Political connections

For several decades, Roy Cohn (1927-86) was the man you needed to know if you wanted to get to know the sort of people who knew Roy Cohn – in other words, all those prominent New York City-based gangsters, politicians, socialites and billionaires who enjoyed greasing one another’s wheels while making loads of money through whatever means necessary. From an early age, the well-connected Cohn proved adroit at utilising those connections, ranging from J. Edgar Hoover and Cardinal Spellman to Donald Trump, back when the future president was merely an up-and-coming Manhattan real-estate developer and would often refer to Cohn as his ‘mentor’.