Jeffrey Toobin

Jeffrey Ross Toobin (born May 21, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, blogger, and former legal analyst for CNN.

During the Iran–Contra affair, Toobin served as an associate counsel on its investigation at the Department of Justice.

Toobin was born to a Jewish-American family in New York City in 1960, a son of Marlene Sanders, former ABC News and CBS News correspondent, and Jerome Toobin, a news broadcasting producer.

His younger brother, Mark, born in 1967 with Down syndrome, has lived apart from the family.

Toobin attended Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School.

While attending Harvard College for undergraduate studies, he covered sports for The Harvard Crimson.

His column was titled "Inner Toobin".

Toobin graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history and literature and was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship.

He attended Harvard Law School, where classmates included Elena Kagan, and he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Toobin has written several books, including accounts of the 1970s Patty Hearst kidnapping and her time with the SLA, the O. J. Simpson murder case, and the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.

He graduated in 1986 with a J.D. magna cum laude.

Toobin began freelancing for The New Republic while a law student.

After passing the bar exam, he worked as a law clerk to U.S. circuit judge J. Edward Lumbard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Next he served as an associate counsel for Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Iran–Contra affair and Oliver North's criminal trial.

He moved to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

He moved from government and the practice of law into full-time writing during the 1990s, when he published his first books.

Toobin wrote a book, Opening Arguments: A Young Lawyer's First Case: United States v. Oliver North (1991), about his work in the Office of Independent Counsel, to which Walsh objected.

Toobin had been required to sign multiple agreements to protect the confidentiality of grand jury and internal proceedings of the office.

But he had taken thousands of pages of notes with him and based his book on such information, revealing material that Walsh believed should have been held as private.

Toobin went to court to affirm his right to publish.

Judge John F. Keenan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote an opinion that Toobin and his publisher had the right to release this book.

The book was published before Walsh's appeal could be decided, mooting the case.

Accordingly, the Circuit Court vacated the lower court's decision and ordered the dismissal of the case.

After three years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Toobin resigned from the U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn, and abandoned "the practice of law."

He wrote for The New Yorker from 1993 to 2020.

He was fired that fall for masturbating on-camera during a Zoom video conference call with co-workers—according to him, believing that his camera was off.

He continued to serve as legal analyst for CNN for two years.

He started working as a writer in 1993 at The New Yorker and in 1996 became a television legal analyst for ABC.

Toobin has provided broadcast legal analysis on several high-profile cases.

In 1994, Toobin broke the story in The New Yorker that the legal defense team in O. J. Simpson's criminal trial planned to accuse Mark Fuhrman of the LAPD of planting evidence.

He published books on some of these cases: The Run of His Life: The People v OJ Simpson (1997), and A Vast Conspiracy (1999), about the investigation of Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

Each of these books was later adapted for television, the Simpson case as a mini-series, and the Clinton as an episode.

In 2000 Toobin received an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elián González custody saga, which had resulted in the return of the boy from the United States to communist-led Cuba.

Toobin joined CNN in 2002 as a legal analyst.

In 2003, he secured the first interview with Martha Stewart about the insider trading charges against her.

Toobin is the author of seven books.

Toobin provided analysis of Michael Jackson's 2005 child molestation trial, the O. J. Simpson civil case, and independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton.

His book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (2007) received awards from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

His next book was The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court (2012).

The latter two were adapted for television as seasons of FX's American Crime Story, with the Simpson case premiering in 2016.