It’s difficult to imagine how any single American over the past 100 years could have done more damage to our country than Roy Cohn. Even Senator Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump may bear less responsibility for the harm they’ve done to millions of lives, because to a great degree they’re both Cohn’s creations. As Chief Counsel of McCarthy”s witch-hunting committee, Cohn set the tone and did most of the dirty work, forcing thousands of government employees out of their jobs on trumped-up charges. And even more than Trump’s racist father, Cohn effectively taught the future President everything he knows about how to bluff, bully, cheat, and lie your way to prevail over those who follow the law. And if you doubt this assessment of Cohn’s significance, you owe it to yourself to read Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark’s astonishing biography, American Scoundrel.
A child of privilege gained through corruption
Roy Marcus Cohn (1927-86) was the only child of New York State Supreme Court Justice Albert C. Cohn and Dora Marcus Cohn, daughter of a wealthy and prominent Jewish family. One uncle was convicted of fraud and imprisoned at Sing Sing, where Roy often visited him. And his father was a leading member of the corrupt Democratic machine in the city. He exposed Roy when young to the conviction that who you knew mattered more than what you said or did. And that lesson guided him throughout his life.
American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump by Kai Bird with Susan Goldmark (2026) 528 pages ★★★★★
He built on McCarthy’s reputation as a bully and a liar
Cohn’s course in life was set in motion before his birth. According to the author, his mother’s wealthy family bought his father, Al, a judgeship to persuade him to marry Dora. Both parents loved Roy but detested each other. Family connections helped Cohn get into Columbia Law School. There he formed the habits that defined his career. Taking his cue from his father and the corrupt men in his circle, he learned that loyalty meant protecting useful allies. And that law was a weapon to use against opponents rather than a system that limited him in any way.
Cohn first became nationally prominent as a young federal prosecutor. He led the espionage case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and privately (and illegally) lobbied the judge to sentence both of them to death. That landed him the job of chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. In that role, often on nationwide TV, he led the investigations that forever elevated the McCarthy hearings into an object of national shame. Cohn humiliated witnesses and ended careers of hundreds of civil servants on often unfounded suspicion that they were Communists. (In fact, most were simply liberals who at most had flirted with the Party in the 1930s, when hundreds of thousands did likewise.) Cohn savagely turned his unproven accusations into political theater.
David Schine and the Army-McCarthy hearings
Cohn’s role with McCarthy came to a climax with the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. The Army charged that Cohn had threatened to wreck it because it would not give special treatment to his friend, David Schine, then a draftee. Most historians believe the relationship was homosexual. Cohn was a closeted gay throughout his life. But Schine was straight, and Bird is skeptical that their relationship was anything but platonic. Cohn was simply obsessed with the younger man. And that obsession poisoned McCarthy’s campaign against the Army and Eisenhower. Eventually, it brought down McCarthy.
Eisenhower’s role in the unfolding scandal was a stain on his presidency. He steadfastly refused, even under pressure from aides and allies, to speak out against McCarthy and Cohn. The president might have shut down McCarthy but failed to do so. Bird compares Eisenhower’s inaction to the Republican Party’s stance toward Trump today.
Cohn and the Mob
After McCarthy fell, Cohn established himself as a New York lawyer and fixer. Working his family connections and capitalizing on the fame he gained with McCarthy, he took on clients that included tycoons, celebrities, politicians, and developers. He also represented mob figures such as Frank Costello, Carlo Gambino, and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno. At the same time, he befriended a wide slice of the New York elite. Among them were Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, George Steinbrenner, Cardinal Spellman, and the Reagans, all of whom he counted as friends. And he became close to the notorious Right-Wing columnists Walter Winchell and George Sokolsky. At their feet he learned the ways and means of manipulating the press.
Cohn’s two most powerful adversaries were Robert Kennedy and Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan DA from 1975 to 2009. Morgenthau repeatedly indicted Cohn. The cases he brought to court were strong, but he could never convict the slippery lawyer.
A life of denial
Cohn was Jewish, but he forged friendships with people who were outspokenly antisemitic. Though he was gay, he led the prosecution of suspected homosexuals in the Lavender Scare that ran parallel to the Red Scare during the McCarthy era. Although he was sexually active with men, he inveighed against homosexuality in public throughout his life. Cohn demanded loyalty, which he regarded as the highest virtue. But he often stiffed employees and creditors alike. He posed as a lawyer dedicated to the rule of law, belying the allegations of bribery, perjury, extortion, and tax evasion he repeatedly faced. Only shortly before he died of AIDS in 1986 was he was finally disbarred. That was long, long overdue.
Meanwhile, however, a young real estate developer named Donald Trump came into Cohn’s orbit. Cohn became Trump’s principal lawyer for the last 12 years of his life. Sitting at Cohn’s feet in night clubs and offices, Trump learned from Cohn how to counterattack, threaten lawsuits, never admit wrongdoing, dominate the news, and claim victory whatever the facts. Bird describes both Cohn and Trump as narcissistic con artists. Neither man possessed any core beliefs, much less in the populist politics they espoused. In the McCarthy Era as in the dark days of Trump’s second term, the two men used personal grievances to plumb long-standing populist anger in American society. And today, every day, we are paying the price for that.
About the author
Kai Bird won a Pulitzer Prize for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written with Martin J. Sherwin. American Scoundrel is his ninth nonfiction book, which he wrote with his wife, Susan Goldmark. Bird was born in Eugene, Oregon in 1951 and earned a BA at Carleton College and an MS at Northwestern University.
Susan Goldmark, Kai Bird’s wife and chief researcher, has worked in over seventy-five countries—in consulting, for nonprofits, and at the World Bank. She was a World Bank Country Director in Nepal and later in Latin America. She holds a BA from Carleton College and a graduate degree in development economics from Princeton University. Susan has been Kai’s muse for decades and led the research for American Scoundrel.
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