He wore the flag like a shield and used it like a dagger.
Roy Marcus Cohn strutted through American history draped in red, white, and blue, a snarling avatar of anti-communism and ruthless power politics. He cloaked himself in patriotism—always “America First,” always lapel-pinned and flag-waving—yet behind that sanctimonious veneer was a man who played kingmaker, lawbreaker, and puppetmaster to mobsters, politicians, and media moguls alike. He was the man behind the curtain for decades, whispering poison into the ears of power while smiling for the cameras. If there was ever a monster made in America, it wore an American flag and answered to Roy Cohn.
The Star-Spangled Hatchet Man
Born in 1927 into a wealthy Jewish family in New York, Cohn was a prodigy—by age 20 he had earned his law degree. But it wasn’t legal excellence that made Roy Cohn a household name. It was his ruthless ambition and his talent for destruction. He got his big break in 1951 prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage. The trial was a showpiece of Cold War paranoia, and Cohn made sure it ended with the electric chair. Later, he bragged that he personally persuaded the judge to impose the death penalty—an act of judicial tampering, if true, and one that killed two people. But justice was never Cohn’s game. Power was.
From there, he rocketed into the national spotlight as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the infamous communist witch hunts of the early 1950s. Cohn’s style was pure scorched earth—smear, destroy, repeat. He didn’t prosecute communists. He annihilated careers. Teachers, actors, government workers, anyone who didn’t sufficiently pledge allegiance to his brand of hyper-nationalistic hysteria was fair game.
All the while, Cohn wrapped himself in patriotic slogans. He championed “God and country,” demonized dissenters, and paraded around with American flag pins on every suit. But this wasn’t patriotism. It was performance. Roy Cohn didn’t love America. He loved domination—and America was just his stage.
Mafia’s Favorite Lawyer
By the 1970s, Roy Cohn had traded Washington for New York and law for something darker. He became a fixer, consigliere, and legal cleaner for the American Mafia. His client list read like a RICO indictment: Carmine Galante of the Bonanno family, “Fat Tony” Salerno of the Genovese family, Paul Castellano of the Gambinos. When mobsters needed to beat the rap, they called Roy Cohn.
He didn’t just represent the Mafia—he was embedded in its bloodstream. Cohn’s law firm and Manhattan townhouse were ground zero for shady deals, political blackmail, and judicial favors. He cultivated judges, manipulated court calendars, and allegedly bribed officials. He helped mobsters secure sweetheart contracts, dodge prosecutions, and intimidate enemies. He taught them how to play the system not as criminals, but as businessmen.
But perhaps his greatest trick was laundering their reputations through his own. Wearing his flag pin, surrounded by pictures of Ronald Reagan and J. Edgar Hoover, he looked every bit the American loyalist. Meanwhile, he was the legal architect of organized crime’s golden age in New York.
It was hypocrisy so blinding it became performance art. The same man who shouted “America First” into microphones was greasing the palms of men who flooded the streets with heroin and bullets.
The Apprentice and the Protégé
Roy Cohn’s most enduring legacy isn’t in the courtroom or the Senate—it’s in the boardrooms and backrooms of American power. One of his young protégés was a brash real estate developer from Queens: Donald J. Trump.
Trump met Cohn in the 1970s when the Department of Justice sued Trump Management for racial discrimination in housing. Cohn told Trump to countersue the government for $100 million. Attack, never apologize. Deny, never admit. Smear, then sue. This became the Trump doctrine—and it was pure Roy Cohn.
Cohn represented Trump for years, becoming his mentor and fixer. He handled divorces, business disputes, and media scandals. He introduced Trump to Manhattan elites and underworld allies. He taught him how to bend the press, how to bully regulators, and how to weaponize litigation. When Trump was accused of housing discrimination or shady deals, Cohn was there, sneering at subpoenas and issuing threats from his phone in the townhouse that reeked of money, power, and rot.
Trump once said of Cohn: “He’s been vicious to others in his protection of me.” That was the essence of Roy Cohn. He didn’t practice law. He practiced warfare. He was a junkyard dog in a three-piece suit, biting ankles and breaking kneecaps behind a patriotic grin.
Secrets, Lies, and the Closet
Cohn was also a man of secrets—especially his own. Publicly, he was a virulent anti-gay crusader. He purged suspected homosexuals from government agencies during the McCarthy years, labeling them “security risks.” But Cohn himself was a closeted gay man, living a double life of opulence, parties, and private scandal.
In the 1980s, as the AIDS epidemic ravaged the LGBTQ community, Cohn denied his own diagnosis and claimed he had liver cancer. He mocked gay activists, supported politicians who slashed AIDS funding, and betrayed the very people he privately emulated. He died in 1986 from complications of AIDS, wrapped in hypocrisy to the bitter end.
Even his death was a lie wrapped in an American flag.
A Legacy of Corruption
Roy Cohn was disbarred shortly before his death—for unethical, unprofessional, and “particularly reprehensible” conduct. The charges ranged from stealing client funds to pressuring clients into amending their wills. By the time the legal world finally turned on him, he had already hollowed out trust in American institutions.
His fingerprints are all over modern politics: the cruelty, the corruption, the performative patriotism. He taught a generation of leaders to scorn accountability, mock the press, and turn every scandal into a show. In many ways, we are still living in Roy Cohn’s America: a nation where power is truth, the law is a weapon, and the flag is camouflage.
He wasn’t just a villain. He was a virus.
He infected the legal system with cynicism, the media with spectacle, and democracy with fear. He turned patriotism into a prop and nationalism into a knife. And when he finally died, there was no grand reckoning. Only silence, whispers, and the faint echo of his methods in the voices of men who still wear flags on their lapels while gutting the country from the inside.
Final Word
There’s a haunting line from the Broadway play Angels in America, where a fictionalized Roy Cohn says, “I’m a heterosexual man, Henry… with AIDS.” That tragicomic denial captures everything about Roy Cohn: the lies, the delusion, the cruelty—all wrapped in the stars and stripes.
Roy Cohn didn’t destroy America with bombs or ballots. He did it with charm, lawsuits, and backroom whispers. He made patriotism a mask for predation. He made destruction look like devotion. And he left behind a blueprint that others still follow.
If there is justice in memory, let Roy Cohn be remembered not as a patriot—but as a warning.