CNN masturbation expert and chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin announced he was leaving the third-place network on Twitter Friday afternoon, a little over a year after his return following his suspension due to a sticky situation he got himself into at The New Yorker during a zoom meeting. And he announced he’ll be writing another book.
“Friends, I’ve decided that, after 20 years, I’m leaving [CNN] after my vacation. Was great to spend my last day on air with pals Wolf, Anderson and Don. Love all my former colleagues. Watch for my next book, about the Oklahoma City bombing, coming in 2023 from [Simon & Schuster],” he explained in the tweet (with comments wisely turned off).
Friends, I’ve decided that, after 20 years, I’m leaving @cnn after my vacation. Was great to spend my last day on air with pals Wolf, Anderson and Don. Love all my former colleagues. Watch for my next book, about the Oklahoma City bombing, coming in 2023 from @simonandschuster
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) August 12, 2022
Toobin’s sudden departure came 14 months after his awkward return to the network, where he made CNN Newsroom host Alisyn Camerota explain to the audience that he was suspended for nearly nine months because he masturbated during a Zoom call with journalist colleagues:
CAMEROTA: It’s been awhile.
TOOBIN: It has been awhile indeed.
CAMEROTA: I feel like we should address what’s happened in the months since we’ve seen you, since some of our viewers may not know what has happened, so I guess I’ll recap. I’ll do the honors.
TOOBIN: Help yourself.
CAMEROTA: Okay. In October, you were on a Zoom call with your colleagues from The New Yorker magazine. Everyone took a break for several minutes, during which time you were caught masturbating on camera. You were subsequently fired from that job after 27 years of working there, and you since then have been on leave from CNN. Do I have all that right?
TOOBIN: You’ve got it all right. Sad to say.
In the little more than a year since he’s been back on CNN, Toobin made sure to leave a mark of his presence.
When Democrats attempted a federal takeover of state elections systems and the filibuster was all that was standing in the way, Toobin argued in favor of Democrats by suggesting “this is life and death for the democracy.”
During the confirmation hearings for new liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Toobin decried Republican focus on her child porn rulings. “You have a judge here who has been on the bench for ten years almost. And we had the entire half-hour of Senator Hawley’s question about a single case where he got to recite the grisly details of and say pedophilia over and over again. This is about appealing to the QAnon audience,” he asserted at the time.
Toobin peaked when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In some of his analyses, he raged at originalism:
The originalists are winning. And they won yesterday, at least that’s how Justice Thomas raised his opinion in the guns case. But, you know, again, it depends how cynical you are about how the Supreme Court works. Some justices want to reach one result or reach another result and find a justification.
Abortion is an issue near and dear to Toobin. He once knocked up Casey Greenfield, the daughter to his former CNN colleague Jeff Greenfield and tried to pressure her into getting an abortion. He then had to be dragged into court and ordered to make child support payments.
He will not be missed.