Jeffrey Toobin, the disgraced former CNN legal analyst and New Yorker writer, addressed the infamous Zoom call on Wednesday during which he was caught masturbating by colleagues, resulting in his hiatus from the cable network and dismissal from the magazine.
“It was a disaster in my life — self-inflicted, self-destructive, and something that I will regret for the rest of my life,” Toobin, whose career was upended in October 2020 when he was caught unzipping his pants and pleasuring himself during a New Yorker employee Zoom meeting, told NewsNation on Wednesday.
His comments were earlier reported by the news site Mediaite.
“I have no excuses,” Toobin, who was eventually fired by the New Yorker, added.
“I have only apologies, which I have tried to offer to everyone involved, including very much my family, which was terribly embarrassed by it.”
Toobin said: “But it’s now more than two and a half years ago and a lot has happened — almost all good since then.”
“And I feel like my life is in a very good place, actually.”
When NewsNation host Dan Abrams asked Toobin “what exactly happened,” he replied: “You know, I’m not gonna go into grisly details.”
“The only thing I’ll say about it is, I didn’t know other people were on the Zoom call, were watching.”
“This was not an intentional act on my part,” Toobin said.
“And I’ll be honest, I don’t really wanna go into the details,” Abrams told Toobin.
Toobin denied that he was fired by CNN, which brought him back eight months after the incident.
The legal analyst who made a name for himself while covering the OJ Simpson trial in the mid-1990s left CNN for good last August — ending a 20-year work relationship with the cable network.
“I was very fortunate that CNN brought me back,” Toobin told NewsNation on Wednesday.
“And I worked at CNN for over a year after being brought back.”
When pressed as to whether he was fired by the network, Toobin said: “No, no, no.”
“I was not fired by CNN. No, that was a mutual decision that I left, I guess it was last August.”
CNN declined to comment.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
