“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Donald Trump cried out early in his first term in the White House. Mr. Cohn, the lawyer and fixer who mentored Mr. Trump during his ascent through New York real estate — and who taught him never to back down, never to apologize and always to threaten opponents with multimillion-dollar lawsuits — was then dead for 31 years. Mr. Trump clearly longed for his ruthless loyalty and his abrasive, no-holds-barred defiance of the American establishment. “Wouldn’t Roy love to see this moment?” Mr. Trump asked Roger Stone, another member of Mr. Cohn’s circle, just after the 2016 election. “Boy, do we miss him.”

Particularly since the Citizens United ruling, US politics has been awash in corporate and billionaire money, with both parties taking gobs of cash from corporations that have direct interests in government policies. But President Donald Trump has taken corruption to new and breathtakingly bold levels.

“I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere,” said Harvard professor of government Steven Levitsky (Guardian, 6/17/25).

A gripping biography traces the notorious lawyer’s path from Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel to becoming Donald Trump’s mentor — and his enduring influence on American politics