With Roy Cohn, Trumpwas the apprentice

IN OCTOBER 1973, Donald Trump, a hungry, young property developer, had a problem. He and his father had been accused by the Justice Department of refusing to rent the many houses they owned and managed to black tenants. Their lawyers were advising them to settle.

Spotting Roy Cohn in the exclusive Le Club disco, Mr Trump approached the legendarily tough New York lawyer and asked him how he would handle the case. “Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court,” Mr Cohn responded.

Two months later, Mr Trump’s new lawyer did just that — filing a $100m countersuit against the government’s “irresponsible and baseless” allegations. That lawsuit was swiftly dismissed by the judge, but Mr Cohn dragged the case out for two years before finally settling. Even as the Trumps were forced to agree to rent to more blacks and minorities, Mr Cohn urged them, despite all evidence to the contrary, to declare victory.

The grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants to the US, Mr Cohn rose to fame in the 1950s as the prosecutor who sent the “atom bomb spies” Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to the electric chair and then, as Senator Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel and right-hand man, helped stage-manage the notorious Communist witch-hunts.

When McCarthy fell from grace, Mr Cohn picked himself up, returned to his native New York and built a power base: his contacts ranged from FBI Director J Edgar Hoover to the Mafia boss Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, and included a host of celebrities, judges and City Hall leaders.

But in Donald Trump, he had discovered more than a rising star keen to tap into that network — he had also found a willing apprentice.

As his lawyer, Mr Cohn guarded Mr Trump’s interests ruthlessly. Using his connections, he was able to secure a 40-year, $400m tax abatement from the city to enable the construction of Mr Trump’s Grand Hyatt hotel. A more modest $20m tax deal helped ease the building of Trump Tower; so, too, did Mr Cohn’s links to the mafia which then controlled the New York concrete industry. Nor were

there any boundaries between the business and the personal, with Mr Cohn drafting a prenuptial agreement before the first of Mr Trump’s three marriages which initially required Ivana to return any gifts she had received from her future husband if they divorced.

But, as the president-elect’s biographer, Wayne Barrett, has suggested, Mr Cohn was much more than a lawyer, instead becoming Mr Trump’s “mentor [and] constant adviser”. Much of Mr Trump’s “survival of the fittest”

Roy Cohn ( right) with Trump in 1983; and top: Trump and his father, Fred, at Trump Village in New York, 1973