McCarthy’s Right Hand
The Senate destroyed Joseph McCarthy in 1954. It never laid a finger on the lawyer at his shoulder. Roy Cohn returned to New York and kept working.
The Senate condemned McCarthy. Cohn walked out.
Earlier today, the House voted 215 to 211 on a procedural rule that set up the SAVE America Act to ride inside a national-security spending bill. The measure requires documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration and photo identification at the polls.
On Thursday night at 9 p.m. Eastern, President Trump will address the nation. He has confirmed that “free and fair elections” will be part of it.
On the House floor, Speaker Mike Johnson warned..
“the barbarians are inside the gate.”
Washington, 1953.
McCarthy held the gavel of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Roy Cohn sat at his right hand.
Cohn was 26 years old.
He had already helped prosecute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. McCarthy made him chief counsel. The Senate’s own history says the two men largely ran the committee by themselves.
Cohn questioned witnesses with the prosecutor’s habit of knowing the answer before he asked. His face appeared beside McCarthy’s in the photographs. His calls seeking special treatment for G. David Schine, a committee consultant drafted into the Army, helped trigger the Army-McCarthy hearings.
For thirty-six days, the country watched them work on live television.
In December 1954, the Senate condemned McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22. Cohn returned to New York. McCarthy died less than three years later.
Cohn never disowned the man beside whom he had risen. He wrote:
“I never worked for a better man or a greater cause”
October 1973.
Cohn was 46, sitting at a table inside Le Club in Manhattan.
A 27 year-old real estate developer crossed the room and introduced himself.
The Justice Department had filed a housing discrimination case against the developer and his father. He asked Cohn what they should do.
“Tell them to go to hell,” Cohn said, “and fight the thing in court.”
Cohn took the case. Two months later, the family and its new lawyer held a press conference at the New York Hilton and announced a $100 million countersuit against the federal government.
A judge dismissed the countersuit. The original case ended in a consent decree with no admission of guilt. The young developer declared victory.
His name was Donald Trump.
Cohn stayed at his side through Trump’s rise in Manhattan.
He advised him on lawsuits and the men who ran New York. Trump later resisted calling Cohn a mentor. He still acknowledged that Cohn represented him for years and taught him about the legal system and, in Trump’s phrase, “some good things about living life.”
McCarthy’s name became a warning.
His lawyer went to work for the future President.
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The McCarthy side of this story is in McCarthy: Guilty Knowledge.
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RE: photo verification to vote, all you need in MT is a Costco membership card with your photo on it. I took the course at the Flathead Election office and it was confirmed.