qwho really was Roy Cohn, co-star of the film The apprenticeby Ali Abbasi, and who was Donald Trump’s second father? “A perverted and exemplary figure, who teaches contempt for the law, lack of scruples, greed, the religion of the balance of power and victory,” wrote Jacques Mandelbaum on October 8, 2024, on the eve of the film’s release in France.
The name of this sulphurous lawyer, who died almost forty years ago, appears for the first time in the world the 1Ahem January 1953. He was then a very young man of 26 years old, a zealous assistant to Attorney General James McGranery and close to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Heavily involved in the witch hunt, anti-communist and homophobic, he played a decisive role in the death sentence of the Rosenberg couple, accused of espionage.
This winter of 1953, he is on a crusade against “director of stabilization and economic development of the UN”, whose profile judges “absolutely deplorable, because he admitted to having hired not just one, but three, four, five or more people” suspected of being members of the Communist Party.
“What arrogance”
The news of his activity was reported in the newspaper on April 21, 1953. This time he was on a tour of Europe with a certain David Shine, to purge the libraries of the American information services. The journalist Claude Julien returns on July 27, 1953 to this trip to Europe, summarized by a Democratic senator as “antics of two cheeky children”.
Less than a year later, on March 15, 1954, Henri Pierre told how Roy Cohn put his mentor Joseph McCarthy in trouble by maneuvering to remove David Shine from his military obligations and accuse the army of harboring communists. The journalist points out: “The fact that Cohn fought like a lion in favor of Shine (…) contributes to reinforcing the rumors about the relationship of a particular character that would unite the two young ephebes…”
This issue is so exciting that during “For several hours, the United States worked in slow motion because millions of citizens crowded around televisions.” follow the commission of inquiry in charge of arbitrating this conflict between the army and McCarthy. “Next to Mr. McCarthy’s imposing black bulk, Mr. Roy Cohn, his assistant, seems very fragile and collegial in his light suit. The shiny hair, the greedy mouth, the languid oriental look under the feminine eyebrows, described Henri Pierre, April 24, 1954. “But you have to see with what confidence he intervenes in the debate, with what arrogance and with what impertinence he answers or asks questions. »
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