Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn (born February 20, 1927, Bronx, New York, U.S.—died August 2, 1986, Bethesda, Maryland) was a lawyer and a controversial public figure who rose to prominence through his alliance with U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his tenacious legal representation of high-profile clients, including businessman and future U.S. president Donald Trump, shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, and organized-crime leaders, such as Anthony (“Fat Tony”) Salerno and John Gotti. A 1978 profile in Esquire magazine titled “Don’t Mess with Roy Cohn” referred to him as “a legal executioner—the toughest, meanest, loyalest, vilest, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America.”

Early life

Born to Dora Marcus and Albert Cohn, Roy Cohn had a privileged upbringing in New York City. His mother was a banking heiress whose brother, Bernard Marcus, was indicted and convicted of fraud in his management of the family bank, which primarily served the New York Jewish community. His father was a justice in the appellate division of the New York state Supreme Court who was well connected to the Democratic Party establishment.

Praised for his cleverness, by age 20 Cohn had earned both an undergraduate degree and a law degree from Columbia University. He had accelerated his education by using programs designed for returning war veterans, although he reportedly dodged the U.S. military draft in 1945 by having himself nominated three times by a friendly congressman to attend the United States Military Academy (West Point) and repeatedly failing the physical endurance exams. He was admitted to the bar in New York at age 21 and soon thereafter became a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.

Rise to prominence

In his early 20s, Cohn gained a reputation as a ruthless prosecutor for his contribution to the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union in 1951 and executed by electric chair in 1953. Cohn’s examination of Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass, was crucial in securing the couple’s convictions. Greenglass later said he had lied under oath at Cohn’s inducement.

Cohn next served as chief counsel on the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, headed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1953–54. Cohn became indispensable in McCarthy’s efforts to publicly shame supposed communist subversives. According to a Time magazine cover story in 1954, Cohn was the “subcommittee’s real brain.” Together McCarthy and Cohn led the mass interrogation and purging of federal employees who were accused of being communists, known as the Second Red Scare. Through rhetoric that linked communism with homosexuality, they also contributed to the lesser-known Lavender Scare, a concurrent moral panic and wave of repression that forced thousands of LGBTQ federal employees out of their jobs.

Cohn’s profile further rose to national prominence during the televised 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the U.S. Army sought to investigate, among other things, Cohn’s use of his position within McCarthy’s office to get preferential treatment for a recently drafted friend.

Private practice and disbarment

After the Army-McCarthy hearings, Cohn resigned from the Senate subcommittee (months before McCarthy would be censured by the U.S. Senate for his use of that subcommittee) and returned to New York. Cohn established himself in private practice at Saxe, Bacon & Bolan, where he would eventually become an unnamed partner, quickly garnering a reputation for doing whatever it took to win a case.

Cohn had many high-profile clients, including several organized-crime bosses, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. Cohn also served as a lawyer for popular New York City nightclub Studio 54, which he was known to frequent. Notably, Cohn also defended Donald Trump and his father, Fred Trump, against charges of racial discrimination in their apartment rentals in 1973.

Financial issues stemming from unpaid bills and his refusal to pay taxes dogged Cohn throughout his life. Political consultant Roger Stone, a close friend of Cohn’s, said that Cohn’s goal was to die broke, owing millions in taxes, which he accomplished.

Less than six weeks before his death in 1986, Cohn was disbarred by the New York state Supreme Court on charges of unethical conduct, including allegations that he had misused a client’s escrowed property, lied on his application to the District of Columbia bar, and tricked a dying friend into naming him the executor of that friend’s estate. He had previously been indicted three times on charges including bribery, perjury, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and extortion, but he was never convicted.

Personal life, sexuality, and death

Throughout his life, Cohn was noted for his large network of loyal friends, most of whom were rich and powerful. His famous friends included Barbara Walters, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, Ed Koch, Nancy Reagan, and former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Following his defense of the Trumps in the 1970s, Cohn and Donald Trump reportedly grew to be close friends. Trump is said to have learned many strategies for accumulating and wielding power from Cohn as a mentor, including never admitting defeat, aggressively litigating against adversaries, and harnessing the power of exaggerations and lies.

Publicly, Cohn’s sexuality was an open secret. Often referred to as “flamboyant” in media coverage, Cohn surrounded himself with young, attractive men and summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a long-standing destination for LGBTQ life.

Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 and died in the summer of 1986 from complications of the disease, although he insisted until the end that he was dying of liver cancer.

In popular culture

In the 1990s playwright Tony Kushner immortalized Cohn by making him a main character in the epic two-part play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1991–92), considered by some to be the definitive work about the AIDS epidemic. Cohn has been played on Broadway by actors Ron Leibman (1993) and Nathan Lane (2018), both of whom won Tony Awards for their performances, and by Al Pacino in a 2003 HBO miniseries adaptation of the play.

Cohn is also the subject of a 1992 biopic, Citizen Cohn (in which Cohn is played by actor James Woods), directed by Frank Pierson, and two 2019 documentaries, Where’s My Roy Cohn?, directed by Matt Tyrnauer, and Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn, directed by Ivy Meeropol, a filmmaker and granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.