The Influence of Roy Cohn

He taught Trump how to exploit power and instill fear through a simple formula: Attack, counterattack and never apologize.

Never surrender. Always counterattack and countersue.

Never admit defeat; claim victory no matter how bad the situation.

If someone wants it that way, you can define those principles as a political mantra or as a legal practice.

Or both.

In fact, those are the principles that guide former President Donald Trump’s outlook, and not just today, but from the moment he arrived on the island of Manhattan in 1973 from the neighboring borough of Queens and hired Roy Cohn as his lawyer.

“Other than his father, the most important influence on the future president was Roy Cohn,” Maggie Haberman of The New York Times wrote in her biography of Trump, “Confidence Man.”

“Confidence man” in Spanish translates as conman, and Cohn’s teachings fit the description well. His principles were those he applied as the lawyer for Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the famous anti-Communist witch hunt gave the senator’s name to McCarthyism, a form of ideological (in that case anti-Communist) persecution without respect for due process.

The game that McCarthy and Cohn played was so intense and so brutal that it stopped only when a U.S. Army lawyer publicly questioned their sense of decency. The question was harsh, but what lay behind it was even harsher – growing anger at a policy of persecution.

When McCarthy was forced to end his hearings in 1954, Cohn moved to New York. He moved to Manhattan, where, among other things, he became legal counsel to the Italian Gambino Mafia family, headed by Anthony Salerno and Paul Castellano who had at least partial control of the construction industry unions: a perfect point of contact for a real estate entrepreneur. Cohn began a work relationship with Trump in 1973.

You could describe Cohn as a combative lawyer, one for whom every case was personal and for whom it was about winning by any means. And just like Trump, there was no room for negotiation, one was either with him or against him.

You can see the influence of Cohn, who died in 1988, in the way Trump tries to undermine the legitimacy of the cases against him and, incidentally, his effort to intimidate judges and prosecutors by attacking their families.

Cohn was Trump’s mentor, and you can see his influence in more than 4,000 lawsuits filed against the former and possibly future president’s companies between 1975 and 2016, and in the tricks he used to discourage witnesses, force settlements and secure victories.

Cohn also taught him how to exploit power and instill fear through a simple formula: Attack, counterattack and never apologize.

These are Mafia principles. And now, thanks to Cohn, they are part of Trump’s political strategy.