#Jeffrey Toobin partied with CNN anchors, execs after return

Jeffrey Toobin partied with his colleagues from CNN after the network welcomed him back with open arms following the Zoom masturbation scandal that got him canned from the New Yorker, reports said Wednesday. 

“Toobin isn’t just on CNN’s airwaves again — he was out mixing and mingling with his colleagues Tuesday night,” Politico Playbook wrote Wednesday after CNN brought Toobin back as their chief legal analyst Thursday following an eight-month absence.

Toobin was in Manhattan with a host of CNN bigwigs for a book party celebrating anchor Brian Stelter’s newly released tome on former President Donald Trump. 

“It’s in the past, people have moved on,” Toobin told Politico. 

The longtime New Yorker scribe, who was fired last fall after 27 years with the glossy, was spotted deep in conversation with New York Times media columnist Ben Smith and hanging out alongside a bunch of the network’s top anchors and hosts. 

Attendees included Stelter and his wife, Jamie Stelter, and CNN hosts and anchors Kate Bolduan, John Avlon, Ana Cabrera, Poppy Harlow, Christine Romans, Donie O’Sullivan and Victor Blackwell, according to Politico and TVNewser. 

Andrew Morse and Ken Jautz, top CNN executives, were also reportedly at the shindig. 

In October, the hands-on journalist and Harvard alum was caught pleasuring himself during an election simulation Zoom call with some of the magazine’s biggest names, and following a three-week probe, he got the boot. 

CNN, which has employed Toobin since 2002, said it took a different approach and allowed the scribe to take an extended leave of absence before he made his return in a segment with anchor Alisyn Camerota on Thursday.

The move has raised eyebrows across the media world and drawn criticism. 

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple published a recent column about the move with the headline “CNN still hasn’t explained its decision to reinstate Jeffrey Toobin” where he reported that a number of network staffers were “blindsided” by the news. 

Wemple posited a scenario that’s sure to come in the future: When the next famous man is accused of sexual misconduct, will they put Toobin on the air to discuss it? CNN didn’t answer Wemple’s questions.

The network has yet to explain why it brought Toobin back, but Stelter noted in a column about the decision that some anchors and hosts “expressed a desire” to see Toobin reinstated “since he has been a leading legal voice on television for decades.”