Career
Toobin began freelancing for The New Republic as a law student. He went on to become a law clerk to a federal judge and work as an associate counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh during the Iran-Contra affair and Oliver North's criminal trial, before becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn. He then took up his post in 1993 at The New Yorker, and became the first television legal analyst in 1994, at ABC.
In 1994, Toobin broke the story in The New Yorker that the O. J. Simpson legal team planned on accusing Mark Fuhrman of planting evidence and playing "the race card." In 2003, he secured the first interview with Martha Stewart with regard to the charges against her for insider trading.
Toobin has provided broadcast legal analysis on many high-profile cases, including Michael Jackson, the O.J. Simpson civil trial and the Starr investigation of President Clinton. He received a 2000 Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elián González custody saga.
Toobin is a longtime friend of Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan, having met her while the two were students at Harvard Law School. He has described Chief Justice John Roberts as "very, very conservative." Regarding Justice Clarence Thomas, Toobin has said that Thomas' legal views were "highly unusual and extreme", called him "a nut," and said that he was "furious all the time."
In March 2009, Politico revealed that Toobin was a member of the private discussion group JournoList, where "several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics" "talked stories and compared notes."
Toobin currently is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a senior analyst for CNN since 2002, and the author of five books. Toobin's book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, has received awards from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
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