Roy Cohn was once the most reviled and fearsome lawyer in New York City.
The unrepentant well-connected power broker had mob bosses on speed dial, ruthlessly destroyed the reputations of political enemies and even played a key role in sending the Rosenbergs to the electric chair.
‘He was the worst human being who ever lived … the most evil, twisted, vicious b****** ever to snort coke at Studio 54,’ a former associate once claimed.
But one client held a privileged place in Cohn’s notoriously cold heart: Donald J. Trump
The unscrupulous attack dog attorney became Trump’s mentor in the 1970s and 80s when the former president – then in his 30s – was an ambitious real estate developer from Queens, determined to build a new Manhattan empire.
With Cohn as his consigliere, Trump maneuvered himself into the city’s tightknit power circles, became a media darling and mastered slash-and-burn tactics that would help pave his way to the White House years later.
In fact, not long ago, while in the crucible of his own legal troubles, President Trump reportedly pleaded with his White House staff: ‘Where is my Roy Cohn?’
Now, over 30 years after Cohn succumbed to AIDS-related complications at the age of 59, his influential relationship with Trump has been explored in a new biopic titled The Apprentice, which screened at Toronto Film Festival this week.
Many say Cohn’s influence on the former president is unmistakable.
He was a man who knew how to beat the system, and in turn taught Trump strategies for flouting rules: deny, lie, and counter-punch with slanderous, ruinous attacks that destroy reputations rather than winning on the merits of the law.
But Cohn’s career was pockmarked by endless personal controversies and a long legal rap sheet that included charges of extortion, blackmail, bribery, securities fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
He was audited by the IRS 19 years in a row for tax evasion and was peripherally caught up in an insurance scam that involved the death of a young man when his yacht mysteriously sank off the coast of Florida.
But through all this, he taught Trump to never give up.
And despite the former president’s own lengthy legal record, which currently includes two impeachments, 34 felony convictions and two federal criminal court indictments that have left him on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties, Trump remains unstoppable ahead of the November election.
Cohn was the only child of a well-connected Bronx judge and doting Jewish mother. He wrote in his memoir that ‘virtually every heavy hitter in politics, law, the judiciary made it to our apartment while I was growing up.’
He was the heir to multiple fortunes on his mother’s side, including the Lionel Toy Train Corporation. And after graduating from Columbia Law School at the age of 20, Cohn became an assistant US Attorney.
He first inserted himself into the national conversation as prosecutor in the 1951 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spy case.
The American couple was accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union, and Cohn persuaded the star witness to change his testimony and encouraged the judge to send both Julius and Ethel to the electric chair (despite her being a mother of two children).
Soon after, he became a henchman for Senator Joseph McCarthy as chief counsel in his crusade to root out alleged Communists from the government.
One of the most bitter ironies of Cohn’s closeted life is that he spearheaded a ruthless campaign with McCarthy against homosexuals working in government.
Five thousand federal employees deemed ‘sexual perverts’ were laid off in what became known as ‘the Lavender Scare.’
Things went sour when Cohn threatened the Secretary of the Army with blackmail in order to secure preferential treatment for a certain G. David Schine, a draftee in the Korean War and rumored lover of Cohn’s.
Schine was a feckless hotel heir who worked as a ‘research assistant’ for Cohn and McCarthy. The playwright Lillian Hellman famously dubbed them, ‘Bonnie, Bonnie, and Clyde.’
Cohn’s attempt to blackmail the Army became a national sensation that resulted in a televised investigation known at the Army-McCarthy Hearings, which effectively ruined Cohn and McCarthy’s credibility.
Yet Cohn spun it as a win.
Back in New York, he attended a party thrown in his honor at the Hotel Astor. It was the first demonstration of his ability to spin defeat into the illusion of victory – a strategy still used by his protégé today.
He reveled in bad publicity and used it to cultivate his own celebrity. Wearing custom suits, he shuttled around New York City in his chauffeured Rolls Royce emblazoned custom license plates engraved with ‘Roy C.’
‘I’m a ham!’ he told Esquire in 1978.
He rubbed shoulders with tycoons and Café Society celebrities while holding court at the 21 Club in Midtown Manhattan. Servers waited on him hand and foot, lighting his Cuban cigar and setting up a red telephone on the table for personal calls.
Trump was dazzled by Cohn’s connections and the parties he hosted, including his annual birthday bash at Studio 54.
By the time 32-year-old Donald Trump arrived at the club for Cohn’s famous 52nd birthday in 1979, camera-ready for the paparazzi, he had already known the lawyer for six years.
The evening unraveled like most debauched nights under the legendary disco ball. ‘If you’re indicted, you’re invited!’ comedian Joey Adams joked. Three thousand people showed up.
His exclusive guest list included all his influential clients and the powerful people that had open accounts in his ‘favor bank.’
Notably present among the Warhol celebrity crowd were Republican party leaders, borough presidents and a throng of judges including the chief of the U.S. District Court.
Other remarkable guests included Barbara Walters, Margaret Trudeau, Bianca Jagger, Cardinal Spellman, and a yet unknown, dewy Democrat assemblyman from Brooklyn, Chuck Schumer, who insisted he was just there with a date.
What Cohn had was a big rolodex and clout. His priority wasn’t money, it was raw personal power that could be leveraged for his own advancement, privilege, and fame.
He later set up a boutique law practice out of his run down but elegant townhouse on East 68th Street, making himself indispensable to a high-powered clientele.
His list of clients included Si Newhouse, the chairman of Conde Nast Magazines and Cohn’s best friend since high school, the Ford Model Agency, Studio 54, Aristotle Onassis, Cardinal Francis Spellman, various members of the Gambino crime family, ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, Norman Mailer, NY Yankees owner George Steinbrenner – and before Trump, the biggest names in real estate: Helmsley and Lefrak.
‘It wasn’t what he knew; it was who he knew,’ said celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz in on Frontline in 2018.
‘He knew everybody. He knew every judge; he knew every justice. He knew everybody who had any influence on the judiciary, and you hired him to get access,;
It was exactly the kind of access Donald Trump needed to break into the vault of New York’s Establishment.
Trump first met Cohn at a private disco called Le Club in 1973.
The two instantly clicked while discussing Trump’s latest legal woes: a race discrimination lawsuit from the Justice Department against Trump and his father, Fred, for refusing to rent to black tenants.
Trump’s lawyers at the time were pushing him to settle. ‘Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court,’ Cohn advised him.
With Cohn as their new ‘hired gun,’ the Trumps countersued the government for $100 million in a defamation lawsuit. They eventually settled the case by agreeing to make apartments available to minority renters, without admitting any wrongdoing.
From that day forward, and for the next decade, Cohn acted as Trump’s personal Svengali.
He represented the mogul in legal disputes, counseled him about his marriage and introduced Trump to New York power brokers, fixers, financiers and socialites.
He exploited legal loopholes on Trump’s behalf, finessed tax abatements and zoning variances, and mercilessly attacked anyone who posed a threat.
‘All I can tell you is he’s been vicious to others in his protection of me,’ Trump told Vanity Fair in 1980. ‘He’s a genius. He’s a lousy lawyer, but he’s a genius.’
Cohn shepherded Trump through his first major project in 1976, the Grand Hyatt Hotel near Grand Central Station.
He used his connections to help secure an unprecedented $400 million, 40-year tax abatement from the city.
Cohn orchestrated the deal with Stanley Friedman, the Deputy Mayor of NYC who signed off on the deal on his last day of office. This would become the longest ever tax abatement granted by the city and to return the favor, Cohn made Friedman a partner in his law firm.
Cohn again represented Trump when he sued the National Football League in a $1.32 billion antitrust lawsuit because the mogul was furious that his team, ‘The New Jersey Generals’ (which played under the US Football League) was unable to compete against NFL teams.
Cohn wielded his power through what he called his ‘Favor Bank’ – a balance sheet of political favors and debts. It was an exchange of quid pro quos.
‘Don’t tell me the law,’ Cohn would say. ‘Tell me the judge!’
Today, nobody is a better practitioner of Cohn’s tricks than Trump.
His three-pronged legal strategy summed up as: Deny, delay, counter-attack, ridicule accusers and never surrender. Engage the press at every chance. And never admit defeat, always claim victory.
Cohn used the press to wage his battles, which has also become a vital component of Trump’s playbook.
He was a magnet for tabloid writers, always armed and ready to spill the gossip. ‘Roy would be hired by a divorce client in the morning and be leaking their case in the afternoon,’ New Yorker writer Ken Auletta wrote.
Cohn also had the good luck to have been childhood friends with Si Newhouse (chairman of Conde Nast) and Generoso Pope Jr, publisher of the National Enquirer, the same paper that protected Trump years later during his 2016 presidential bid by burying unflattering stories in a practice known as catch and kill.
In the early 80s, Cohn planted flattering stories for his mob clients in Newhouse’s papers – even slamming the IRS in a cover story for their national Sunday-newspaper supplement, ‘Parade.’
Cohn had so much respect for journalists that according to Vanity Fair, he once kept his Gambino mafia clients waiting when two reporters visited him at his office.
‘These gentlemen are from The New York Times, and that is very important. You’ll have to wait.’
With the help of Cohn’s loyal media connections and the contacts he cultivated at television networks, Trump orchestrated a self-mythologizing campaign during the pre-digital media era
‘I hear Roy in the things he says quite clearly,’ Peter Fraser, Cohn’s lover for the last two years of his life told the New York Times. ‘That bravado, and if you say it aggressively and loudly enough, it’s the truth – that’s the way Roy used to operate to a degree, and Donald was certainly his apprentice.’
‘Donald is my best friend,’ Cohn said back then of his trophy client, shortly after he had thrown a 37th-birthday party for Trump.
He would often remark on Trump’s resemblance to his first blond, rich-boy obsession: David Schine.
‘Donald fit the pattern of the hangers-on and the disciples around Roy,’ recalled Cohn’s cousin, David Marcus to Vanity Fair.
‘Something about Roy’s self-hating-Jewish persona drew him to fair-haired boys. I felt that Roy was attracted to Trump, more than in a big-brotherly way.’
Just as Cohn seemed to be at the top of his game during the mid-80s, his life took a dramatic turn and his luck began to run out.
The New York Bar Association had started disbarment proceedings against him and he was charged with unethical conduct in four different cases.
One of Cohn’s defense team remembers that, rather than humbly slip into the closed hearing room, Roy would cruise down Fifth Avenue in a candy red Cadillac convertible and march triumphantly into the Bar Association offices.
But his health began to fail when he was diagnosed with HIV in early 1984 and the disease took a destructive toll on Cohn’s well-polished physicality.
Yet as a deeply closeted homosexual, he insisted to his dying day that he was suffering from liver cancer.
In a March 1986 interview with Mike Wallace, he said: ‘I’ll tell you categorically, I do not have AIDS.’ When Wallace asked him how the gossip began, Cohn explained, ‘Oh, it’s a cinch, Mike. Take this set of facts: bachelor, unmarried, middle-aged – well, young middle-aged. The stories go back to the McCarthy days.’
During this time, Cohn and Trump’s friendship began to take a back seat.
Some speculate that Trump was trying to distance himself from the ‘tar of illness’, while others think he wanted to remove himself from Cohn’s professional controversy.
Cohn asked his protégé for one last favor: he needed a hotel room for his lover who was dying of AIDS. Trump arranged for him to stay at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel. Months passed, then Cohn got the bill. He refused to pay.
Cohn later appealed to Ronald Reagan for special treatment – an insult to the millions of people, including his own friends, who died unnecessarily during the administration’s failure to acknowledge the AIDS epidemic.
But through his powerful contacts he was able to take part in an experimental treatment program that very few people could get into.
After three weeks of AZT treatments, he was discharged on November 23.
A telegram from the President read: ‘Nancy and I are keeping you in our thoughts and prayers. May our Lord bless you with courage and strength. Take care and know that you have our concern. Ronald Reagan.’
‘Cohn would die hard; he would clamp onto the doorjambs, and when death yanked him through to the other side, he would go without grace,’ said Cohn’s biographer, Nicholas Von Hoffman.
His longtime friend and ‘beard,’ Barbara Walters said: ‘That if his cancer was a judgment from God, then Roy Cohn had been punished enough.’
Three weeks before his death on August 2, 1986, Roy Cohn was officially disbarred from practicing law in the State of New York.
He succumbed to AIDS-related complications at the age of 55. According to Roger Stone in The New Yorker: ‘Cohn’s ‘absolute goal was to die completely broke and owing millions to the IRS. He succeeded in that.’