Roy Cohn | |
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Born | Roy Marcus Cohn February 20, 1927 New York City, U.S. |
Died | August 2, 1986 Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. | (aged 59)
Education | Columbia University (BA, LLB) |
Occupation | Lawyer |
Known for |
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Political party | Democratic[1] |
Parents |
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Family | Joshua Lionel Cowen (great-uncle)[2] |
Roy Marcus Cohn (/koʊn/ KOHN; February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer and prosecutor who came to prominence for his role as Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel during the Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954, when he assisted McCarthy's investigations of suspected communists. In the late 1970s and during the 1980s, he became a prominent political fixer in New York City.[3][4] He also represented and mentored New York City real estate developer and former U.S. President Donald Trump during his early business career.[5]
Cohn was born in the Bronx in New York City and educated at Columbia University. He rose to prominence as a U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor at the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, where he successfully prosecuted the Rosenbergs leading to their execution in 1953. After his time as prosecuting chief counsel during the McCarthy trials, his reputation deteriorated during the late 1950s to late 1970s after McCarthy's downfall.
In 1986, Cohn was disbarred by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court for unethical conduct after attempting to defraud a dying client by forcing the client to sign a will amendment leaving him his fortune.[6] He died five weeks later from AIDS-related complications, having vehemently denied that he was HIV-positive.[7]
NYTObit
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).One hospital attendant testified in a Florida court that Cohn 'tried to take (Rosenstiel's) hand for him to sign' the codicil to his will. The lawyer eventually emerged with a document bearing what the New York judges described as 'a number of "squiggly" lines which in no way resemble any letters of the alphabet.'
Roy Cohn, the flamboyant New York lawyer who catapulted to public prominence in the 1950s as the grand inquisitor of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's communist-hunting congressional panel, died Saturday at the age of 59. Irene Haske, a spokeswoman at the National Institutes of Health, said the primary cause of Cohn's death at 6 a.m. EDT was cardio-pulmonary arrest, with "dementia" and "underlying HTLV-III infections" listed as secondary causes.