Jeffrey Toobin Biography

Jeffrey Ross Toobin was born on 21st May 1960 in New York City, to television news correspondent, Marlene Sanders, and broadcast-news producer, Jerome Toobin. He has a younger brother Mark Toobin.

For his education, he went to Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and later joined the Harvard University from where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in American History and Literature in 1982.

At Harvard University, he was the recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He also wrote the column Inner Toobin for The Harvard Crimson, the student’s newspaper of Harvard University.

Thereafter, he joined the Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude with a J.D. in 1986. During his time there, he worked as the editor of Harvard Law Review.

While still studying at the Harvard Law School, Jeffrey Toobin began freelancing for a liberal publication called The New Republic.

After completing his law studies, he began working as a law clerk to a federal judge. Thereafter, he joined the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh as an associate counsel and assisted him during the Iran-Contra affair and Oliver North's criminal trial.

His experience while working for Walsh served as the basis for his first book, Opening Arguments: A Young Lawyer's First Case—United States v. Oliver North, which came out in 1991. Walsh objected to the publication of the book; however, Toobin and his publisher filed a preemptive lawsuit. Judge John F. Keenan, eventually ruled in Toobin's favour.

After working for Walsh, he worked for three years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

In 1993, he joined the American weekly magazine, The New Yorker, and worked as its staff writer till 2020. He covered legal affairs for the magazine and wrote articles on major legal controversies and trials.

He covered the O.J. Simpson murder trial and in an article­—An Incendiary Defense —in 1994 broke the story that the legal team of Simpson planned to accuse Mark Fuhrman of planting evidence.

In his second book, The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, he gave an account of the O. J. Simpson trial. The book which released in 1996 became a New York Times bestseller and also served as the basis for FX Network’s 2016 ten-part limited series, The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, starring John Travolta and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

For the magazine, he also wrote articles on the 2001 dispute over Florida’s votes for president, the Paula Jones sexual harassment case as well as the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the trial of Timothy McVeigh.

In 1996, he joined ABC News as its television legal analyst and worked there for six years. During his time there, he provided legal analysis of major cases like the O.J. Simpson civil trial and the Kenneth Starr investigation of the Clinton White House. His coverage of the Elian Gonzales custody saga bagged him the 2001 Emmy Award.

In April 2002, he joined CNN Worldwide as its legal analyst and covered various significant legal stories including the nomination of four Supreme Court Justices as well as the trials of Michael Jackson and George Zimmerman.

Jeffrey Toobin has authored several critically acclaimed books which became bestsellers. These include A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President (1999), Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election (2001) and The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (2007).

His book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, won the 2008 J. Anthony Lukas Prize for Nonfiction from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

His other well-received books include The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court (2012), American Heiress: The Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst (2016) and True Crimes and Misdemeanors, the Investigation of Donald Trump (2020).

In October 2020, he was suspended from The New Yorker after he exposed himself during a zoom video call between New Yorker and WNYC radio staffers. The following month he was fired from The New Yorker. New York Public Radio, the parent organisation of WNYC, too, indefinitely banned him from its airwaves and podcast. He took a leave of absence from CNN.

Toobin, himself, said that the incident was unintentional and at the time he believed that he was off camera. He apologised to his wife, family, friends and coworkers.

Jeffrey Toobin met Amy Bennett McIntosh at Harvard University while working for The Harvard Crimson and married her in 1986. She completed her MBA from the Harvard Business School and has previously worked for Verizon Communications and Zagat Survey. The couple have two children Adam Jerome and Ellen Frances.

He also has a son, Rory, born in 2009, from an extramarital affair with attorney Casey Greenfield.