'Crassest instincts': Biographer outlines mentor whose 'ghost hovers' over Trump's trial

The controversial attorney Roy Cohn, who served as chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and the House Unamerican Activities Committee during the 1950s and went on to represent a young Donald Trump during the 1970s, died of AIDS-related complications on August 2, 1986.

But 38 years later, Cohn remains a major inspiration to Trump, now 77, at a time when he is facing four criminal indictments.

Author Kai Bird, who is writing a book on Cohn, discusses that inspiration in an essay published by the New York Times on Tuesday — the day closing arguments in Trump's criminal hush money trial began.

"It was Mr. Cohn who taught Mr. Trump how to manipulate the law, and other people, to his advantage," Bird explains. "His ghost now hovers over the former president's entire legal outlook, influencing proceedings in ways large and small. The outcome in this case may be the final verdict on Mr. Cohn's brilliant, sinister strategies."

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Bird adds, "Mr. Trump always admired Mr. Cohn's bravado and belligerence. Mr. Cohn's whole worldview seemed to validate the young developer's crassest instincts."

Trump, Bird notes, once said of the lawyer, "If you need somebody to get vicious, hire Roy Cohn."

"Most recently, we learned that the former president would not be taking the witness stand and exposing himself to cross-examination, choosing instead to let a stream of prominent Republican visitors make his case for him on the courthouse steps," the author observes.

"That is the strategy that Mr. Cohn lived by. Roy Cohn was indicted four times by Manhattan’s legendary prosecutor Robert Morgenthau."

Over the years, Trump has made it clear that the attorneys he admires the most are Cohn-like in their approach.

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"Of all the lessons Mr. Trump learned from his mentor," Bird points out, "the value of treating people transactionally may have been the most important. The former president has run through countless lawyers in his decades of legal proceedings. Many were discarded. Some were not paid. But he held Mr. Cohn in high regard and took his lessons to heart."

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