(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Puck News reporter Dylan Byers reported Wednesday that the New York Times has hired CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who achieved infamy in 2020 when he masturbated on a Zoom conference call in front of his colleagues.
“Transfer news: famed legal analyst @JeffreyToobin is joining New York Times Opinion,” Byers posted on Twitter/X.
transfer news: famed legal analyst @JeffreyToobin is joining New York Times Opinion@PuckNews
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) February 12, 2025
The Times hiring Toobin comes just a little more than two months before the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Toobin published a book about the OKC bombing in 2023 that attempted to compare that attack to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising.
Toobin’s book also covered up for the others involved in the bombing by arguing that Timothy McVeigh acted alone in attacking Oklahoma, receiving only minor assistance in building the Ryder truck bomb from Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier. As Headline USA has covered extensively, McVeigh was linked to a network of neo-Nazi extremists, many of whom were federal informants.
By pinning the bombing solely on McVeigh, Toobin ignored the fact that former Attorney General Merrick Garland, among others, failed to prosecute others involved in the bombing.
Garland, who was an up-and-coming federal prosecutor in 1995, actively attempted to steer the case away from McVeigh’s mysterious accomplice—known only as “John Doe 2.” A fuller account of Garland’s coverup can be read here.
To this day, the U.S. government says that the OKC bombing was a lone wolf terrorist attack—and Toobin’s book helped perpetrate that lie. Indeed, in his book, Toobin tried to explain away John Doe 2 by saying that a key witness, Elliott’s Body Shop owner Eldon Elliot, was mistaken in seeing McVeigh was with an accomplice when he rented his Ryder truck two days before the bombing.
In doing so, Toobin spread more misinformation by retreading the already debunked story that Elliot confused McVeigh and John Doe 2 with two other people who rented a Ryder truck a day later, on April 18. Elliot was not at his body shop on April 18, meaning he could not have confused McVeigh and John Doe 2 with the two people other people.
Elliott maintained until the day he died that he saw McVeigh with John Doe 2. And he’s not alone: Even the FBI admitted to still looking for John Doe 2 in 1996—almost a year after publicly calling off the investigation for him in June 1995.
Headline USA also recently interviewed a first-responder to the bombing who saw McVeigh with an accomplice, which puts the number of witnesses who saw John Doe 2 on April 19 up to at least 27.
Luckily for readers, there are far better resources on the true story of the Oklahoma City bombing—particularly Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh, and Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed—and Why It Still Matters.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
