Cynthia Citron

A LOS ANDELES Friend once described him as”ugly and charismatic at the same time.” He was also a powerful, ruthless, and avid liar. But his extraordinary prowess as a lawyer allowed him to reach the highest levels of society and become close friends with presidents, future presidents, mafia members and influential media personalities, many of whom he defended in court at one point In time.

At 20, Roy Cohn graduated from Columbia law school, and at 23, he participated in the infamous Julius and Ethel Rosenberg conspiracy trial, in which the pair were convicted of passing important information to the Communists. It was Cohn who called on the judge at the trial, Irving Kaufman, to sentence both Rosenbergs to death. Years later, when asked if he regretted his role in the infamous affair, Cohn replied, ” If I could pull the switch, I would do it myself.”

An anti-Communist who was paranoid about politics, Cohn said, “I don’t care how the law is, I want to know who the judge is.” And one day, meeting President Roosevelt for the first time, he told the President, ” I support your attempt to pack up the Supreme court!»

It was FBI Director Edgar Hoover who recommended Cohn to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was investigating “homosexuals and perverts”at the time. When McCarthy was appointed Chairman of the Senate Committee on government operations, he learned that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on investigations was part of that Committee, which allowed him to use it to investigate Communists in the United States on his own. Government. For this job, he appointed Roy Cohn as his lead attorney.

Their fight with the Army began in early 1954 when Cohn tried to gain favorable treatment for his apparent lover, G. David Schine, who had been drafted as a private. Further, the Senate’s mounting disgust with McCarthy’s unsubstantiated “lists of Communists in government” caused the initiation of the infamous trial known as the Army-McCarthy Hearings. The hearings continued for 36 days and were watched on live television by some 20 million viewers. In the end Cohn and McCarthy were both discredited and accused of “corruption of truth” and damned by the Army’s chief legal representative, Senator Joseph Welch, who addressed McCarthy, saying, “”Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness” and “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

Cohn, making the most of a bad situation, resigned and joined the company of his great uncle, Lionel Trains. Because, as he admitted, he “didn’t play by the rules,” he took over the company for seven months.

Later, accused of bribery and conspiracy in the takeover of 5th Avenue Coach Lines bus routes, he defended himself for seven hours and was acquitted. After that, he noted that ” it is always political to wrap yourself under the flag.”

His political education was heightened when Roger Stone (he of the eternal Trump scandals) took over as his mentor. And then Cohn passed on Stone’s teachings to Donald Trump. As Trump’s advisor he instructed him on manipulating the press. If the press reports it, “the public will actually quote whatever you say,” Cohn reportedly told him. When accused of racial biases, attack, Cohn said. Create phony issues; never admit you’re wrong; never apologize; rat out other people, but never put anything in writing. And to keep law enforcement off your back, apply “situational ethics.”

Politically, Cohn provided a window into Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign for media Mogul Rupert Murdoch. And he was working with trump when trump decided to bring down Bonwit teller to build a Trump Tower on the site. It was alleged that trump imported 200 undocumented immigrants from Poland to work out the job and then failed to pay them. Moreover, it was further argued that trump did not use steel to build the new building as he should have; he used concrete, which was much cheaper.

After all, Cohn was embroiled in a government lawsuit over seven million dollars in taxes. But as Gore Vidal noted: “He always manages to stay out of jail. I’d like to have it for my lawyer.”

But his “moral turpitude” finally caught up with him when he became a Trustee and executor of the estate of Louis Rosenstein, head of the Schenley liquor organization. Rosenstein’s family claimed Cohn forced his client to sign documents while He was on his deathbed. Although 37 witnesses, including Barbara Walters, Donald trump and William Buckley, testified on his behalf, Cohn lost the case and was suspended. But even then he insisted: “I wouldn’t crawl. I don’t like any of them. I’m not begging.

Roy Cohn died in 1986 of complications from AIDS, still denying his homosexuality and claiming he was dying of ” liver cancer.” He was 59 years old.

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