Roy Cohn

• 1. Introduction

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  The AIDS Memorial Quilt panel made for Roy Cohn is plain white, and it carries four words. His name is lettered in black. Bully is red, Coward is yellow, and Victim is blue. His tombstone in Union Field Cemetery in Queens, New York, offers a very different verdict. It calls him a lawyer and a patriot.

  Both memorials describe the same man, an American lawyer and prosecutor who spent decades close to the levers of power. How did a boy from the Bronx end up standing beside senators, mobsters and presidents? Why did famous people show up to vouch for him when the state stripped him of his license? What did he tell the world about his own illness, and why? And why do playwrights and filmmakers keep coming back to him?

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• 2. Prodigy Prosecutor

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  On the 20th of February 1927, Roy Marcus Cohn was born into a wealthy Jewish family in the Bronx. His father, Albert C. Cohn, was an assistant district attorney of Bronx County and later became a judge on the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court. His mother was Dora, born Marcus. Roy was their only child. A botched childhood surgery meant to change the look of his nose left him with a prominent scar.

  Dora watched over her son's grades, his appearance and his relationships. They lived together until her death in 1967. When his father insisted on summer camp, Dora rented a house near it, and her presence cast a pall over the experience. Those who knew him saw a tenderness in private that his public persona lacked. They also saw vanity and deep insecurity.

  Money and disgrace sat side by side in the family. His maternal grandfather, Joseph S. Marcus, founded the Bank of United States in 1913. The bank failed in 1931, during the Great Depression. Its president, Roy's uncle Bernie Marcus, was convicted of fraud and sent to Sing Sing. The young Roy visited him there often.

  After Fieldston School and Horace Mann School, Cohn finished his studies at Columbia University in 1946. He graduated from Columbia Law School at the age of 20. He then clerked for two years for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In May 1948, at 21, he was finally old enough for the New York bar. Later that month he became an assistant U.S. attorney. That same year he joined the board of the American Jewish League Against Communism.

  In December 1950, the prosecution of William Remington began. Remington was a former Commerce Department employee, charged with espionage after the defection of the former KGB handler Elizabeth Bentley. Prosecutors could not secure an espionage indictment. But Remington had twice denied under oath that he belonged to the Communist Party USA, and he was convicted of perjury in two separate trials. Cohn also worked in the office of Irving H. Saypol, helping with the Smith Act case against 11 senior Communist Party members. By the 19th of November 1952, he was also reported to be teaching criminology and legal ethics at New York Law School.

  The case that made his name was the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn conducted the direct examination of Ethel's brother, David Greenglass. Greenglass testified that he had helped his brother-in-law by carrying classified documents stolen from the Manhattan Project by Klaus Fuchs. That testimony was central to the Rosenbergs' conviction and their execution in 1953.

  Greenglass later changed his account. He said he had lied at the trial to protect himself and his wife, Ruth, and that the prosecution encouraged him to do it. Cohn took great pride in the verdict and claimed a larger role than the public one. In his autobiography he said his own influence had put both Saypol and Judge Irving Kaufman on the case. He also said Kaufman imposed the death penalty on his personal recommendation. Cohn denied taking part in any illegal ex parte discussions.

  Historians have reached a consensus that is hard to compress. Julius Rosenberg was a highly valued NKVD spymaster working against the United States. But the trial was marred by prosecutorial misconduct, mainly by Cohn, and the Rosenbergs should not have been executed. Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz wrote that they were both "guilty" and "framed." The verdict had done something else as well. It made a 24-year-old prosecutor visible to powerful men in Washington.

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• 3. McCarthy's Chief Counsel

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  FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was among those who noticed. With backing from Hoover and Cardinal Spellman, the Hearst columnist George Sokolsky persuaded Senator Joseph McCarthy to hire Cohn as chief counsel. McCarthy had been weighing another candidate, Robert F. Kennedy. Cohn went to work for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and became known for aggressive questioning of suspected Communists.

  His methods suited McCarthy. Cohn disliked open hearings, and McCarthy preferred "executive sessions" and "off-the-record" sessions held away from the Capitol. Witnesses could be questioned with little public scrutiny. Cohn had free rein in many investigations, and McCarthy usually appeared only for the more publicized sessions.

  During the Lavender Scare, Cohn and McCarthy made a serious allegation. They said Soviet Bloc intelligence services were blackmailing federal employees into espionage. The threat, they claimed, was exposure of closeted homosexuality. President Dwight Eisenhower responded by signing Executive Order 10450 on the 27th of April 1953. It barred homosexuals from federal employment as a security risk. Cohn's cousin, David L. Marcus, said that many federal workers in Washington whom the pair exposed killed themselves. McCarthy and Cohn also used rumors of homosexuality to silence opponents. Former Senator Alan K. Simpson later called this a lesser-known element of the period that "harmed far more people" than the hunt for Communists.

  Then came G. David Schine. Sokolsky introduced this anti-Communist propagandist to Cohn, who brought him onto McCarthy's staff as an unpaid consultant. When Schine was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953, Cohn worked hard to win him special treatment. He even threatened to "wreck the Army" if his demands were refused.

  That conflict, together with McCarthy's claims about Communists in the Defense Department, led to the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. The Army accused Cohn and McCarthy of improper pressure on Schine's behalf. They countercharged that the Army was holding Schine "hostage" to squelch McCarthy's investigations. The hearings contributed to the Senate's censure of McCarthy later that year. Cohn resigned from the staff and returned to New York to practice privately.

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• 4. The Fixer's Docket

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  Over the next thirty years in New York City, Cohn collected an extraordinary client list. It included Donald Trump and the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. It also included Aristotle Onassis, the Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The mob was well represented too: Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante, John Gotti, Paul Castellano and Mario Gigante. Alan Dershowitz, a client himself, called Cohn "the quintessential fixer."

  Some clients were trouble. Richard Dupont was evicted in January 1979 from 644 Greenwich Street in Manhattan, where he had run Big Gym. He then pressed Cohn to keep representing him in a bogus claim to own the property. Dupont, then 48, was convicted of aggravated harassment and attempted grand larceny.

  Cohn also tried running a company. His great-uncle Joshua Lionel Cowen founded the Lionel model train company, and by 1959 Cowen and his son Lawrence were fighting over control. In October 1959, Cohn and a group of investors stepped in. His syndicate had bought 200,000 of Lionel's 700,000 shares over three months. Under his leadership of about three and a half years, Lionel suffered falling sales, quality-control problems and huge losses. He lost a proxy fight and was forced out in 1963.

  Cohn's own legal troubles were as persistent as his clients'. Robert Morgenthau, as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, indicted him three times in six years. Cohn was acquitted every time. In September 1963, he and the attorney Murray Gottesman were charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors said they had obstructed a federal investigation into claims that Samuel S. Garfield and others defrauded United Dye and Chemical Corporation of $5 million. Both men were acquitted on the 17th of July 1964.

  In January 1969, he was indicted again, this time for conspiracy, extortion and blackmail. Prosecutors alleged that he had blackmailed shareholders of Fifth Avenue Coach Lines into selling. That let the B.S.F. Company, a holding company headed by Victor Muscat, take over the company's bus routes. Judge Inzer Bass Wyatt dismissed the blackmail charge, and Cohn was acquitted. Vanity Fair's Marie Brenner later described the trial. Near its end, Cohn's own lawyer suffered a heart attack. Cohn stepped in and delivered a seven-hour closing argument without once looking at a notepad.

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• 5. Backroom Politics

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  In 1979, Cohn joined the board of the Western Goals Foundation, where he served alongside Edward Teller. He was also claimed to belong to the John Birch Society, though he publicly opposed it. He was a registered Democrat. Even so, he backed most Republican presidents of his time and Republicans in major New York offices. He served as an informal advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He also cultivated Democrats, among them New York mayor Ed Koch, secretary of state Carmine DeSapio and Brooklyn party boss Meade Esposito.

  In 1972, Cohn helped Nixon discredit Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern's vice presidential running mate. He leaked Eagleton's medical records to the press. They showed that Eagleton had been treated for depression. Years later, as New York debated its first gay rights bill, Cohn sided with the Archdiocese of New York. He declared that "homosexual teachers are a grave threat to our children."

  The 1980 Reagan campaign brought Cohn together with Roger Stone. Cohn helped Stone arrange for John B. Anderson to win the nomination of the Liberal Party of New York, which would help split the opposition to Reagan in the state. Stone said Cohn handed him a suitcase that he chose not to open. As instructed, he dropped it at the office of a lawyer influential in Liberal Party circles. Reagan carried New York with 46 percent to Jimmy Carter's 44 percent, with Anderson taking over 7 percent. After the statute of limitations for bribery had expired, Stone said: "I paid his law firm. Legal fees. I don't know what he did for the money."

  Media owner Rupert Murdoch was another client, and Cohn repeatedly pressed President Reagan on his behalf. Cohn is also credited with introducing Murdoch to Donald Trump in the mid-1970s. It was the start of a long association between those two men.

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• 6. The Trump Client

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  In 1973, the Justice Department accused Donald Trump's company of violating the Fair Housing Act in 39 of its properties. Federal lawyers alleged that it quoted different rental terms to Black applicants and falsely said no apartments were vacant. The buildings were in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Representing Trump, Cohn filed a $100 million countersuit, calling the charges "irresponsible and baseless." The countersuit failed.

  Trump settled out of court in 1975. The company had to send the New York Urban League a bi-weekly list of vacancies and give the league priority for certain locations. Trump said he was satisfied that the deal did not compel him to accept welfare recipients unless they were as qualified as any other tenant. In 1978, the Trump Organization was back in court for violating the settlement. Cohn dismissed the new charges as "nothing more than a rehash of complaints by a couple of planted malcontents." Trump denied them.

  Cohn was also representing the mobster Anthony Salerno, whose associates controlled the concrete unions in New York. Cohn is alleged to have introduced Salerno to Trump. Salerno then reportedly helped with construction of Trump Tower by supplying concrete at reduced prices. Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal, in 1987, about the many "respectable" men who boasted of their integrity yet lacked loyalty. What he liked most about Cohn was that he did the opposite. Cohn called Trump his best friend and told journalists that Trump phoned him 15 to 20 times a day.

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• 7. Loyalty and Secrets

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  Cohn's circle was wide. He dated Barbara Walters in college and stayed her friend. S.I. Newhouse, heir to the Condé Nast publishing empire, was his classmate at Horace Mann and a lifelong friend. Cohn called Generoso Pope "a second father." He exchanged Christmas gifts with J. Edgar Hoover, and they went to parties with their mutual friend Lewis Rosenstiel, founder of the liquor company Schenley Industries.

  His switchboard operator, Christine Seymour, recalled frequent calls from Nancy Reagan. She said the former CIA director William Casey "called Roy almost daily" during Reagan's first election. Casey and Cohn were reportedly both close to the Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence. Cohn also befriended Estée Lauder, William F. Buckley Jr. and New York mayor Abraham Beame. He met Alan Dershowitz while working with him on the Claus von Bülow case.

  Cohn's own words reveal what he prized. "For me, the overriding value of loyalty," he said, and he saw politics as a matter of trust, patronage and repayment. In The Autobiography of Roy Cohn, Sidney Zion summed him up as a man who cared nothing about money and was "in it for the game, and the power."

  His sexuality was a constant subject of speculation. When Cohn recruited G. David Schine, rumors spread of a sexual relationship. Schine's chauffeur later offered to testify that he had seen them "engaged in homosexual acts" in the back of a limousine. Nothing showed that Schine ever felt romantic about Cohn. Schine dated the actress Piper Laurie and eventually married Hillevi Rombin, a former Miss Universe, with whom he had six children.

  During the Army-McCarthy hearings, Cohn denied any "special interest" in Schine. Army attorney Joseph Welch then asked a witness whether a photo came "from a pixie." Pixie was a popular cheap camera brand. Welch defined the word as "a close relative of a fairy." The room caught the insult and found it amusing. Cohn later called the remark "malicious," "wicked" and "indecent."

  Cohn always denied being gay in public. Still, he had a few known boyfriends, including his assistant Russell Eldridge, who died of AIDS in 1984. Peter Fraser, 30 years his junior, was his partner for the last two years of his life. Roger Stone told The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin in 2008: "Roy was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men." Stone added that Cohn "was interested in power and access."

  Power may also explain a darker rumor. Bill Bonanno, son of Joseph Bonanno, and other former clients credited Cohn with having compromising photographs of J. Edgar Hoover. Cohn told Bonanno that Hoover knew the pictures existed and feared blackmail. Other organized crime figures have corroborated the claim.

  Portraits of Cohn tend toward extremes. In a 1978 Esquire profile, Ken Auletta called him "a legal executioner" and "one of the most brilliant lawyers in America." Marie Brenner remembered his hypnotic stare and eyes of the palest blue that seemed to protrude from the sides of his head. She wrote that even Al Pacino's screen version failed to convey a child-like yearning to be liked.

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• 8. Disbarment and Afterlife

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  In 1986, a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court disbarred Cohn. The charges included misappropriating clients' funds, lying on a bar application and falsifying a change to a will. The will charge came from 1975, when Cohn entered the hospital room of the dying, unconscious Lewis Rosenstiel. He pushed a pen into the man's hand and lifted it to a document naming himself and Rosenstiel's granddaughter, Cathy Frank, as executors. A court judged the resulting marks indecipherable and in no way a valid signature. Yet famous people appeared as character witnesses, among them Barbara Walters, William F. Buckley Jr. and Donald Trump.

  Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 and tried to keep it secret. He took part in clinical trials of AZT, a drug first synthesized to treat cancer and later developed as the first anti-HIV agent. Until his dying day he insisted that he had liver cancer. He died on the 2nd of August 1986, at a hospital on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. He was 59. According to Seymour, Trump was the last person to speak with him by phone.

  Cohn had written, in How to Stand Up for Your Rights and Win!, that "only a fool pays more tax than is legally required." He advocated "paying as little as the law allows." He also warned of a "very fine line" between avoidance and evasion. After his death, the IRS seized almost everything he owned, including his house, cars and bank accounts. Roger Stone said Cohn's "absolute goal was to die completely broke and owing millions to the IRS. He succeeded in that."

  The stage claimed him first. Tony Kushner's Angels in America, from 1991, portrays Cohn as a closeted, power-hungry hypocrite. In the play, the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg haunts him as he denies dying of AIDS. Ron Leibman played him on Broadway. Al Pacino took the role in the 2003 HBO miniseries. Frank Wood played Cohn in a 2010 Off-Broadway revival, and Nathan Lane took it on in London in 2017 and on Broadway in 2018. Kushner also put Cohn in a one-act play, G. David Schine in Hell, in 1996. In the early 1990s, Ron Vawter performed the one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, with Cohn's part written by Gary Indiana.

  Screens followed. George Wyner played Cohn in the 1977 NBC film Tail Gunner Joe, and Joe Pantoliano in the 1985 CBS miniseries Robert Kennedy and His Times. James Woods starred in the 1992 HBO film Citizen Cohn. Will Brill appeared in the Showtime miniseries Fellow Travelers in 2023. David Moreland played him in a 1998 episode of The X-Files. Michael Sheen plays Roland Blum on The Good Fight, a dishonest lawyer inspired by Cohn. The Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" name-checks Cohn and the Rosenbergs.

  Two documentaries arrived in 2019. Ivy Meeropol, a filmmaker and granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, directed Bully, Coward, Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn. Matt Tyrnauer made Where's My Roy Cohn? Meeropol said Cohn "paved the way for Trump." She said he introduced Trump to Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, the people who helped him get to the White House. The 2024 film The Apprentice examines the Cohn and Trump relationship. It earned two Academy Award nominations, including one for Jeremy Strong's portrayal of Cohn.

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