New Yorker suspends Jeffrey Toobin after he exposed himself in Zoom meeting
- Journalist Jeffrey Toobin made ‘embarrassingly stupid mistake’ exposing himself during a Zoom call
- Incident reportedly occurred during call between colleagues at The New Yorker and a radio station
Author-commentator Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended by The New Yorker and is stepping away from his job as CNN’s senior legal analyst pending what the cable network is calling a “personal matter”.
Vice reported earlier Monday that Toobin had exposed himself during a Zoom meeting with staffers of The New Yorker and WNYC radio.
Toobin called the Zoom incident a “mistake”.
“I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera,” Toobin said in a statement to Vice. “I apologise to my wife, family, friends and colleagues.
“I believed I was not visible on Zoom,” he added. “I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.”
In a statement, The New Yorker said Toobin had been “suspended while we investigate the matter”. It declined further comment. Toobin joined the magazine in 1993.
In his last tweet on October 13, Toobin commented on the upcoming challenge to the Affordable Care Act during the Supreme Court nomination hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
Despite his recently inactive status on social media, Toobin appeared Saturday on CNN.
A CNN spokesperson said in a statement that “Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted”.
The 60-year-old Toobin has been a New Yorker writer for more than 20 years and joined CNN in 2002. He is the author of several books, most recently True Crimes and Misdemeanours: The Investigation of Donald Trump, published in August. His other works include The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson and The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.
Associated Press, Tribune News Service, Business Insider