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Ghost Dog

(16,881 posts)
Thu Apr 21, 2016, 06:06 AM Apr 2016

Roy Cohn, the lawyer who.influenced Donald Trump to turn the tabloids into a soapbox

Donald Trump is a man who likes to think he has few equals. But once upon a time, he had a mentor: Roy Cohn, a notoriously harsh lawyer who rose to prominence in the mid-1950s alongside the communist-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. His tactics would often land him in the papers, but Cohn was unafraid of being slimed by the press – he used it to his advantage. A devil-may-care-as-long-as-it-gets-a-headline attitude was Cohn’s trademark in life. Trump, in our time, has made it his.

His careful manipulation of negative attention is something that Trump noticed immediately when the two met in 1973. Trump and his father had just been sued for allegedly discriminating against black people in Trump’s built-and-managed houses in Brooklyn, and sought out Cohn’s counsel. Among other things, Cohn advised that Trump should “tell them to go to hell”. Cohn was hired, and one of his first acts as Trump’s new lawyer was to file a $100m countersuit that was quickly dismissed by the court. But it made the papers.

This was the beginning of a long and close relationship. Trump relied on Cohn for most of the legal matters during a particularly tricky decade. Cohn drew up the pre-nuptial contract between Donald and Ivana when they married in 1977 – a famously stingy contract that only gave Ivana $20,000 a year...

/... http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/20/roy-cohn-donald-trump-joseph-mccarthy-rosenberg-trial
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Roy Cohn, the lawyer who.influenced Donald Trump to turn the tabloids into a soapbox (Original Post) Ghost Dog Apr 2016 OP
K & R. Interesting if sordid. appalachiablue Apr 2016 #1
If you've seen my posts about Pledges reminding me of McCarthyism, you know I am no fan merrily Apr 2016 #2
Wow! Did not know that! Chasstev365 Apr 2016 #3

merrily

(45,251 posts)
2. If you've seen my posts about Pledges reminding me of McCarthyism, you know I am no fan
Thu Apr 21, 2016, 06:54 AM
Apr 2016

of Revoltin' Joe and therefore no fan of Cohn. However, I know that Roy Cohn did have one good trait. He quietly helped single moms fighting against rich husbands who were not paying child support, if their plight came to his attention; and he did it free and without being asked.

In other respects, low. But I feel compelled to state the one good thing I know about him.

As for the pre-nup, I would be surprised if a pre-nup fixing rights on divorce (as opposed to death while married) was legally enforceable in the 1970s. However, some lawyers did them figuring what the heck.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/13/nyregion/trump-the-divorce-case-the-accusations-are-flying.html

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