David L. Marcus is the author of two books about education and parenting.

My cousin Roy Marcus Cohn—counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy, consigliere to Mafia bosses, mentor to Donald Trump—had almost no principles. He smeared Jews even though he was Jewish. He tarred Democrats even though he was a Democrat. He persecuted gay people even though he was gay.

Yet throughout his life, he held fast to one certainty: Russia and America were enemies. Roy often told me the Kremlin blamed the U.S. for Russia’s failure to prosper, so Russian leaders were bent on destroying our democracy.


If Roy had lived another 30 years, I’m sure he’d be pleased to learn that his protégé was elected president. But I am equally sure Roy would be appalled by Trump’s obsequious devotion to ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin. In his nasal tone, Roy would warn that Putin follows the Soviet playbook by interfering with elections in Western Europe; invading sovereign nations such as Ukraine; and assassinating dissidents and journalists.

I am intimately familiar with Roy Cohn’s views. Over nearly a decade, starting as a college student, I interviewed my cousin about his chaotic personal life and his deceitful deals as a prosecutor and power broker. I also shadowed him for a magazine story, in what turned out to be his final year.

In our conversations, Roy halfheartedly justified his ethics in cheating on his taxes, changing a dying man’s will and defending mob figures including Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno. But whenever the subject of Russia arose, Roy was unequivocal: The “evil empire” would stop at nothing to undermine Washington and its allies. He railed about Americans becoming “complacent, even stupid” as the Cold War ended.

For most Americans, the Army-McCarthy hearings—the televised congressional spectacle in which Roy served as chief counsel to Senator McCarthy—exposed Roy’s absurd witch hunt for “reds” in the military. Roy, though, had a different perspective. When I asked about those humiliating hearings 25 years later, he boasted that by exposing alleged communists in the government (many of them closeted gay people), he had staved off the “Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist menace.”

Roy also was unapologetic about the 1951 spy trial that divided the country. He had no misgivings about his private discussion with a judge—illegally—to ensure that Ethel Rosenberg was put to death in the electric chair along with her husband Julius. But, I pressed him, what about historians who say that Ethel, a mother of two, was innocent? “Ethel was a ringleader for the Soviets,” Roy shot back.

Evidence later indicated that Roy wasn’t entirely wrong about the Rosenbergs: The U.S. had learned about the espionage by cracking Soviet spy codes. But Roy remained utterly untroubled about his role in perverting the judicial process. And what would Roy “Death to Traitors” Cohn say today about Trump sharing classified information with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador?

Roy died of complications of AIDS in 1986, five years before the Soviet Union’s official demise. I believe even Roy would have been less hostile to Russia during the brief honeymoon of glasnost reforms. But I have little doubt he would see Putin’s regime as the American nemesis.

With his innuendo and accusations, Roy was tweeting conspiracy theories long before Twitter. I can imagine him blasting Trump for cozying up to Putin. I think he would have unleashed hashtag-filled invective about Trump ignoring his own intelligence agencies on the threat of Russian covert activities in the U.S. He would’ve started a tweet-blizzard when Trump urged the Group of Seven industrialized nations to readmit Russia.

Roy might have forgiven Trump for laughing off Putin’s transparent lies about meddling in our 2016 election—after all, Trump won. But Roy would be horrified at the president praising Putin as a “terrific person” and “strong leader.” And as much as he enjoyed applying leverage to get something he wanted, Roy would have likely denounced Trump for withholding military aid from a country that had been invaded by Russia just to score political dirt on an opponent.

Although he has been dead for a third of a century, Roy is resurrected. This month, two documentaries about him are out. One is “Bully. Coward. Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn,” by Ivy Meeropol, granddaughter of the Rosenbergs. She shows Roy besmirching gay State Department officials as “perverts” susceptible to espionage. The other film, “Where’s My Roy Cohn?,” includes footage of Roy denouncing the Communist Party in the 1950s in terms that he’d surely use about Russia today: “Its object is the overthrow of the government of the United States.”

Roy’s remains rest in our family mausoleum, behind a simple epitaph: “LAWYER AND PATRIOT.” That’s a double lie. He was disbarred in his last days. And during his 59 years, he desecrated Congress, the courts and other American institutions.

Lately, I find myself wishing my cousin was around to become a true patriot—by exposing the perils of our president’s infatuation with an old KGB colonel. When it comes to Russia, Donald Trump might not like the answer to his question: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”