No one knows more about manipulating this country’s legal system than Donald Trump. A favored protege of the infamous and despicable New York lawyer Roy Cohn—who built a successful career ruining other peoples’ lives as Sen. Joe McCarthy’s ruthless sidekick in the 1950s—Trump learned early on how to use the legal system as a tool of intimidation against his enemies.
For those unfamiliar with the sheer scale of Trump’s litigiousness, the title of attorney James D. Zirin’s 2019 book, “Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits,” says it all. As David Fahrenthold, in his 2019 Washington Post review of Zirin’s book, summarizes:
Zirin argues that Trump learned to see the law as Cohn did: “not as a system of rules to be obeyed … but as a potent weapon to be used against his adversaries.” Trump sued often but rarely won big. Winning in court wasn’t always the point: The lawsuit itself was the thing, a tool of intimidation cloaked in legalese, an outgoing missile that left your enemies buried in costs and hassle. That approach had costs for Trump, too. But he could bear them. He lost friends, wives, lawyers and business partners — but always found new ones, who thought their fate would be different.
That lesson—to weaponize the legal process as much as possible—likewise applied whenever Trump found himself on the receiving end of litigation. Jack Shafer, senior media writer for POLITICO, also referenced Zirin’s review when he noted in June that “Cohn taught Trump to counterattack; undermine his adversary; work the press; lie, lie and lie again; and even in the case of a loss or forced to settle, claim victory and go home.”
However, as Shafer observes, the “Roy Cohn strategy,” which Trump has so successfully employed in escaping serious civil liability over the course of his life, does not translate well in the criminal arena, which is what Trump finds himself navigating today.
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