Roy Cohn, the Mafia lawyer, was more than just the consigliere in Trump’s story. He was Donald’s mentor, his godfather. If Trump received an education beyond his two years at Fordham and as a transfer student at Wharton (‘I’m a smart person. I went to the Wharton School of Finance’), it was from his guide through the circles of the Inferno, who conducted masterclasses in malice. Trump was an apt pupil in aggression. ‘I don’t think I got that from Roy at all,’ Trump told the Washington Post. ‘I think I’ve had a natural instinct for that.’ He didn’t really need an education in heartlessness, but he learned the finer points from Cohn. Offering his highest praise, Trump called him ‘a total genius … he brutalised for you.’

Like Trump, Roy Cohn was the pampered son of a politically connected New York family. [....] He promoted himself in his early cases by giving false leaks to the New York World Telegram. He was put in charge of prosecuting communist agents, staging several prominent show trials, including one of 11 Communist Party officials for subversion. In 1951, he took effective control of the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were accused of stealing atomic secrets. He pulled strings to appoint both chief prosecutor and judge, then urged the judge to impose the death penalty, though the evidence against Ethel Rosenberg was flimsy. Cohn’s tour de force brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who hired him as chief counsel in his Red-hunting investigations. After the Red Scare came the Lavender Scare, when Cohn launched a campaign against homosexuals in government jobs, though he was a closeted homosexual himself.

Cohn opened a law office in New York, taking on such clients as the Mafia kingpins Tony Salerno, Paul Castellano, John Gotti and Carmine ‘The Cigar’ Galante, underboss of the Bonanno crime family – as well as the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the New York Yankees. He was the city’s supreme fixer. [....]

Donald Trump met Roy Cohn at Le Club, a private New York disco, in 1973, when Trump was 27 and had a serious problem. The Justice Department was suing him and his father for racial discrimination in their building at 100 Central Park South. ‘My view is tell them to go to hell,’ Cohn advised, ‘and fight the thing in court.’ From that moment, Cohn and Trump were inseparable. Cohn recalled that Trump would phone him more than a dozen times a day. With Cohn as their attorney the Trumps filed a countersuit against the federal government for using ‘Gestapo-like tactics’. Their suit was instantly dismissed and two years later the Trumps settled after being forced to sign a decree forbidding them from engaging in discriminatory practices.

[....] For Trump, Cohn served ‘like a cultural guide to Manhattan’, Stone told the Washington Post. ‘Roy was more than his personal lawyer.’

Cohn took him to the 21 Club, where they held court in Cohn’s reserved red leather booth. He took him to his townhouse on 68th Street, where he lived and conducted his law business, and which was filled with a running crew of attractive young gay men, models, cigar-chomping politicians, gangsters and journalist hangers-on. ‘Roy lived in a matrix of crime and unethical conduct,’ according to his biographer Nicholas von Hoffman. He ‘derived a significant part of his income from illegal or unethical schemes and conspiracies, the most blatant of which was not paying income tax’.

[....]

Cohn greased the skids with favours. ‘I got to know everybody,’ Trump said. Cohn arranged for the Mob to construct Trump’s towers and provide protection against labour trouble. ‘You know how many lawyers in New York represent organised-crime figures? Does that mean we’re not supposed to use them?’ Trump asked. Cohn threatened to sue anyone in Trump’s way to secure leases on properties and city tax abatements. He wrote the prenuptial agreement stipulating that Trump’s first wife, Ivana, would return all gifts in the event of a divorce, and coerced her to sign; Cohn had suggested an associate to serve as her lawyer. (‘I would never buy Ivana any decent jewels or pictures. Why give her negotiable assets?’ Trump told his friends, according to Vanity Fair.) And Cohn finagled a federal judgeship for Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry. When anyone resisted Trump’s demands, he waved Cohn’s picture in their face. ‘Would you rather deal with him?’ he would say.

The State of New York disbarred Cohn in 1986 for unethical and unprofessional behaviour described in the judgment as ‘particularly reprehensible’. A month later, he died of Aids, an illness he tried to conceal (he told Trump he had cancer). He was an outrageous racist and self-loathing Jew, freely spewing epithets about ‘niggers’ and ‘kikes’. He was also a self-hating homosexual, who obsessively denounced ‘fags’ and crusaded against gay rights. When he was dying Trump turned away from him, shifting his business to other lawyers. ‘I can’t believe he’s doing this to me,’ Cohn said. ‘Donald pisses ice water.’ Cohn called Trump to ask him to find a room in one of his hotels for Cohn’s former lover and assistant, near death himself from Aids. Trump got him a ‘tacky’ room and sent Cohn the bills. Cohn refused to pay. Trump’s underlings called to evict the dying man. The only surprising part of the story is Cohn’s shock.