San Joaquin Valley Town Hall

San Joaquin Valley Town Hall

Celebrating our 75th Year

American lawyer, author, blogger, and legal analyst

Jeffrey Toobin

January
Jeffrey Toobin

Jeffrey Ross Toobin (born May 21, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, blogger, and former legal analyst for CNN

Toobin was born to a Jewish-American family in New York City in 1960, a son of Marlene Sanders, former ABC News and CBS News correspondent, and Jerome Toobin, a news broadcasting producer. His younger brother, Mark, born in 1967 with Down syndrome, has lived apart from the family

Toobin began freelancing for The New Republic while a law student. After passing the bar exam, he worked as a law clerk to U.S. circuit judge J. Edward Lumbard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Next he served as an associate counsel for Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Iran–Contra affair and Oliver North's criminal trial. He moved to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.

During the Iran–Contra affair, Toobin served as an associate counsel on its investigation at the Department of Justice. He moved from government and the practice of law into full-time writing during the 1990s. Toobin has written several books, including accounts of the 1970s Patty Hearst kidnapping and her time with the SLA, the O. J. Simpson murder case, and the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. The latter two were adapted for television as seasons of FX's American Crime Story, with the Simpson case premiering in 2016.