Roy Cohn | |
---|---|
Education | Columbia University (BA, LLB) |
Occupation | Lawyer |
Known for | Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial (1951) Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel (1953â1954) Donald Trump's attorney and mentor (1973â1985) |
Parent(s) | Dora Marcus Albert C. Cohn |
Cohn became chief counsel to McCarthy as well as a chief architect of what we now call âMcCarthyismââthe interrogation and purging of federal employees based on McCarthyâs unsupported claim that the government was filled with communists.
Mr. Cohn, who made his reputation as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg espionage case and as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy, was Mr. Trumpâs lawyer for 13 years. Credit... The future Mrs. Donald J. Trump was puzzled.
Joseph McCarthy. Jump to navigation Jump to search. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 â May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.
Early in 1954, the U.S. Army accused McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of improperly pressuring the army to give favorable treatment to G. David Schine, a former aide to McCarthy and a friend of Cohn's, who was then serving in the army as a private.
August 2, 1986Roy Cohn / Date of death
Joseph N. WelchBornJoseph Nye WelchOctober 22, 1890 Primghar, Iowa, U.S.DiedOctober 6, 1960 (aged 69) Hyannis, Massachusetts, U.S.EducationGrinnell College (1914) Harvard Law School (1917)OccupationLawyer, Actor4 more rows
Where's My Roy Cohn? is a 2019 documentary film, directed by Matt Tyrnauer, and produced by Matt Tyrnauer, Marie Brenner, Corey Reeser, Joyce Deep, and Andrea Lewis. The film stars American lawyer Roy Cohn as himself, alongside Ken Auletta, Anne Roiphe, Roger Stone, Donald Trump, and Barbara Walters.
59Â years (1927â1986)Roy Cohn / Age at death
On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67â22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. He continued to speak against communism and socialism until his death at the age of 48 at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 2, 1957.
Despite McCarthy's acquittal of misconduct in the Schine matter, the ArmyâMcCarthy hearings ultimately became the main catalyst in McCarthy's downfall from political power.
Rent Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019) on DVD and Blu-ray - DVD Netflix.
Cohen is interred at Cedar Park Cemetery, in Emerson, New Jersey.
CastCharacters1991-1992 Cottesloe Theatre premiere2017 London National TheatreRoy CohnHenry GoodmanNathan LaneBelizeJoseph MydellNathan Stewart-JarrettThe AngelNancy CraneAmanda LawrenceHannah PittRosemary MartinSusan Brown4 more rows
Certified Occupational Health NurseCertified Occupational Health Nurse (COHN)
Kathleen Chalfant played Ethel Rosenberg in the first production of Angels in America, Parts One and Two, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and later at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York. View all notes She captures the essence of the play with her red-lipped, husky voiced portrayal.
1989 Fisher died in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he was lecturing.
HUAC was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and rebel activities on the part of private citizens, public employees and organizations suspected of having Communist ties. Citizens suspected of having ties to the communist party would be tried in a court of law.
For Mr. Trump, the benefits of his new representation were obvious. Mr. Cohn was one of the most famous and feared lawyers in America. He would later appear on the cover of Esquire beneath an ironic halo, and earn a posthumous parody on âThe Simpsons.â. But Mr. Cohn saw something in Mr. Trump, too.
He had helped send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for spying and elect Richard M. Nixon president. Then New Yorkâs most feared lawyer, Mr. Cohn had a client list that ran the gamut from the disreputable to the quasi-reputable: Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, Claus von Bulow, George Steinbrenner.
In June 1986, Mr. Cohn was disbarred for âunethical,â âunprofessionalâ and âparticularly reprehensibleâ conduct. To this day, Mr. Trump rues the outcome. âThey only got him because he was so sick,â Mr. Trump said in the interview. âThey wouldnât have gotten him otherwise.â.
Among the many things Mr. Trump learned from Mr. Cohn during these years was the importance of keeping oneâs name in the newspapers. Long before Mr. Trump posed as his own spokesman, passing self-serving tidbits to gossip columnists, Mr. Cohn was known to call in stories about himself to reporters.
After helping convict the Rosenbergs as a young federal prosecutor and then working in Washington as a top aide to McCarthy, Mr. Cohn had returned to New York, starting a boutique practice in his shabby but elegant townhouse on East 68th Street. The division of labor in the firm was clear.
Mr. Cohn was the master of ceremonies at a Trump birthday party at Studio 54; years later, Mr. Trump returned the favor with a birthday toast of his own at a party in the atrium of Trump Tower, joking that Mr. Cohn was more bark than bite.
And Mr. Cohn turned repeatedly to Mr. Trump â one of a small clutch of people who knew he was gay â in his hours of need. When a former companion was dying of AIDS, he asked Mr. Trump to find him a place to stay. When he faced disbarment, he summoned Mr. Trump to testify to his character.
For author Sam Roberts, the essence of Cohnâs influence on Trump was the triad: âRoy was a master of situational immorality . . . . He worked with a three-dimensional strategy, which was: 1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. Counter-attack, counter-sue immediately.
As Donald Trump would later tell the story, he ran into Cohn for the first time at Le Club, a members-only nightspot in Manhattanâs East 50s, where models and fashionistas and Eurotrash went to be seen.
How to explain the symbiosis that existed between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump? Cohn and Trump were twinned by what drove them. They were both sons of powerful fathers, young men who had started their careers clouded by family scandal. Both had been private-school students from the boroughs whoâd grown up with their noses pressed against the glass of dazzling Manhattan. Both squired attractive women around town. (Cohn would describe his close friend Barbara Walters, the TV newswoman, as his fiancĂŠe. âOf course, it was absurd,â Liz Smith said, âbut Barbara put up with it.â)
And as Trumpâs first major project, the Grand Hyatt, was set to open, he was already involved in multiple controversies.
Despite McCarthyâs very public demise when the hearings proved to be trumped-up witch hunts, Cohn would emerge largely unscathed, going on to become one of the last great power brokers of New York. His friends and clients came to include New Yorkâs Francis Cardinal Spellman and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
âCome and make your pitch to me,â Roy Cohn told Roger Stone when they met at a New York dinner party in 1979. Stone, though only 27, had achieved a degree of notoriety as one of Richard Nixonâs political dirty-tricksters. At the time, he was running Ronald Reaganâs presidential-campaign organization in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and he needed office space.
The heir to that tradition is Donald Trump. When you combine that with the bare-knuckled tactics of Roy Cohnâor a Roger Stoneâthat is how you win elections. So Roy has an impact on Donaldâs understanding of how to deal with the mediaâattack, attack, attack, never defend.â.
That man was future Republican president Donald Trump, and Cohn advised, âtell them to go to hell.â. Soon afterward, Cohn started working as Trumpâs personal lawyer. Cohn served as a mentor to the businessman, helping him to navigate the world of New York's power brokers.
Cohn became chief counsel to McCarthy as well as a chief architect of what we now call âMcCarthyismââthe interrogation and purging of federal employees based on McCarthyâs unsupported claim that the government was filled with communists. In addition to this very public Second Red Scare, Cohn and McCarthy also led the less-public Lavender Scare ...
The charges included a visit he made to the dying multimillionaire Lewis Rosenstiel at a hospital while Rosenstiel was semi-comatose. âCohn held Rosenstiel's hand to sign a document naming Cohn a co-executor of Rosenstiel's will after falsely telling him that the document dealt with his divorce,â The Washington Post reported at the time.
One of the most notorious is Roy Cohn, a man whose influence spans several decades of hot button issues, Republican politicians and LGBT history. Cohn was a prosecutor in the Rosenberg spy trial, chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy, a close friend to Nancy Reagan and a personal lawyer for Donald Trump. He was also a closeted gay man who helped ...
The chief architect of McCarthyism prosecuted the Rosenbergs, purged suspected communists and LGBT government workers and was portrayed in 'Angels in America.'. There are certain behind-the-scenes figures in American politics who, like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, seem to turn up everywhere. One of the most notorious is Roy Cohn, a man whose ...
Shortly before his death in 1986, Cohn was disbarred as a lawyer for âdishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation.â.
e. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 â May 2, 1957) was an American politician and attorney who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957 .
McCarthy was admitted to the bar in 1935. While working at a law firm in Shawano, Wisconsin, he launched an unsuccessful campaign for district attorney as a Democrat in 1936. During his years as an attorney, McCarthy made money on the side by gambling.
It was hinted in the press that he died of alcoholism (cirrhosis of the liver), an estimation that is now accepted by modern biographers. He was given a state funeral that was attended by 70 senators, and a Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass was celebrated before more than 100 priests and 2,000 others at Washington's St. Matthew's Cathedral. Thousands of people viewed his body in Washington. He was buried in St. Mary's Parish Cemetery, Appleton, Wisconsin, where more than 17,000 people filed through St. Mary's Church in order to pay him their last respects. Three senatorsâ George W. Malone, William E. Jenner, and Herman Welker âhad flown from Washington to Appleton on the plane that carried McCarthy's casket. Robert F. Kennedy attended the funeral in Wisconsin. McCarthy was survived by his wife, Jean, and their adopted daughter, Tierney.
Truman, in turn, once referred to McCarthy as "the best asset the Kremlin has", calling McCarthy's actions an attempt to "sabotage the foreign policy of the United States" in a cold war and comparing it to shooting American soldiers in the back in a hot war. It was the Truman Administration's State Department that McCarthy accused of harboring 205 (or 57 or 81) "known Communists". Truman's Secretary of Defense, George Marshall, was the target of some of McCarthy's most vitriolic rhetoric. Marshall had been Army Chief of Staff during World War II and was also Truman's former Secretary of State. Marshall was a highly respected general and statesman, remembered today as the architect of victory and peace, the latter based on the Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction of Europe, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. McCarthy made a lengthy speech on Marshall, later published in 1951 as a book titled America's Retreat From Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall. Marshall had been involved in American foreign policy with China, and McCarthy charged that Marshall was directly responsible for the loss of China to Communism. In the speech McCarthy also implied that Marshall was guilty of treason; declared that "if Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest"; and most famously, accused him of being part of "a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man".
McCarthy was critical of the convictions because the German soldiers' confessions were allegedly obtained through torture during the interrogations. He argued that the U.S. Army was engaged in a coverup of judicial misconduct, but never presented any evidence to support the accusation. Shortly after this, a poll of the Senate press corps voted McCarthy "the worst U.S. senator" currently in office. McCarthy biographer Larry Tye has written that antisemitism may also have factored into McCarthy's outspoken views on Malmedy. McCarthy frequently used anti-Jewish slurs, received enthusiastic support from antisemitic politicians including Ku Klux Klansman Wesley Swift, and according to friends would display his copy of Mein Kampf, stating, "Thatâs the way to do it." Tye also cites three quotes from European historian Steven Remy, chief Malmedy prosecutor COL Burton Ellis JAG USA, and massacre victim and survivor Virgil P. Laru, Jr:
During a five-hour speech, McCarthy presented a case-by-case analysis of his 81 "loyalty risks" employed at the State Department.
Because of McCarthy's various lies about his military heroism, his "Tail-Gunner Joe" nickname was sarcastically used as a term of mockery by his critics. McCarthy campaigned for the Republican Senate nomination in Wisconsin while still on active duty in 1944 but was defeated by Alexander Wiley, the incumbent.
McCarthy died at the age of forty-eight, in 1957. Unlike McCarthy, Trump seems to have only one fixed idea, and it is about his own greatness. One day, he is talking about his abiding friendship with President Xi Jinping and China, âwhich has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus.â.
On January 6, 2017, at around 8:30 a.m., Donald Trump undoubtedly had serious matters on his mind. In just two weeks, he would come into possession of the nuclear codes, attempt to fill out the upper ranks of the federal government, and assume responsibility for the course of American policy at home and abroad.
In âThe Paranoid Style,â Hofstadter quotes McCarthy, speaking in 1951, on the âparlousâ state of America:
The Library of America recently put out a collection of writings by the Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter. It includes two full-length studies published in the early nineteen-sixties: âAnti-Intellectualism in American Lifeâ and âThe Paranoid Style in American Politics.â.
The President is above all trying to whip up a frenzy of paranoia about the Obama Administrationâs supposed efforts to promulgate the theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. âObamagate,â according to the President, is an affair âworse than Watergate.â.
The Justice Department, undermining the rule of law, has obediently asked that charges be dropped against Michael Flynn, the former national-security adviser, who admitted to lying to investigators about his contacts with Russia . In 2016, Trumpâs rallying cry was âLock her up!â.
And it was a shamelessness that Trump picked up and ran with. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his chief counsel Roy Cohn whispering during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Photograph: Everett/Rex/Shutterstock. Cohn was born in the Bronx in 1927.
As Senator Joseph McCarthyâs chief counsel, he was a kind of stage director of the major events of the red scare: the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the McCarthy hearings. Another man would have let himself be an invisible functionary in those proceedings, but not Cohn. He made himself visible.
Cohn started his career as a federal prosecutor, but it was his performance in the trial of the Rosenbergs â who were tried and convicted of espionage in 1951 â where he made his real reputation. According to David Greenglass, Cohn pressured him into testifying against his sister Ethel.
A mentor in shamelessness: the man who taught Trump the power of publicity. Roy Cohn, the lawyer who embraced infamy during the McCarthy hearings and Rosenberg trial, influenced Donald Trump to turn the tabloids into a soapbox. From left: Roy Cohn, journalist Ed Kosner and Donald Trump. Photograph: Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg during their trial for espionage in New York in 1951. Photograph: AP. Along with his fellow committee member David Schine, he embarked on a kind of European tour, with the mission to root out communists abroad. Cohn and Schine proceeded to make giant fools of themselves in the press.
But once upon a time, he had a mentor: Roy Cohn, a notoriously harsh lawyer who rose to prominence in the mid-1950s alongside the communist-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. His tactics would often land him in the papers, but Cohn was unafraid of being slimed by the press â he used it to his advantage.
Cohn eventually resigned, but he always defended the hearings, once writing an article for Esquire titled, âBelieve Me, This Is the Truth About the Army-McCarthy Hearings, Honestâ. This piece was widely acknowledged to stretch the truth; letters of complaint poured in.