Roy Cohn: Donald Trump’s mentor he doesn’t want you to know about

Donald Trump is, for better or for worse, one of the most important and recognized personalities around the globe right now. However, to understand him better, it’s necessary to know his mentor, New York lawyer Roy Cohn.

NPR writes that Roy Cohn first met Donald Trump at a nightclub in 1973. A few months later, when the US Department of Justice sued Fred Trump (pictured) for racist rental practices on his apartment buildings, his son Donald knew the right man for the job.

However, Roy Cohn became much more than legal advisor for Donald Trump. The lawyer has been widely described as grooming the New York real estate mogul into the man who would he is today.

Cohn, who some describe as a surrogate father to Trump, provided him with connections but more importantly, a special knack on dealing with people and always getting the upper hand.

The Washington Post described Cohn as “the man who showed Donald Trump how to exploit power and instill fear”. His lesson was simple: “attack, counterattack and never apologize”.

But who is exactly Roy Cohn? Why some people compare him to a Forrest Gump-like figure of the American underbelly?

Roy Cohn was born in New York City in 1927 into an upper-class Jewish family from The Bronx. He graduated from Columbia University at the age of 20 with a degree in Law.

Despite being in his early 20s, Cohn became one of the central figures of the Red Scare, serving as chief counsel of Senator Joseph McCarthy in his crusade against Communism in the 1950s.

Among the high-ranking Communists that Cohn helped to convict as an Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, probably the most famous were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for being Soviet spies in 1953.

As the BBC highlights, Cohn admitted using illegal, back-channel conversations to guarantee the execution of the Rosenberg marriage and raise his profile on the American public of the 1950s.

To top it all, the BBC points out that Cohn also took part in the Lavender Scare, persecuting gay men working for the US government in the 1950s, despite being one himself.

After McCarthy’s downfall in 1954, Cohn resigned from the US Justice Department and began working in a private law firm as an attorney in New York City.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he became a high-profile lawyer and political fixer, defending cases that ranged from mafia bosses to the owner of the New York Yankees, to Cardinal Francis Spellman.

At the same time, he was known to party in the infamous New York nightclub Studio 54, where Cohn’s attraction to men was barely an open secret.

Cohn became a fixture in New York nightlife, developing friendships with the likes of Andy Warhol and Barbara Walters.

At the same time, he cultivated connections with important Republican politicians and opinion leaders, including Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Although aligned with Republicans, Cohn was registered as a Democrat for most of his life and had close bonds with Ed Koch, the Democratic mayor of New York from 1978 to 1989.

The final years of his life were marked by his failing health due to complications with AIDS, although Cohn ever denied having the condition.

When news spread out that Cohn was sick with a disease that was seen at the time as only affecting the lowest levels of society, his powerful friends abandoned him.

Reportedly, Donald Trump turned away from his mentor after learning about the AIDS diagnosis, leaving him alone. Ultimately, Roy Cohn passed away on August 2, 1986.

However, it seems Trump hasn’t forgotten his surrogate father. When facing with possibility of impeachment in 2017 for allegedly colluding with Russian operatives, the former US President blurted out: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”, out of the frustration of his legal team.

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