business leaders, and once at a dinner in 2015 with a number of guests including prominent heads of state,” Attia wrote in the Feb. 2 post.

There was no mention of the blood tests or gait analysis that Attia offered Epstein. The plan to visit Epstein’s ranch went unacknowledged. And the introduction to the foreign-born model adds a new layer to Attia’s description of his interactions with the convicted sex offender.

Attia resigned his CBS News position last month, with a spokesperson saying the influencer did not want to be a “distraction.” He parted ways with protein bar company David and powdered supplement maker AG1, previously known as Athletic Greens.

Attia disclosed relationships with seven other companies — including Biograph, which he co-founded — on his website, an archived copy from December shows. A spokesperson for weight-loss startup Virta Health confirmed Attia served as an adviser and said the company has ended its relationship with him and will not be collaborating with him in the future. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.