Roy Cohn

BA, Columbia University LLD, Columbia University

Something Cohn had, Donald liked.

—SUSAN BELL, ROY COHN’S LONGTIME SECRETARY, NOTING THE AFFINITY BETWEEN HER BOSS AND DONALD TRUMP

Al Cohn was a mover and shaker in the Democratic Party, an assistant district attorney in the Bronx, and a justice of the New York Supreme Court. Al Cohn’s son, Roy, born into New York’s legal aristocracy in 1927, also grew up to be a lawyer—a notoriously slimy one as well as an all-around douchebag.

He was a whiz kid who graduated from Columbia Law School at twenty and had to wait until he turned twenty-one to be admitted to the New York bar. The day he got his law license he started his first job—abetted by his father’s connections—in the office of the US Attorney in Manhattan. He quickly made a name for himself as a foaming-at-the-mouth anticommunist, climaxing with his successful prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage in 1951. He proudly claimed responsibility for talking the judge into giving them the death penalty, even though such conversations between a prosecutor and the bench are not—what’s the word?—oh, right: legal.

His anticommie crusade brought him to the attention of another closeted homosexual—have we mentioned that Roy Cohn was a closeted homosexual?—named J. Edgar Hoover, founding director of the FBI. Hoover tipped another Washington gargoyle, Senator Joseph McCarthy, that Cohn would make a fine chief counsel in the senator’s own red-baiting witch-hunt with the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. One advantage Cohn had over the other leading candidate, Robert F. Kennedy,* was that Cohn was Jewish; appointing him would undermine the accusation that McCarthy’s animus against communists was really an attack on Jews. (As Cohn himself said, “Not all Jews are communists, but most communists are Jews.” See Morris Cohen for an example of one Jew who was, indeed, a communist.) And so the rapacious young Cohn teamed up with the crazed, dull-witted, alcoholic senator from Wisconsin to pursue commies.

Cohn and McCarthy would do anything to draw attention to their cause. A highly effective tactic was to fulminate about the threat of homosexuals in the government, the idea being that homosexuals were both communist sympathizers and highly susceptible to blackmail by communist agents seeking inside information. (Who, we ask you, would be more aware of the potential for, and potency of, blackmail than two closet cases and a drunk?) McCarthy, Cohn, and J. Edgar were ultimately responsible for the resignation or firing of hundreds of gay men from the State Department alone. In 1953, the wave of gayphobic hysteria^* had swelled to the point where nice old President Dwight Eisenhower felt compelled to sign an executive order banning homosexuals from the government altogether.*

Cohn’s last hurrah with McCarthy was the Army-McCarthy hearings, initiated mainly by Cohn’s attempt to force the US Army to give special treatment to a friend of his^* who had been drafted; the army pushed back; McCarthy’s committee stepped in to adjudicate; the hearings were televised; and the entire nation learned that Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy were assholes. After the hearings Cohn left government “service” and went into private practice and a heavy nightlife schedule in New York.^*

Through his family connections, Cohn joined a reputable law firm. Within a dozen years, according to Robert Sherrill in The Nation, it was known as “the law firm that bought off judges, suborned witnesses and won cases through trickery and political pressure.” Sometimes he’d demand cash from a client to bribe a judge and keep the money for himself. Or take a client’s money, then do nothing to represent the client. Or let one client go to jail in order to get a client he liked better off the hook. Witness tampering? Check. Leaking confidential client information to the press to make himself look good? Check. Leaving a trail of unpaid bills?^* Ditto.

His law clients included mafiosi, nightclub proprietors, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, and a young real estate heir from the outer boroughs named Donald Trump, to whom he became a mentor. An example of how Cohn and his “always attack, never apologize” philosophy—as well as his unrestrained disregard for the truth—rubbed off on Trump: in the early 1970s, when a far-reaching consent decree forced the Trump Organization to stop discriminating against blacks, Trump issued a Cohn-inspired press release proclaiming a sweeping victory over the Justice Department. Now that we think about it, the unapologetic, proudly mendacious stance of Roy Cohn could well have inspired the Republican Party en masse to take the murky path that left it, decades later, saddled with none other than Donald Trump (who also leaves a trail of unpaid bills) as its presidential candidate.* But enough of him. Back to the man of the hour, or at least of the chapter.

Columbia-educated Cohn ridiculed Harvard Law graduates for their old-fashioned adherence to legal and ethical norms.

Democrat Cohn made his name with Republican McCarthy and advised the administrations of Nixon and Reagan.

Jewish Cohn often referred to other Jews as “kikes.”

Homosexual Cohn called gays “fags” and campaigned publicly against tolerance and in favor of legal sanctions.

In 1986 he was finally disbarred for, among other crimes, taking the hand of a rich, comatose former client, wrapping it around a pen, and scratching a signature on a codicil declaring Cohn to be a beneficiary.

Six weeks after his disbarment Cohn—one of the most truly repellent people in modern US history and a monster’s monster—died of AIDS complications.

He never stopped denying he was gay.