IF Stone, the leftist journalist, wrote a book called “The Trial of Socrates”, which I picked up and read in Jerusalem. Stone basically says Socrates was an elitist who got what he deserved at the hands of democracy. He also detected a sneer behind the irony.
Stone was probably being tendentious, since he was a journalist. But he also knew people, and that’s something classical scholars probably don’t have when they make their analysis.