Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin spoke Wednesday about the masturbation incident that nearly cost him his career.
“It was a disaster in my life” he told Dan Abrams on NewsNation. “Self-inflicted, self-destructive, and something I will regret for the rest of my life.”
Toobin was filmed on camera with his pants down during a 2020 Zoom call between staffers at New Yorker magazine – where he was a writer – and local radio station WNYC.
He was fired from the New Yorker and suspended from CNN, where he was a legal analyst.
“I have no excuses,” he told Abrams. “I have only one apology that I have tried to offer to everyone involved, including very much my family who were terribly embarrassed.”
Toobin returned to CNN in June 2021, then he and the network parted ways last year in what he called a “joint” decision.
He joined Abrams to discuss his new book, Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh And The Rise of Right Wing Extremism, but began by addressing the incident.
“What exactly happened?” asked Abrams. “Was it just that you left the screen open?”
“I’d rather not go into the grisly details,” Toobin replied. “The only thing I would like to say is that I was unaware that other people were on the Zoom call, watching, and it was not an intentional act on my part.”
He said a lot had happened since then and he was “in a very good place” now, but he knew the incident would haunt him.
“As we used to say at school, it’s on my permanent record,” he told Abrams. “I know that. But I hope it’s not the entirety of my records.”
See more of their conversation above.