Donald Trump’s Mentor Killed My Grandparents
The morning after Donald Trump was elected president, I woke up with one clear and horrifying thought: the ghost of Roy Cohn was moving into the White House.
Cohn, who had been Trump’s lawyer and friend, had also played a major role in securing the execution of my grandparents, the so-called “atom spies” Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. He made his name at the ripe old age of 23 as the assistant prosecutor in their trial. When I was very young, he floated ominously through my consciousness along with Judge Irving Kaufman, David Greenglass, and J. Edgar Hoover. They were the bad guys, the very mention of whom would prompt an angry hissing from various aunts and uncles like so many tires running out of air.
As Tony Kushner wrote in Angels in America, Cohn was “the polestar of evil.” He knew there was no evidence against my grandmother yet he helped manufacture the case against her. When Judge Kaufman wavered, Cohn pushed for her execution.