Apprently Jeffrey Toobin of ‘The New Yorker’ was always a creep

It’s 2020, a lot has happened in this year, and we still have two months to go. One of the most remarkable changes we’ve undergone include the pivot to the digital world. In quarantine & social distancing, we’ve connected over online communication tools – from Zoom to Teams to Meets, and what have you. Video calls caught like wildfire, and soon enough, we came face-to-face with the detrimental side of these tools. 

Zoom fatigue became a thing. Working from home with kids & pets blurred the definition of professional conduct. After all we’re all living through a global pandemic, we all deserve to be given some credit to just make it through. But something no one wanted to witness was a legal professional exposing himself on a work call. 

When misfortune strikes

Unfortunately, that’s what happened this week, when Jeffrey Toobin was caught on the call, allegedly exposing his private parts, much to the chagrin & trauma of his coworkers attending the call. Anonymous attendees corroborated this information. On an election simulation Zoom call with fellow New Yorker staff members & people from the public radio station WNYC, he exposed his penis on camera.

Toobin was later quoted explaining, “I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera. I apologize to my wife, family, friends, and co-workers. I believed I was not visible on Zoom. I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.”

In response to the incident, The New Yorker has suspended him, as confirmed by spokesperson Natalie Raabe, “Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended while we investigate the matter.” In the same vein, Toobin pre-empted the repercussions and asked for time off from CNN, as confirmed in an official statement, “Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted.”

Person of interest

He may have avoided further scandal by not denying what happened, but his admission of his actions provided flames for several other conversations, in the digital world & IRL.  The social media world seems to be torn in two: people who are defending his action as innocuous & others outraged at how a man’s mistakes are easily forgotten when women are being shamed for even breastfeeding on Zoom calls.

Jeffrey Toobin, aged sixty years, is an American lawyer & author, but most famously legal analyst for media giants CNN & The New Yorker. His claim to fame also includes his book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, which was later adapted as a TV series, The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, in 2016. It went on to win nine Emmy Awards.

Now that Toobin’s “embarassingly stupid mistake” is public knowledge, and his professional gigs have come to a halt, it’s unclear if he’ll return to cable news, in the lead-up to CNN’s election coverage. His last appearance over the weekend might have been it. Now it’s coming to light that masturbating on a Zoom call may not be the only display of indecent behaviour by Toobin. 

More in store

Many stories allege Toobin’s sleazy behaviour over different instances. He doesn’t have a great track record on fidelity either. He had a longtime off-and-on extramarital affair with attorney Casey Greenfield, with whom he also fathered a child. 

A source reportedly shared the timeline of their affair, “Jeff and Casey saw each other off-and-on over the years. She was married to someone else for two years. After her divorce, she started seeing Jeff again. He said he was going to leave his wife for her. But, by then, Casey had begun to distrust him. She suspected he had several other mistresses.”

People are digging up more dirt. Some sources also claim that he visited the Miami Velvet swingers club in 2008, a sex club while on duty for a New Yorker profile on political consultant Roger Stone, staying on well after Stone had left.