Roy Cohn

The law came to Roy Cohn as a family utility. His father, Albert Cohn, was an assistant district attorney in the Bronx and later a judge on the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court. His mother, Dora Marcus, came from the family that founded the Bank of United States, which failed in 1931. Its president, Cohn's uncle Bernie Marcus, was convicted of fraud and sent to Sing Sing, and the boy visited him there. He went through Fieldston and Horace Mann, finished Columbia in 1946, and took his law degree at 20, too young to practice. He clerked for the U.S. attorney until his 21st birthday made him eligible, joined the bar in May 1948, and became an assistant U.S. attorney the same month.

At 24 he prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage, drawing from David Greenglass the testimony that convicted them. The trial made his name. J. Edgar Hoover took notice, and in 1953 Joseph McCarthy hired him as chief counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations over Robert F. Kennedy. For 18 months Cohn ran the hunt — closed sessions, unnamed sources, careers ended in an afternoon. The Army-McCarthy hearings put him on television for 36 days in 1954, and he resigned before the committee filed its reports. He was 27, and finished with government for good.

Cohn boasted for the rest of his life about the Rosenbergs. In the autobiography published after his death, he said his own influence put Irving Kaufman on the bench in that case and that Kaufman imposed the death sentences on his personal recommendation — while denying he had ever held an improper ex parte conversation with the judge. Historians now broadly hold that Julius Rosenberg spied and that the prosecution, Cohn's part of it most of all, was tainted by misconduct. With McCarthy he pressed the purge of gay men from federal employment, work that cost many their careers and, his own cousin said, drove some to suicide. Cohn was a gay man. He denied it in public until he died, and he died of AIDS on August 2, 1986, insisting to the end that he had liver cancer.

Five weeks before he died, the Appellate Division disbarred him for misappropriating client funds, lying on a bar application, and forcing a pen into the hand of the dying Lewis Rosenstiel to alter a will. His tombstone in Queens calls him a lawyer and a patriot. His panel on the AIDS Memorial Quilt reads Bully. Coward. Victim. Tony Kushner made him a central figure of Angels in America in 1991, haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, and Al Pacino and Nathan Lane have played the part since. What returned him to argument was Donald Trump, his client from 1973 until his death — Jeremy Strong drew an Academy Award nomination for playing Cohn opposite him in The Apprentice.

Roy Cohn's life against the full span of the corpus.

• United States v. Rosenberg case
  On the prosecution team — his direct examination of David Greenglass produced the testimony that convicted them 1951
• Army-McCarthy hearings other
  As chief counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations 1954
• McCarthy book
  His defense of the senator, published 11 years after McCarthy died 1968
• A Fool for a Client book
  His account of the federal prosecutions he beat 1972
• Justice Department housing discrimination suit against Trump Management case
  Defending Fred and Donald Trump, he countersued the government for 100 million dollars and lost, and the case settled in 1975 1973
• How to Stand Up for Your Rights and Win! book 1981

• February 20, 1927 aged 0 Born in the Bronx to a judge and a banking family His father sat on the Appellate Division. His mother's father had founded the Bank of United States.
• 1931 aged ~4 The family bank fails and his uncle goes to Sing Sing Bernie Marcus was convicted of fraud. Cohn visited him in prison as a boy.
• 1947 aged ~20 Graduates from Columbia Law School at 20 Too young to be admitted to the New York bar.
• May 1948 aged 21 Admitted to the bar at 21 and made an assistant U.S. attorney
• 1951 aged ~24 Prosecutes Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage He was 24. Greenglass later said he had perjured himself and that the prosecution encouraged it.
• 1953 aged ~26 Hired as McCarthy's chief counsel over Robert F. Kennedy J. Edgar Hoover and Cardinal Spellman backed him for the job.
• April 22, 1954 aged 27 The Army-McCarthy hearings go out live on national television The Army charged that Cohn had pressed it to favor his friend G. David Schine. He resigned later that year.
• 1975 aged ~48 Forces a pen into the hand of the dying Lewis Rosenstiel The marks were later ruled no signature at all. It became a disbarment charge.
• August 2, 1986 aged 59 Dies of AIDS at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Disbarred five weeks earlier. He said to the end that he had liver cancer.

• Joseph McCarthy 1908–1957
  Senator whose unsupported accusations and investigations gave “McCarthyism” its name and damaged civil liberties. chief counsel to
• Julius Rosenberg 1918–1953
  Ran a Soviet spy ring and was executed for espionage in 1953 prosecuted
• Ethel Rosenberg 1915–1953
  Executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage, on testimony her brother later recanted. prosecuted
• Donald Trump b. 1946
  Businessman, media personality, and 45th and 47th president whose populist movement transformed American politics. attorney to
• J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972
  Longtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses. backed by
• Barbara Walters 1929–2022
  Pioneering broadcast journalist who became the first female co-anchor of a network evening news program. friend