CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin Rails Against ‘Sleazebags on K Street’ and the Washington ‘Sewer’
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin is tired of K Street’s “sleazebags” and every lobbyist’s “disgusting profession.”
Sparring with David Urban, a lobbyist himself who was a campaign strategist for President Donald Trump, Toobin said “the idea that someone who has proximity to a legislator” and could lobby them “is what makes Washington work,” but that it also makes it “such a sewer.”
The topic at hand was attorney Michael Cohen‘s reported routine of selling himself to prospective clients by letting them know he was exceptionally close to the president.
In response, Urban took a defensive posture, noting that the First Amendment protects the act of lobbying by virtue of its last sentence that mentions “the right for citizens to petition the government for redress of grievances.” Since it’s part of the constitution, Urban reasoned it “must be pretty important.”
“For Jeff saying it’s a swampiest most disgusting, despicable profession, other than journalism, I might buy that,” he added, firing back at Toobin’s scathing criticism of the lobbying profession.
However, Urban acknowledged that “there is a problem in Washington of shadow lobbying.”
“There is no transparency,” he said.
But when it was again Toobin’s turn to speak, he returned to Urban’s constitutional protection argument, finding it to be a pretty weak excuse for lobbying.
“I’m so moved that James Madison wrote the First Amendment to protect these sleazebags on K Street,” Toobin said. For him, the problem isn’t just transparency, but the fact that those with means are allowed to “buy access through lobbying.”
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
[Image via screengrab]
