and he lies about everything. He says there is no global warming, but if he got elected he may make us buy solar mirrors from his buddies.... Did Roy Cohn pop his cherry at Le Club in 1977?? Only the Green Goddess Gaia knows for sure. From the Daily Beast:
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
Donald Trump’s brash and bullying style was learned at the heel of Roy Cohn, one of America’s most infamous lawyers.
They
met at Le Club, a private disco on the Upper East Side frequented by
Jackie Kennedy, Al Pacino, and Diana Ross, according to Trump: The Saga of America’s Most Powerful Real Estate Baron. Donald Trump,
the young developer, quickly amassing a fortune in New York real estate
and Roy Cohn, America’s most loathed yet socially successful defense
attorney who had vaulted to infamy in the 1950s while serving as legal
counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The friendship they forged would provide the foundation for Trump’s eventual presidential campaign.
And in hindsight, it serves as a tool for understanding Donald Trump
the Candidate, whose bumper sticker-averse declarations—undocumented Mexican immigrants are “criminals” and “rapists”;
Senator John McCain is “not a war hero”—have both led him to the top of
the Republican primary polls and mistakenly convinced many that he is a
puzzle unworthy of solving. It may appear that way, but Trump isn’t
just spouting off insults like a malfunctioning sprinkler system—he’s
mimicking what he learned some 40 years ago.
A
longtime friend of Trump’s who was introduced to the candidate by Cohn
told me it’s a shame that Cohn’s not alive to see the chaos his protégé
has wrought.
“He would have just loved what’s going on right now,” the friend said. “Roy liked upsetting the establishment.”
Roy
Marcus Cohn, born in the Bronx in 1927, was the son of Albert Cohn, a
judge and prominent Democrat. He graduated from Columbia Law School in
1947, and the day he was admitted to the bar, according to a New York Times obituary, he got a job in the office of the Manhattan United States Attorney thanks to his father’s connections.
He
became known for his arrogant courtroom style, notably in the case of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American citizens convicted of conspiring to
give information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. They were
executed, and Cohn was promoted to assistant U.S. Attorney.
He
moved to Washington, where his first assignment was to prepare the
indictment of Owen Lattimore, an expert on China and professor at Johns
Hopkins University who had been accused of being “the top Russian
espionage agent in the United States” by Senator Joe McCarthy.
The
charges were ultimately dismissed, but Cohn’s aggressive performance
left a lasting impact on McCarthy, who named him chief counsel to the
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. (Robert F. Kennedy was
assistant counsel.)
McCarthy
and Cohn, who was gay and would later die of AIDS, claimed that foreign
communists had blackmailed closeted homosexual U.S. government
employees into giving them secrets. The charge resulted in President
Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, which allowed the government to deny
homosexuals employment.
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Cohn helped McCarthy wage similar witch-hunts on the State Department, Voice of America, and the Army.
When McCarthy was finally censured, in 1954, Cohn was thought to be finished, too.
He
moved back to New York City and joined the law firm Saxe, Bacon &
Bolan. But instead of fading into obscurity, Cohn became a socialite
with a roster of high-powered, famous, pious, and allegedly murderous
clients.
He
represented Andy Warhol, Studio 54, Roman Catholic Cardinals Francis
Spellman and Terence Cooke, and mafia leaders Carmine “Cigar” Galante
and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno.
Cohn’s tactics were thought to be so unethical and dishonest by the legal establishment (he was eventually disbarred) that Esquire dubbed him “a legal executioner.”
The reputation didn’t hurt his dance card, however.
Cohn
was known for his parties, thrown at his Greenwich estate and attended
by politicians, designers, artists, and celebrities. He liked to pretend
that Barbara Walters, a friend, was his girlfriend. “He was a very
complicated man,” she told SFGate in 2008. “He was very smart and
funny. And, at the time, seemed to know everyone in New York. He was
very friendly with the cardinal, he was very friendly with the most
famous columnist in New York, Walter Winchell. He had a lot of extremely
powerful friends.”
According to The New York Times’ obituary
for Cohn, those friends included “dozens of politicians, Democrats and
Republicans alike, at every level, from Cabinet members to county
judges,” including President Reagan.
Although,
Trump’s friend told me, Cohn saw in Trump “front page stuff, and Roy
was always attracted to celebrity,” he clearly wasn’t lacking for
celebrity in his life. For Cohn, more important than Trump’s status was
his attitude.
“I think he saw in Trump a kindred spirit,” the friend said. “He saw a certain toughness that he also saw in himself.”
After graduating from the Wharton School and successfully avoiding
deployment to Vietnam, Trump, whose campaign ignored an interview
request, joined the family real-estate business and in 1971, moved to a
studio apartment on the Upper East Side.
He wasted no time beginning his social ascent.
“One of the first things I did was join Le Club,” he wrote in his 1987 book The Art of the Deal,
“which at the time was the hottest club in the city and perhaps the
most exclusive—like Studio 54 at its height. Its membership included
some of the most successful men and most beautiful women in the world.”
Le Club, Trump wrote, “turned out to be a great move for me, socially and professionally.”
Cohn became Trump’s lawyer. And Trump thought highly of his controversial tactics.
“If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent, you get Roy,” he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “People will drop a suit just by getting a letter with Roy’s name at the bottom.”
In 1973, at Cohn’s urging, Trump sued the federal government
for $100 million in damages, after the government sued the Trump
Management Corp. for allegedly discriminating against blacks in its
leasing of 16,000 apartment units throughout New York.
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