New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Aug. 10 announced plans to resign amid ongoing criminal investigations. The state’s attorney general, Letitia James, had recently released a report finding that Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women.
Cuomo has denied the charges. For weeks the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo have drawn scrutiny, as have conflict-of-interest questions concerning CNN and anchor Chris Cuomo, who often had his governor brother on his show.
On Aug. 3, conservative commentator Clay Travis called out the network for another apparent conflict of interest.
“CNN currently has Zoom masturbator Jeffrey Toobin on analyzing the Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment allegations as their legal expert,” he tweeted. “Amazing.”
Chris Stigall, a conservative radio host, tweeted something similar that day alongside an image of a CNN broadcast with a panel of four guests. The man in the bottom left corner resembles Toobin, who spent eight months on leave from CNN after exposing himself to his New Yorker magazine colleagues during a Zoom call. Toobin returned to CNN as the network’s chief legal analyst in June.
But that wasn’t Toobin discussing the attorney general’s report about Cuomo. It was CNN political director David Chalian. You can watch a clip of the segment here.
Travis and political commentator Megyn Kelly issued corrections. Stigall also tweeted a follow-up saying that it wasn’t Toobin.
But screenshots of Travis’ original tweet are still spreading online without that mea culpa.
One was posted on Instagram as recently as Aug. 10.
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We rate claims that this segment shows Toobin analyzing Cuomo’s sexual harassment allegations False.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. It is republished here with permission. See the sources for this fact check here and more of PolitiFact’s fact checks here.
