Speaker 1: Welcome back. We're talking about Roy Cone. I don't know
Speaker 1: owl's to lead it to this. I'm Robert Evans Podcast,
Speaker 1: Bad People talk about Him. This is part two, Roy Cone,
Speaker 1: He suck. My guest today is Joel Monique. Joel Hi. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm eager to more learn more about Roy
Speaker 1: Cone and the terribleness that he inflicted on our country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is. He He inflicted nothing but pain. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's good for him, I guess. So when we last
Speaker 1: left our dear friend Roy he had promised to wreck
Speaker 1: the army. Now, I don't know if you're aware of this,
Speaker 1: but Americans today are broadly fond of the army, and
Speaker 1: since the President of the United States was in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, a retired general declaring a desire to destroy
Speaker 1: the branch he served with was not a great long
Speaker 1: term career move. Like, broadly speaking, Americans are positively inclined
Speaker 1: towards the army. UH. In the nineteen fifties, it was
Speaker 1: like a universal thing, right, like pretty pretty close to it. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, McCarthy and Cohn had made a tactical error
Speaker 1: in deciding that they were going to destroy the army.
Speaker 1: UM because the Army was for the Bridges. They were like,
Speaker 1: we could do anything. Yeah, it's like the Beatles declaring
Speaker 1: they're bigger than Jesus, except for the Beatles. Actually, we're
Speaker 1: bigger than Jesus. Um statistical thing, yeah, statistical facts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Americans had actually been pretty mixed on McCarthy and
Speaker 1: his tactics In the years leading up to the Army trial.
Speaker 1: Journalists and intellectuals had sharply criticized what seemed to be
Speaker 1: and was a thoroughly undemocratic thing. Eisenhower himself had called
Speaker 1: McCarthy ms predecessor the House Unamerican Activities Community, the most
Speaker 1: Unamerican thing in the country. Many in the nation were
Speaker 1: thus baffled when Ike let Senator McCarthy go on for
Speaker 1: years without serious opposition, even by the low standards of
Speaker 1: US presidents, Eisenhower is proba probably in like like the
Speaker 1: upper quarter or so of of of our presidents. And
Speaker 1: again he did a lot of horrible things, because presidents
Speaker 1: are a bad thing to have. UM. One of the
Speaker 1: number of great black marks against his name, maybe even
Speaker 1: the greatest, although you know we also have Korea. UM,
Speaker 1: is that through his silence he allowed McCarthyism to fester
Speaker 1: and continue. Some scholars claim his neglect was intentional and
Speaker 1: indirect approach. He used to subtly stymy the Senator ike,
Speaker 1: they claim secretly leveraged his influence to modestly obstruct the
Speaker 1: Red and Lavender scare. C. D. Jackson, and Eisenhower's speechwriter,
Speaker 1: tried to convince his boss to take action. He later
Speaker 1: claimed the President read my text with great irritation, slammed
Speaker 1: it back at me, and said he would not refer
Speaker 1: to McCarthy personally. I will not get into the gutter
Speaker 1: with that guy, And I think the defenses of Eisenhower
Speaker 1: here are bullshit. The only way to defeat a cancer
Speaker 1: like McCarthy ism, which is based on bigotry and fear,
Speaker 1: would have been for the most admired man in the
Speaker 1: country to stand up and call it what it was.
Speaker 1: The reality of the situation is that Senator McCarthy he
Speaker 1: was a Republican, and so was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Crushing
Speaker 1: McCarthy's witch hunt would have cost political capital, and he
Speaker 1: needed party unity to accomplish things that meant more to
Speaker 1: him than the suffering of tens of thousands of citizens
Speaker 1: in short, the presidents not such a good thing to
Speaker 1: have kill the two party system. It's killing us mhm h,
Speaker 1: literally destroying us. Yeah, it's such a problem. Not to
Speaker 1: be too selacious, but do you think they also had
Speaker 1: blackmail on him on Eisenhower? I doubt it. I honestly
Speaker 1: think this is perfectly explicable from Eisenhower just not wanting
Speaker 1: to deal with something that would have been nasty like
Speaker 1: he had politically, like he had ship he wanted to
Speaker 1: do UM, and he didn't really care if gay people
Speaker 1: and leftists were being harassed UM and if some innocent
Speaker 1: like not innocent, because the gays and the leftist were innocent,
Speaker 1: but if some people who were neither of those things
Speaker 1: got mistakenly drawn into two he just didn't care because
Speaker 1: it was more important for him to do the things
Speaker 1: that he wanted to do with the political capital that
Speaker 1: he had. UM. So he just didn't do anything. He
Speaker 1: didn't He knew it was the wrong thing what I
Speaker 1: McCarthy was doing, and he clearly disliked McCarthy, but he
Speaker 1: didn't care to stop it because that would have meant
Speaker 1: sacrificing something else he wanted, you know, because again, good
Speaker 1: people don't become the president, and Eisenhower is in this
Speaker 1: period of time about the best person we get as president.
Speaker 1: Still not a very good man. Let's look at the lineage.
Speaker 1: Not much changed. Not much has changed. We had one
Speaker 1: moderately good person be president and he was not a
Speaker 1: good president. Sorry carter Um. So the whole hellish circus
Speaker 1: finally met its end in the spring of nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: Is the Army Trial drew to a close with a
Speaker 1: cross examination of a young lawyer for the Army. Now,
Speaker 1: this man was a fresh faced, earnest young person serving
Speaker 1: in uniform. He was the kind of person Americans love. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got this like young educated army man, like sitting
Speaker 1: like handsome, sitting on in like the center of the trial,
Speaker 1: being cross exam and by Roy Code, who is a monster.
Speaker 1: Now the trial was televised and it was one of
Speaker 1: the first mass TV events in world history. Twenty million
Speaker 1: Americans got to watch this kid, who is basically like
Speaker 1: the avatar of their beloved military and of white innocence,
Speaker 1: get torn apart by Roy Cone and Joe McCarthy. It
Speaker 1: was nothing that Roy and Joe hadn't done to hundreds
Speaker 1: of people before, but because the victim was a friendly,
Speaker 1: young white man. The cruelty suddenly mattered to Americans, like,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what happens, is they pick on a
Speaker 1: nice white boy on television and that destroys their careers.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how we got all of our gay
Speaker 1: legal legislation in the early offs. And uh now it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: our white family members are gay. Well, changes that white
Speaker 1: people are gay? Well, I guess we'll have to deal
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, I guess there are people. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it it also mattered that a man with some sort
Speaker 1: of moral character happened to be taking part in the hearings,
Speaker 1: and that man was Joseph Welch, the Army special counsel
Speaker 1: he had hired, the young lawyer that McCarthy and Cone
Speaker 1: were badgering, and eventually he got fed up enough to
Speaker 1: tell them. Until this moment, Senator, I think I never
Speaker 1: really gauged your cruelty or recklessness. Now, Cone was savvy
Speaker 1: enough to see the room's response to this, and to
Speaker 1: realize that he was on television and realize how bad
Speaker 1: this looked, and he desperately You can watch again, this
Speaker 1: is all on video. You can watch him try to
Speaker 1: get McCarthy to back down. You can watch him being like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we gotta like, we gotta like, this isn't gonna go
Speaker 1: well for us to get pushing this ship. Um but
Speaker 1: tail gunner Joe would not have any of that bullshit.
Speaker 1: He continued pressing the young lawyer until Welch told him,
Speaker 1: let us not assassinate this lad further. Senator, You've done enough.
Speaker 1: Have you no decency sir? At long last? Have you
Speaker 1: no sense of decency? Uh? Listen, the fifties love decency,
Speaker 1: They love decent people. Oh yeah, up. Now this was
Speaker 1: the death knell for McCarthy, is um yeah. The Army
Speaker 1: put together a dossier and Roy Cone which listed all
Speaker 1: of the ways he had threatened and intimidated witnesses in
Speaker 1: order to get his boyfriend light duty and better assignments.
Speaker 1: The White House leaked this to the press into Congress,
Speaker 1: and suddenly McCarthy and Cone were being cinsured for abuse
Speaker 1: of power. I'm gonna quote now from a write up
Speaker 1: by the Miller Center in May nineteen fifty four. I
Speaker 1: simply said that administration officials and all executive branch employees
Speaker 1: would ignore any call from McCarthy to testify Eisenhower explained
Speaker 1: his action, declaring that it is essential to efficient and
Speaker 1: effective administration that employees of the executive branch be in
Speaker 1: a position to be completely candid and advising with each
Speaker 1: other on official matters without those conversations being subject to
Speaker 1: congressional scrutiny. Now this was a a bold and daring move,
Speaker 1: and it worked. McCarthy his credibility in tatters and now
Speaker 1: starved witnesses hit a brick wall, and his fellow senators
Speaker 1: turned against him. In early December nineteen fifty four, the
Speaker 1: Senate passed emotion of condemnation in a vote of sixty
Speaker 1: seven to twenty two. McCarthy was ruined, and within three
Speaker 1: years he was dead from alcohol abuse. The era of
Speaker 1: McCarthyism was over. I could help to bring it to
Speaker 1: a better end. And again I only gets involved and
Speaker 1: puts his personal credibility on the line to take out McCarthy.
Speaker 1: When McCarthy makes a mistake that that pushes people against him.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, no, it makes sense. Oh he's already dead.
Speaker 1: I kill him, kill him now, crazy, I know, I yeah.
Speaker 1: Cowardice is the best way to describe it. And the
Speaker 1: fact and even that one senator who had to really,
Speaker 1: he had the piercing line of have you no decency? Sir?
Speaker 1: Look in a mirror. If of America's work population had
Speaker 1: to be interrogated, and it took one white dude for
Speaker 1: you to be like, oh maybe I should pay attention.
Speaker 1: Uh you, I don't know how much decency there Isn't
Speaker 1: that either? Yeah? Yeah, it's great. So Con left the
Speaker 1: government in nineteen fifty five, never to return. Stymied from
Speaker 1: continuing to assault and abuse his political letemies, he decided
Speaker 1: to go after the next best thing, acquiring the wealth
Speaker 1: necessary to keep fucking with people now. The best way
Speaker 1: he could think to do this was with what was
Speaker 1: effectively one of the family businesses, the Lionel Corporation. By
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, it was the largest toy manufacturer on
Speaker 1: the planet. So there there's a big old company. When
Speaker 1: Roy returned to New York in nineteen fifty five, he
Speaker 1: decided to take it over. Now, he worked at a
Speaker 1: law firm by day, which was a job that his
Speaker 1: dad got for him, and he organized like, basically put
Speaker 1: while he's working in during his days at the law firm,
Speaker 1: he's putting together cash from himself and his other investors
Speaker 1: in his family money to buy up two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: shares of Lionel bit by bit, and he does it
Speaker 1: like kind of in secret. By nineteen fifty nine, he
Speaker 1: had enough to make up a controlling interest in the company.
Speaker 1: Roy took charge of the Lionel Corporation, and of course
Speaker 1: he proved to be absolutely terrible at the job of
Speaker 1: managing a toy company. Roy Cone somehow does not get
Speaker 1: what children want. Um, yeah, I know he would have.
Speaker 1: Who would have thought roy Cone would not have known
Speaker 1: what kids wanted in a toy Yeah. So basically, after
Speaker 1: under several years of roy Cone's management, Loyal collapses, leading
Speaker 1: to Roy's ouster and paving the way for the company
Speaker 1: to be bought by Neil Young. Um. Yeah, the musician
Speaker 1: Neil Young buys it. He's apparently huge into toy trains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: never went a guest. Mhm. That part of it, like
Speaker 1: Neil Young taking over, is actually a very suite and
Speaker 1: a very happy story. So obviously we're not going to
Speaker 1: talk about it at all because this is my podcast,
Speaker 1: but Neil Young is great. Throughout the nineteen sixties, Roy
Speaker 1: developed his career as a lawyer for the powerful and
Speaker 1: incredibly fucking shady. He had a particular fondness for working
Speaker 1: for the mob. Among his clients was a guy named
Speaker 1: fat Tony Salerno, who, by the way, the Simpsons fat
Speaker 1: Tony is based off of the real mobster fat Tony Salerno. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why they that's why his name is that. Like
Speaker 1: nobody watching the today knows about this mobster from like
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, But yeah, fat Tony Salerno ran
Speaker 1: the biggest numbers racket in New York City, alongside prostitution
Speaker 1: and loan sharking and all of the normal mob ship
Speaker 1: you'd expect. Through a confused, using set of schemes, he
Speaker 1: actually came to co own a huge number of New
Speaker 1: York City parking lots with the mob. Roy Kone did so,
Speaker 1: like Roy is the Mob's lawyer, and he winds up basically,
Speaker 1: there's all these parking lots that are supposed to be
Speaker 1: owned by the City of New York, but like one
Speaker 1: of the city employees basically allows Roy and the Mob
Speaker 1: to control them, and so Roy co owns a bunch
Speaker 1: of like paid parking spaces with the Mafia in New
Speaker 1: York City. It's a weird gag lot or is it
Speaker 1: just the parking spots. Yeah, he owns lots. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: owns parking lots that that are supposed to be city property.
Speaker 1: But Roy and the Mob are profiting off of them
Speaker 1: and memory serves in the seventies, they use those to
Speaker 1: slowly start building new developments. Although, yeah, yeah, you got
Speaker 1: I think Roy was probably involved in some of that.
Speaker 1: Although it's the kind of thing where like nobody's writing
Speaker 1: down Roy's exact involvement, and this is a cash business,
Speaker 1: so like he's not paying taxes on any of Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's super illegal, is the core of this. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: there was one thing that Roy hated more than communists,
Speaker 1: it was the concept of paying taxes. Many of his
Speaker 1: friends later reported that his Many of his friends later
Speaker 1: reported that his greatest ambition in life was to die
Speaker 1: owing the I R S millions and millions of dollars um.
Speaker 1: He simply did not pay taxes. As he grew more
Speaker 1: successful as a mob lawyer and became partner at his
Speaker 1: Manhattan law firm, Cone wrangled the business into paying for
Speaker 1: his two roles, Royces, paying for his food, his suits,
Speaker 1: his vacations, his homes. Cone would loudly explain to anyone
Speaker 1: who listened that he avoided making any more money than
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary. Business expenses were tax deductible for the company
Speaker 1: and not income for him, even if they went to
Speaker 1: buying him whatever he wanted to happen to one. So
Speaker 1: Cone had no money basically, but the company had a
Speaker 1: lot of money, and the company paid for everything that
Speaker 1: Cone had and then wrote off those payments his tax deductible,
Speaker 1: and so Cone didn't pay taxes. Listen, I don't have
Speaker 1: all the numbers before me, but I know a lot
Speaker 1: of millionaires and billionaires were like living off of that
Speaker 1: model of lifestyle. Now, yeah, god, yeah, it's pretty cool
Speaker 1: that he that he that he works this out and
Speaker 1: very telling of like the kind of guy that he is.
Speaker 1: Because again, Roy doesn't think he has any responsibility to
Speaker 1: like society or to like the country, to making like
Speaker 1: you know, Rhodes and ship like Roy Roy Cone does
Speaker 1: not give a funk about any of that. So Cone
Speaker 1: broadened his practice from the mafia to other wealthy and
Speaker 1: powerful men who you know, wanted to get out of
Speaker 1: the law one way or the other. A big part
Speaker 1: of his clientele were wealthy men who wanted to divorce
Speaker 1: their wives without losing any of their money. He also
Speaker 1: started representing the Archdiocese of New York, a KA the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. So in New York, the mafia and the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church had the same lawyer, and it was roy Coe.
Speaker 1: You gotta love New York. Yeah, it's pretty great. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean in the Catholic Church, bunch of Italian men
Speaker 1: with a lot of money who commit crimes. The Mob
Speaker 1: a bunch of Italian men with a lot of money
Speaker 1: who commit crimes. I guess the only difference is that
Speaker 1: the Mob includes more Sicilians. It's good stuff. Yeah. As
Speaker 1: the sixties turned to the seventies, Royce started defending wealthy
Speaker 1: people charged with cocaine possession. He was an expert wielder
Speaker 1: of the legal cudgel. Roy was known to brag, my
Speaker 1: tough front is my biggest asset. I don't write polite letters.
Speaker 1: I don't like to plea bargain. I like to fight.
Speaker 1: And he was also famous for saying that all he
Speaker 1: cared about in a case it didn't matter, Like he
Speaker 1: didn't care about the evidence, he didn't care about the charges.
Speaker 1: He just cared about who the judge was. Because his
Speaker 1: job in any court case was to was to manipulate
Speaker 1: the judge. Nothing else mattered. Yeah, I think so if
Speaker 1: we go back to episode one where we were talking
Speaker 1: about his childhood and growing up with all of those,
Speaker 1: he would know, you know, this is an a typical
Speaker 1: type of judge or this one's Yeah, and he's familiar
Speaker 1: with all the cases. It makes sense lean into your strengths,
Speaker 1: Roy Cone. Why not? Yeah, Yeah, it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: totally like he's he's very consistently the man he is
Speaker 1: his entire life. He's like twenty something at that point,
Speaker 1: he's twenty seven when he and McCarthy are like like
Speaker 1: finally when their crusade ends, so like he never changes.
Speaker 1: Like That's the kind of the thing about Roy Cone
Speaker 1: is he is exactly the same person his entire life,
Speaker 1: which is remarkable. There's no arc like he at no
Speaker 1: point does Roy grow as a human being. Well, when
Speaker 1: your mom, you know, is taking care of you into
Speaker 1: your forties, you have no need to grow. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: do think that might have had something to do with it.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, Roy Cone met the man who
Speaker 1: would become his moral protege and almost a son to him,
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump. They first met. Yeah, they first met
Speaker 1: at a nightclub when Trump was in his mid pointies,
Speaker 1: the same rough age Roy Cone and his boyfriend Shine
Speaker 1: were when they started working for McCarthy. And a number
Speaker 1: of people have pointed out that Donald Trump and David
Speaker 1: Shine both look a lot alike. Shine was like a tall,
Speaker 1: on Nordic looking young man. If you look at pictures
Speaker 1: of like Donald Trump when he's in his twenties, like
Speaker 1: he's a tall, blonde, Nordic looking man. They're kind of
Speaker 1: similar looking dudes. Umu as. I mean, that's not how
Speaker 1: Roy Cone felt about it. Like a lot of people
Speaker 1: basically will insinuate Cone had a crush on Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Um and that may have been the case. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: when they met, Donald's dad was still alive. Shockingly, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's dad didn't dine to nine. I think it was
Speaker 1: like he was alive way longer than he should have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't be at the end, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was bad now. Yeah, so Donald is the heir
Speaker 1: of a massive fortune when they meet, and he's already
Speaker 1: in trouble in the law too, because he's his dad
Speaker 1: and he owned a real estate company that had just
Speaker 1: gotten exposed for refusing to rent homes to black people. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's like the first conversation Roy Cone and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has. It's like Donald Trump's like, yeah, the law
Speaker 1: is up my ask because we won't rent to black people.
Speaker 1: And Roy Cone's like, oh, I can help with that. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's how their relationship starts. I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: The Atlantic Beautiful start it is. It's gorgeous. Trump recognized
Speaker 1: a man after his own self image, a ruthless player
Speaker 1: who knew how to win. In the film, Cone remembers
Speaker 1: Trump saying, I've spent two days with these establishment law
Speaker 1: firms and they're all telling us give up, do this
Speaker 1: sign a decree or and all that. I followed your
Speaker 1: career and you seem you're a little bit crazy like
Speaker 1: I am, and you stand up to the establishment. Can
Speaker 1: I come see you. Donald asked for Roy's advice, and
Speaker 1: Roy told him very simply tell them to go to
Speaker 1: hell and fight the thing in court. They did exactly that.
Speaker 1: Trump and Cone held a press conference announcing a hundred
Speaker 1: million dollar countersuit against the government. It was almost immediately dismissed,
Speaker 1: but that was not the point. Con understood the media
Speaker 1: from his childhood writing a gossip column and his time
Speaker 1: leaking stories to the press on behalf of the FBI.
Speaker 1: Roy knew that Americans never read below the headline when
Speaker 1: they're looking at a newspaper, so nobody would find out
Speaker 1: that the suit got dismissed. All they remember was the
Speaker 1: headline that Trump had countersued the government for a hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars, which must mean that Trump had some reasonable
Speaker 1: reason to be angry at the government, that they wronged
Speaker 1: him too. And then suddenly you've complicated something that's actually
Speaker 1: very simple. Trump and his dad are racist to ship. Um.
Speaker 1: You see the same tactic at play in Trump today.
Speaker 1: Here's where he learns it. Roy Cone teaches him this ship.
Speaker 1: So the legal battle with Cone and Trump versus the
Speaker 1: government went on for almost two years, and it did
Speaker 1: not end in a victory for roy Cone or Donald
Speaker 1: Trump in the traditional legal sense of the word, but
Speaker 1: both still considered it a win from the Atlantic. They
Speaker 1: won the case by not losing, by counter attacking, raising
Speaker 1: phony charges, admitting no wrong Trump paid careful attention. Roger
Speaker 1: Stone was another one of roy Cone's friends and protegees,
Speaker 1: and he was interviewed for the documentary Where's My Roy Cone?
Speaker 1: His comments in that film can be assumed to double
Speaker 1: as Donald Trump's comments on the same matter. Roy would
Speaker 1: always be for an offensive strategy. These were the rules
Speaker 1: of war. You don't fight on the other guy's ground.
Speaker 1: You define what the debate is going to be about.
Speaker 1: I think Trump would learn that from Roy. I learned
Speaker 1: that from Roy. It's very upset that it works. It's
Speaker 1: it's disastrously successful. Now The Atlantic would go on to
Speaker 1: some up Roy's style this way Conan Trump embody the
Speaker 1: mafia style and American politics. I don't mean the sopranos.
Speaker 1: I mean the cold will to power that carries a
Speaker 1: threat of murder without shame. And it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: the two people interviewed and Where's My Roy Cone described
Speaker 1: Cone with the word evil, so like again that that's
Speaker 1: just the guy he is. Everyone knew it, Trump knew it,
Speaker 1: and Trump loved it. And when we talk about evil
Speaker 1: on this show on Behind the Bastards, were usually talking
Speaker 1: about someone with a significant body count. And if we're
Speaker 1: talking about kills that Roy ordered, he's he's stuck it
Speaker 1: maybe too Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But like most mob lawyers,
Speaker 1: Roy had a funny way of having enemies or former
Speaker 1: friends wind up dying under mysterious circumstance. This one example
Speaker 1: would be the guy who sold Roy and the Mob
Speaker 1: those parking lots, because again he was doing he was
Speaker 1: giving them those lots illegally, and there was an investigation
Speaker 1: into him, and then he turned up dead in the
Speaker 1: trunk of a car, um Like. I don't know if
Speaker 1: Roy had anything to do with that, but I don't
Speaker 1: know that he didn't. Then there was a signature Mob
Speaker 1: style of at the time was just shoot him in
Speaker 1: the back of their trunk and then close it walk away, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And yeah. Then there was the case of Roy's yacht.
Speaker 1: I say Roy's yacht, but it was really owned by
Speaker 1: Cones law firm least from Michelle company called Pied Piper
Speaker 1: Yacht Charters, which I think Roy also had some sort
Speaker 1: of interest in. Everyone hid Piper, Yeah, Pie Piper Yacht Charters. Sure.
Speaker 1: I feel like Epstein is really just right about to
Speaker 1: just be like hello. A lot of people were taking
Speaker 1: notes on Roy, so everyone knew the yacht as Roy's
Speaker 1: yacht until June twenty, nineteen seventy three. On that night,
Speaker 1: the ninett yacht, which was officially named Defiance, sunk off
Speaker 1: the floor to coast. It was insured and Roy made
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars. It shure was Defiance of the I
Speaker 1: R S. I bet yeah you can't. You can't see it, listeners,
Speaker 1: but all of us just made a face like, Now,
Speaker 1: it was handy that the yachts sunk, because by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three the Defiance was well past its best days.
Speaker 1: Her original captain had refused to take the helm on
Speaker 1: the journey up to New York because the boat was
Speaker 1: in such bad shape and they were actually going to
Speaker 1: scuttle the boat and sell it for scrap. But the
Speaker 1: fact that it's sank meant that Cone got a hell
Speaker 1: of a lot more money for it because it was
Speaker 1: insured for the full value of a functional yacht. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah, so this the the guy who had been
Speaker 1: the captain of the boat refuses to pilot it because
Speaker 1: it's in such bad shape, so Cone fire, He resigns,
Speaker 1: and then Cone hires another captain to replace him, and
Speaker 1: the captain he picks as a convicted felon in three states. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: not maybe the best guy to pilot your boat. Now,
Speaker 1: before the journey started, twenty one year old sailor Charles
Speaker 1: Martinson told his father that he had a bad feeling
Speaker 1: about the vessel and he wasn't sure it would make
Speaker 1: the journey. Sure Enough, a fire broke out and the
Speaker 1: boat sank with Martinson aboard it, and Martinson died. His father. Lt.
Speaker 1: Martinson was also a sailor and something about the story
Speaker 1: that the captain told him about how his son had
Speaker 1: died didn't sit right. In July, he succeeded in sitting
Speaker 1: down with a crew member and secretly taping their conversation.
Speaker 1: The crew member admitted to suspecting that the boat had
Speaker 1: been deliberately sabotaged, and furthermore revealed that the FBI had
Speaker 1: reached out to him about the sinking. Now, the FBI
Speaker 1: never found anything conclusive, and they decided not to dredge
Speaker 1: up the boat to do a proper investigation because it
Speaker 1: would have been expensive, so they left it at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the sea with Charles's body. Lt. Martinson went
Speaker 1: to his grave believing that Roy Cone had deliberately scuttled
Speaker 1: the boat, killing his son to make two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: When an interviewer asked roy about this, His response was
Speaker 1: interesting and completely characteristic of him. This is Roy. He
Speaker 1: thinks I murdered his son. Let's look at it this way. Hey,
Speaker 1: I didn't own the boat. B I didn't get the insurance. See,
Speaker 1: the statement is an outrageous falsehood. For how am I
Speaker 1: going to get angry in a man who lost his son.
Speaker 1: You've got to feel terrible about it. I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: going to get into a name calling contest or a
Speaker 1: criminal lawsuit against a father who lost his son. All
Speaker 1: I can tell you is that I understand his bitter feelings.
Speaker 1: And if he read someplace that I gave a party
Speaker 1: on the boat, it was my boat. Even though I
Speaker 1: never met a son, never heard of his son, never
Speaker 1: hired his son, never saw his son in my entire life,
Speaker 1: and never had any insurance come to me directly or indirectly.
Speaker 1: I'm still not a bit angry at a man who
Speaker 1: reacts emotionally. Wow, when you lose a son, I couldn't
Speaker 1: be sorrier for him for what happened. Now that's Roy's response. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's impossible to prove what happened here one way
Speaker 1: or the other, but it's fair to say that whether
Speaker 1: or not Roy intended to murder that young man. He
Speaker 1: absolutely orchestrated something shady in regards to the sinking of
Speaker 1: that boat. All you have to do is follow the
Speaker 1: money which Esquire did. What of the two thoundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar insurance policy? It was paid to a dummy corporation
Speaker 1: set up by Pied Piper Yacht Charters, owners of the boat,
Speaker 1: the same company whose escrow account Roy manipulated. According to
Speaker 1: court papers, part of the insurance money was to spur
Speaker 1: Us to pay off the yachts mortgage. Another fifteen thousand,
Speaker 1: seventy five went to Cohn's law firm for legal fees.
Speaker 1: Another's seven thousand and one hundred dollars went to the
Speaker 1: law firm his reimbursement for personal property lost on the boat,
Speaker 1: and seven thousand fifty dollars was paid to Cone directly
Speaker 1: for lost property. Confronted with this information, which contradicted his
Speaker 1: earlier claims, Roy said, simply, this is possible. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure whether we were paid by the insurance company or
Speaker 1: Pipe Piper. I didn't get any money from the boat sinking. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I got that money from the boat sinking.
Speaker 1: Seven thousand dollars and a half or made some several thousands,
Speaker 1: and my law firm got thousands of My law firm
Speaker 1: pays for me. Yes, if you have power, you can
Speaker 1: just shrug and people will be like, Okay, then I
Speaker 1: guess we don't know, and they'll walk away. It's incredible
Speaker 1: that the FBI would not want to investigate this guy
Speaker 1: who's been a part of jillion shady things like this
Speaker 1: could have been the whole Yeah, it's so good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that poor dad, Oh yeah, no, he's I mean,
Speaker 1: his life is ruined because his son has killed, possibly murdered.
Speaker 1: Because some people will say that like the kid realized
Speaker 1: there was a scheme going on and Roy had him killed.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like, I don't know if Roy was
Speaker 1: I kind of out Roy intended for someone to die,
Speaker 1: But I think Roy had a malicious disregard for whether
Speaker 1: or not someone died. I will say that's probably true. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this gets me to another important fact about Roy Khone.
Speaker 1: We are never going to have a full accounting of
Speaker 1: the extent of this man's crimes. It's impossible because he
Speaker 1: knew the law, he had powerful friends, and most of
Speaker 1: the crimes he committed tended to be the kind of
Speaker 1: shady rich guy crimes that involved secretly buying businesses and
Speaker 1: manipulating escrow accounts and other things no right minded person understands,
Speaker 1: which is why wrong minded people like Roy get away
Speaker 1: with the ship they get away with. So let's move
Speaker 1: back to the mob. Roy's mafia connections came in super
Speaker 1: handy when his new buddy, Donald Trump needed a favor.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen seventies, Trump was in the process
Speaker 1: of constructing a building that is still today the most
Speaker 1: famous cornerstone of his real estate empire, Fifth Avenue's Trump Tower.
Speaker 1: It was to be a huge building, as grand as
Speaker 1: the narcissistic ambitions of its namesake, and while most skyscrapers
Speaker 1: of similar size were made from steel, Trump for some
Speaker 1: reason wanted to build it entirely out of concrete. It
Speaker 1: was the largest concrete structure in the country for a
Speaker 1: while now. The problem with making a building of this
Speaker 1: size out of concrete is that the entire concrete industry
Speaker 1: in New York, including its labor union, was controlled by
Speaker 1: the mafia during this period of time. According to another
Speaker 1: write up from Esquire, quote ready mixed concrete drives quickly,
Speaker 1: which can leave developers vulnerable to expensive workers slowdowns, a
Speaker 1: common tactic from mob controlled construction sites. Will Other developers
Speaker 1: were urging the FBI to take down the mafia. Trump
Speaker 1: bought its concrete and artificially high prices. According to Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning journalist David K. Johnston, who's known and covered
Speaker 1: Trump for thirty years, Trump received in exchange a smoothly
Speaker 1: operating work site from the construction union. So Trump, through
Speaker 1: Cone orchestrates a plan where like Number one, the unions
Speaker 1: on strike. At this point, people can't really get concrete,
Speaker 1: and when they do, people like the workers will pour
Speaker 1: the concrete and then go on strike in order to
Speaker 1: get more money, a lot of which goes to the
Speaker 1: mafia's coppers. And because the concrete will be wasted if
Speaker 1: it's not like worked on while it's still setting like,
Speaker 1: it's a great racket. And Trump, basically, because of Cones connection,
Speaker 1: is able to set up an arrangement with the mob
Speaker 1: by by which he's the only guy who gets to
Speaker 1: use concrete effectively in constructing a building during this period
Speaker 1: of time. You know who doesn't control the entire concrete
Speaker 1: industry in New York City? Is it your advertisers? Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: they don't. They absolutely do not. We are we are back.
Speaker 1: We we have returned. So, according to a former Cone employee,
Speaker 1: Trump and Fat Tony Salerno actually met face to face
Speaker 1: at Cones town house. Now Trump has denied the meeting
Speaker 1: ever occurred, but Salerno was later indicted on racketeering charges
Speaker 1: for an eight million dollar concrete deal made for a
Speaker 1: Trump development. So you tell me now. The successful construction
Speaker 1: of Trump Tower is what first made Trump. The project,
Speaker 1: which involved tearing down an old hotel that had been
Speaker 1: at the location and building up something better, had been
Speaker 1: seen as impossible when Donald announced his plans, in part
Speaker 1: because the concrete working union was on strike and there
Speaker 1: were a bunch of logistical hurdles and it was Roy
Speaker 1: Cone who managed all these hurdles for Trump. Like this
Speaker 1: was seen as the reason Trump got famous. Is like
Speaker 1: everyone was like because of how corrupt the construction industry is,
Speaker 1: because of the mob, There's no way Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: going to be able to actually like complete this project.
Speaker 1: And he does and it impresses everybody. And the reason
Speaker 1: he does is because Roy Cone fucking knows everybody. And
Speaker 1: Roy Cone fixes this for Donald. Now, Cones Law firm part.
Speaker 1: There's a number of reasons why it's not just his
Speaker 1: connections to the mob. One of them is that Cohn's
Speaker 1: partner in his law firm was the Deputy mayor of
Speaker 1: New York City who fast tracked approval. Yeah, who fast
Speaker 1: tracked approval for Trump's construction plans. When the was finished,
Speaker 1: Cone engineered positive coverage for Trump in The New York Post,
Speaker 1: which was owned by one of Cohen's clients, a guy
Speaker 1: you might have heard of named Rupert Murdoch. Together, so
Speaker 1: Trump Cone introduces Trump to Rupert Murdoch. That's where that
Speaker 1: relationship starts. Is roy Kone? What of people? Yeah, human filth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Donald Trump got the credit for the feet of construction,
Speaker 1: of course, or at least he took the credit, and
Speaker 1: his fame only grew from there. And for his part,
Speaker 1: Roy kne didn't want credit. What he really wanted was
Speaker 1: to be needed by powerful people. One of his acquaintances
Speaker 1: at the time noted that the first thing he Cone
Speaker 1: said to me was Donald Trump cannot live without me.
Speaker 1: We speak on the phone sometimes thirty forty times a day.
Speaker 1: Wow wow wow. Yeah. It's got to be nice to
Speaker 1: be needed, you know, especially when you trade in gossip, lies,
Speaker 1: and destroying other lives. You know, you need people to
Speaker 1: need you, or people are going to be angry at you. Yep,
Speaker 1: it's like a wall of humans. He surrounded himself with
Speaker 1: maddening So the nineteen seventies were probably Roy Cone's golden era.
Speaker 1: He was an infamous regular at Studio fifty four, the
Speaker 1: cocaine drenched nightclub that defined New York culture in the
Speaker 1: late seventies, or at least the parts of it that
Speaker 1: involved drugged up rich people. Cone partied with Andy Warhol
Speaker 1: and an assortment of other famous people who weren't Andy Warhol.
Speaker 1: He was constantly seen with Barbara Walters, who he was
Speaker 1: fake engaged to for years in order to have a measure.
Speaker 1: Yeah Barbara, Yeah, Barbara. She was one of his closest friends.
Speaker 1: They basically like they were in a faux relationship for
Speaker 1: years so that he could have plausible to I idility
Speaker 1: as to being gay. Yeah, Barbara Walters, I mean girl icon.
Speaker 1: Everybody loved ry Code, that's the thing. People. Well, also,
Speaker 1: like he's friends with a bunch of people who he
Speaker 1: should have hated him because they were like left wing
Speaker 1: or like they were, you know, progressive or they were
Speaker 1: gay themselves. Cone is just one thing people point out
Speaker 1: is he was really charming. He's a people person, that's
Speaker 1: but it's Barbara. She's a rich person, and rich people,
Speaker 1: I know, part of the same class unless things go
Speaker 1: bad from our lives. Robert. Yeah. But again, this just
Speaker 1: continues to outline the psychopathy that clearly was Roy Cone. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that you could convince all of these people
Speaker 1: to like you despite the fact you were so clearly
Speaker 1: a horrible person in bed with them. Monster. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: found a story and yet another Esquire article about Roy
Speaker 1: Cone that illustrates the kind of socialite that he was
Speaker 1: and how he exercised his influence. It's a petty tale,
Speaker 1: but it's a fun one about a restaurant SPA called
Speaker 1: twenty one that yeah, quote the restaurant's ba of the
Speaker 1: rich and powerful used to seat Roy Cone in Siberia
Speaker 1: upstairs in a corner with the tourists. One day, Roy
Speaker 1: called and made a reservation for four at eight pm,
Speaker 1: purposefully arriving ten minutes early. He was brusquely led to
Speaker 1: his usual far nook promptly at eight pm. The Duke
Speaker 1: and Duchess of Windsor entered the room. Tin captain stood up,
Speaker 1: as Roy remembers it, and tried to steer the Duke
Speaker 1: and Duchess to a choice table. From the corner of
Speaker 1: the room, Roy waved to his dinner guests. They waved back,
Speaker 1: pulling away from the captains to join their friend. Please,
Speaker 1: Mr Khne, the Captain's beseeched him, allow us to give
Speaker 1: you a more comfortable table. He wouldn't hear of it.
Speaker 1: Roy loved it, recalls his boyhood friend William Fugazi. He
Speaker 1: fixed them. That was his way of showing them. Now
Speaker 1: he gets the good tables, so they don't. They think
Speaker 1: Roy's gross and they give him the bad table. So
Speaker 1: he invites the Duke and Duchess of winds Are over
Speaker 1: and they have to sit in the shitty table with him.
Speaker 1: And then after that he always gets the good table
Speaker 1: because you never know who Roy's gonna bring. Wow, because
Speaker 1: the tourists. I mean, that's a fucking power move though,
Speaker 1: Like you want to impress, I'll just get just have
Speaker 1: the Duke and fucking Duchess of Windsor come in and
Speaker 1: like fuck you. I'm Roy Knea. Yeah, the man knew
Speaker 1: had a wheeld Power. Yeah. Now, Roy the man who
Speaker 1: Knew how to live Wheeld Power lived with his mother
Speaker 1: in her home until her death in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: The door to his bedroom held a nameplate that spelled
Speaker 1: out Roy in the Disney font. He collected hundreds of
Speaker 1: stuffed frogs and had weird exotic pets, including at least
Speaker 1: one lama. He was a strange dude lama a llama, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a llama at one point, has too much money
Speaker 1: and and a huge stuffed frog collection. A huge stuffed
Speaker 1: frog collection. Yeah, like like like stuffed frog collection, like
Speaker 1: plush like like like like plush frogs like um, like
Speaker 1: stuffed animals, but from emotionally stunted human beings their childhood.
Speaker 1: He also used his connections with Studio fifty four, which
Speaker 1: gave him an unlimited access to drugs, to ensure a
Speaker 1: constant supply of young men showed up at his door
Speaker 1: ready to so basically he pays a lot of these
Speaker 1: young boys and drugs. He is said to have slept
Speaker 1: with a new boy each day, and that's probably not
Speaker 1: an exaggeration. Now. In fairness, Roy was renowned for being
Speaker 1: one of the very best friends you could have. Unlike
Speaker 1: his protegee Donald Trump, roy was capable of deep and
Speaker 1: abiding loyalty, and when he chose to take someone on
Speaker 1: as a client, he would go to absurd and often
Speaker 1: the legal lengths to win their cases. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: he was indicted for obstructing justice to get his client
Speaker 1: off for stock fraud. On one occasion, he helped a
Speaker 1: friend of his out by talking a judge into administering
Speaker 1: the oath of citizenship to another friend, completely shortcutting the length. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a friend of his is trying to get citizenship
Speaker 1: for this um. I think he might have been Cuban
Speaker 1: for this filmmaker that he wanted to have work on
Speaker 1: a project with him, and he needed to get the
Speaker 1: guy's citizenship. And he asks Roy, and Roy just tells
Speaker 1: him show up at this courtroom in Los Angeles at
Speaker 1: this time. And like, the guy shows up with the
Speaker 1: dude who needs citizenship in the back of this courtroom.
Speaker 1: The judge sees them at the particular time and a
Speaker 1: journs the court proceedings, calls them up and administers the
Speaker 1: oath of citizenship. That's the kind of ship that Roy
Speaker 1: Cone can fix, right, Like when I say he was
Speaker 1: the best fixer. He was like an absolute genius at
Speaker 1: his evil craft. It is yes that the system can
Speaker 1: be so easily moved. Is still I don't know why
Speaker 1: we live like this? Yeah? No, because if you, if
Speaker 1: you are a guy like Roy kone, none of the
Speaker 1: none of the bureaucracy exists, because you just call a
Speaker 1: person and you make it happen, which is why he
Speaker 1: has the friends he has now. Kne shenanigans did land
Speaker 1: him in constant legal trouble. In nineteen sixty nine, he
Speaker 1: was arrested for bribing a city appraiser. During his court case,
Speaker 1: his lawyer suffered a likely faked heart attack, and Cone
Speaker 1: was forced to mount his own defense. He spoke with
Speaker 1: no notes for seven straight hours, ending on a long
Speaker 1: monologue about his love for the United States of America.
Speaker 1: The jury was moved to tears and he was acquitted.
Speaker 1: Oh come on, play the heart like an instrument. He's amazing,
Speaker 1: Like he's one of those he's a monster. There is
Speaker 1: a degree to which you have to respect him because
Speaker 1: he was fucking good at what he did. He was
Speaker 1: the best at being Roy Cone Um, one of his
Speaker 1: friends later said of Roy, I was surprised at how
Speaker 1: absolutely shameless he was about who he was. He had
Speaker 1: almost a kind of delight in being Roy Cone. Underneath
Speaker 1: the social persona of needing to be liked, there was
Speaker 1: an absolute menace. And for an example of that kind
Speaker 1: of menace, there was one year where he rented a
Speaker 1: vacation house at a Florida beach town fame for being
Speaker 1: a haven for gay men. Roy partied and fucked and
Speaker 1: he wound up at a number of the same gatherings
Speaker 1: as John Waters, who despised him. And this is one
Speaker 1: of the things about this John Waters. So all of
Speaker 1: these people like Andy Warhol, Barbara Walters are happy to
Speaker 1: be friends with Roy Cone as much of a monster
Speaker 1: as he was. Walter's never John Waters never falls for it.
Speaker 1: He because John Waters is a real one. And when
Speaker 1: people when when Waters his friends would out with Roy
Speaker 1: would be like, do not fucking know who this guy is? Like,
Speaker 1: fuck you, you cannot be friends with this guy. Look
Speaker 1: at good human work. Yeah, no, John Waters, fucking rules
Speaker 1: Waters is as good as you would hope he would be, um,
Speaker 1: yeah and yeah, So Water, John Waters, who despised him
Speaker 1: and he was heart was horrified that a lot of
Speaker 1: the younger men didn't know who Roy was and would
Speaker 1: you know have sex with him in exchange for drugs
Speaker 1: and money? Um and Roy knes landlady at the time,
Speaker 1: the woman who rins him this house, gives a fascinating
Speaker 1: interview for the documentary Bully Coward Victim, and she notes
Speaker 1: that Cone was always surrounded by people, at least two
Speaker 1: or three, but often more than that, and she she
Speaker 1: found it particularly striking that the only time she ever
Speaker 1: saw him alone is on the occasions that he would
Speaker 1: go out for a swim. Every other moment of his
Speaker 1: life he was surrounded by people. This is a man
Speaker 1: who almost could not be alone with himself, which I
Speaker 1: think is important. Um. I mean, listen, you do a
Speaker 1: lot of bad things. They're gonna hunt you now. His
Speaker 1: landlady also note that the at the end of his
Speaker 1: year there, he offered to buy the house from her,
Speaker 1: and she told him it wasn't for sale, and in
Speaker 1: her recollection when she said that, his eyes grew very cold,
Speaker 1: and he told her things that aren't for sale have
Speaker 1: a nasty way of getting sold. Oh, threat just switched
Speaker 1: to threats. That's how it works. Yeah, all right. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, Roy's oldest client, the eighty four
Speaker 1: year old Lewis Rosen Steel net worth seventy five million dollars,
Speaker 1: was on his deathbed in a Florida hospital. Being a
Speaker 1: good and decent man, Roy arrived to help him sign
Speaker 1: his last will and testament. Of course, Lewis already had
Speaker 1: a will. Elderly and ill, Roy was able to convince
Speaker 1: him that the document he was signing would save one
Speaker 1: of his ex wives from prison. Instead, it was a
Speaker 1: revised will that would have made Cone a trustee and
Speaker 1: the executor of Rosenstein's will. The amended word, Yeah, baby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. Now. The amended will was avoided in court,
Speaker 1: but it gives you an idea of the kind of
Speaker 1: things that Roy got up to. Oh my word, yeah,
Speaker 1: stealing from a dying man. Yeah, of course he's going
Speaker 1: to steal from a dying man. That guy doesn't need
Speaker 1: it anymore. That's the bottom of the barrel, Ship Roight.
Speaker 1: He spent his life at the bottom of that barrel. Now,
Speaker 1: by the close of the nineteen seventies, Roy was at
Speaker 1: the absolute height of his power, the single most feared
Speaker 1: lawyer probably in the world. This Esquire profile from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight gives you both a rundown of why he
Speaker 1: was so terrifying and how he was seen by his
Speaker 1: contemporaries at the apex of his power. I can get attention,
Speaker 1: no question about it, says Cone. They know my name.
Speaker 1: The usual responses what did I do? His standard technique
Speaker 1: is to dispatch a threatening letter on behalf of a client. Hey, Mr,
Speaker 1: this is now the eleventh hour before the monster strikes.
Speaker 1: Is how Roy puts it. Roy symbolizes viciousness and protecting
Speaker 1: a client or going after someone who needs viciousness to
Speaker 1: write a wrong says Bill Fugazy. He fights his cases
Speaker 1: as if they were his own. It is war. If
Speaker 1: he feels his adversary has been unfair, it is war
Speaker 1: to the death. No white eggs, no Mr. Nice guy.
Speaker 1: Prospective clients who went to kill their husband, torture a
Speaker 1: business partner, break the government's legs, higher Roy Cone. He
Speaker 1: is a legal executioner, the toughest, meanest, loyalist, violist, and
Speaker 1: one of the most brilliant lawyers in America. He is
Speaker 1: not a very nice man. Once, when a husband tried
Speaker 1: to pull a fast one and ordered two moving trucks
Speaker 1: to sneak up to collect furniture at seven am. His
Speaker 1: hysterical wife called Roy. What should I do? She screamed,
Speaker 1: Sit tight. He calmed her, I'll call the cops. He
Speaker 1: had the husband thrown in jail. I must have had
Speaker 1: fifty men call me over the years and asked, we
Speaker 1: hear Roy Cone is going to represent my wife. Would
Speaker 1: you make sure he doesn't rough us up? Says Fugaze.
Speaker 1: The mere sending of a letter from Roy Cone has
Speaker 1: saved us a lot of money, says builder Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: When people know that Roy is involved, they'd rather not
Speaker 1: get involved in the lawsuits and everything else that's involved. Publishers,
Speaker 1: TV networks, editors are accomplished to receiving peremptory phone calls,
Speaker 1: are threatening letters from Cone, and cringe at the court
Speaker 1: costs of taking him on. What's really incredible is that
Speaker 1: he sort of has created the modern wealthy douche. Like
Speaker 1: if you if you think about all the stuff that
Speaker 1: happened early on with me too and the director who
Speaker 1: I will not name, but you know who he is. Producer. Sorry, Um,
Speaker 1: he pulled all those same tactics. I'll just I'll just
Speaker 1: call the paper and threaten them because who's gonna want
Speaker 1: to deal with me? And this idea that just if
Speaker 1: I can exhaust you legally, not just with my words
Speaker 1: but also with my financial capital, you just have to
Speaker 1: bow out. That is so insidious. And I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say he's the first person to do it, but
Speaker 1: he was the best and maybe the first person to
Speaker 1: get that good at it. Like he's so frightening that
Speaker 1: after a while he doesn't even really have to argue cases.
Speaker 1: You just are told that roy Cone is involved, and
Speaker 1: you settle because you do not want to fucking step
Speaker 1: into the ring with roy Cone. Right, ships and people,
Speaker 1: like some other lawyers who were contemporaries of his will
Speaker 1: argue like he wasn't actually a good lawyer, He was
Speaker 1: just good at being frightening, Like that's that was roy
Speaker 1: Cone's like skill was scaring the ship out of people.
Speaker 1: Timidation is legit, man, absolutely, especially when you're going up
Speaker 1: against the law, which a lot of people don't have,
Speaker 1: you know, an intrinsic knowledge of. Yeah. So in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: Roy Cone got involved in national politics in a way
Speaker 1: he really hadn't before. Cone had, of course considered running
Speaker 1: for office, but his more level headed friends had told
Speaker 1: him that that would be a terrible idea because he
Speaker 1: his his closet was nothing but skeletons. It was like
Speaker 1: one of those monasteries built out of the bones of monks.
Speaker 1: That's Roy Cone's closet, like just just pure skeletons. So
Speaker 1: obviously he can't run for office, but he can't help
Speaker 1: his friends get into office. And one of his friends
Speaker 1: was another fellow you might have heard of, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Now,
Speaker 1: when Ronald started his run for the White House, roy
Speaker 1: knew that he had a chance to seat a president
Speaker 1: who was also a personal friend. Cone knew the Reagan's well,
Speaker 1: and the Reagan's knew Cone as well as anyone ever
Speaker 1: knew roy Cone. Despite being a registered Democrat, Cone and
Speaker 1: his partners at the law firm campaigned and raised money
Speaker 1: for Reagan's campaign. He also engaged in his traditional rat fuccory,
Speaker 1: using his young friend Roger Stone, come and bribe the
Speaker 1: Liberal Party, which was a third party at the time,
Speaker 1: to endorse John B. Anderson as a third party candidate
Speaker 1: in the election. The thinking here was that he would
Speaker 1: take votes away from Jimmy Carter. Now, when Reagan won
Speaker 1: the election, the new York Times noted, like lawyer campaigners
Speaker 1: of all parties before them, the two now have a
Speaker 1: voice in the appointment of the judges that members of
Speaker 1: their law firm appear before, and of the United States
Speaker 1: attorneys who prosecute their clients, which is obviously a dream
Speaker 1: for Roykone because again, if you if you got the
Speaker 1: judge his job or the prosecutor, you're going up against
Speaker 1: their job. You got a little bit of average, don't
Speaker 1: you just so just a little bit there are Okay,
Speaker 1: if you were a person who plays by the rules,
Speaker 1: aren't you supposed to recuse yourself? No? Funk that ship?
Speaker 1: No know when no one does that bullshit? Like why
Speaker 1: would you do that? Ship? But you know who does
Speaker 1: play by the rules? Joel, who's the products and services
Speaker 1: that support this podcast? I'm so glad. Yeah, we're back.
Speaker 1: So President Reagan certainly had no issues being seen with
Speaker 1: infamous Cold warrior Roy Cone. The President's men actually threw
Speaker 1: a party for Cone and his partners after the election,
Speaker 1: and Roy himself through one of the best attended parties
Speaker 1: on inauguration Day in nineteen eighty three, talking about a
Speaker 1: little quid pro quo here we were just talking about
Speaker 1: how Cone gets a voice and who gets made a judge.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eight three, Ronald Reagan appointed Mary Anne Trump Barry,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's sister to the U. S. District Court. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: that's good. Some good ship. By the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: some of Roy's lifestyle choices were beginning to catch up
Speaker 1: with him, namely his choice to never pay taxes. He
Speaker 1: bragged to one interviewer that, without question, I hold the
Speaker 1: world's record for having been audited by the I R S.
Speaker 1: He was in fact under audit for more than twenty
Speaker 1: years and eventually charged with Yeah. They eventually charged him
Speaker 1: to for going more than three million dollars in back taxes. Now,
Speaker 1: none of this stopped Cone from living the high life.
Speaker 1: Between his firm and his rich friends, every need was
Speaker 1: taken care of. Cone even joked readily that he didn't
Speaker 1: have a bank account because the I R S would
Speaker 1: immediately seize it. And as Esquire reports, Cones refusal to
Speaker 1: pay didn't just extend to the I R S. From
Speaker 1: January nineteen seventy to December nineteen seventy seven, no less
Speaker 1: than twenty eight judgments were filed against Roy in Manhattan
Speaker 1: State Supreme Court. In fourteen separate cases, judges ordered him
Speaker 1: to pay the State of New York a total of
Speaker 1: seventy one thousand, three d two dollars and sixty one cents.
Speaker 1: In three separate judgments, he was ordered to pay the
Speaker 1: city nine thousand, three hundred twenty eight dollars and ten
Speaker 1: cents Dunhill Taylor's Oil, credit card companies, a locksmith, a mechanic,
Speaker 1: a photo off set company, a stationary store and office
Speaker 1: supply company, temporary office workers, travel agencies, and storage companies
Speaker 1: have all filed claims against Cone and seeking payment. These
Speaker 1: smaller creditors must retain attorneys or bill collectors. It gets
Speaker 1: pretty expensive, particularly since roy relish is a fight for
Speaker 1: a relatively small bill, it's often not worth the trouble.
Speaker 1: Rather than pursue Roy, a Manhattan Button Stores swallowed a
Speaker 1: sixty dollar bill. Asked about these unpaid bills, Roy says
Speaker 1: that during his nine year legal battle in New York,
Speaker 1: money's and energy were devoted to survival, and there was
Speaker 1: a total lack of attention to other things, so he
Speaker 1: just didn't pay for anything. And he would be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna assume me, But like it's gonna cost you
Speaker 1: more money to assume me than to just accept that
Speaker 1: I'm getting some stuff for free. At what point does
Speaker 1: it go from being civil too criminal though, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: theft just he just stot ship when he wanted it. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's Roy Cone. He was a tremendous piece of ship. Now,
Speaker 1: Roy was also infamous among his friends for never ordering dinner,
Speaker 1: even when he would take people out to dinner. Instead,
Speaker 1: he would eat the food from the plates of his guests,
Speaker 1: grabbing he wanted and taking and again, people, including very
Speaker 1: powerful people Royalty, were just accepted this, like, this is
Speaker 1: what happens when you eat with Roy. He's just going
Speaker 1: to take food off of your plate. And I think
Speaker 1: that was kind of Roy's point. He's a power moves guy.
Speaker 1: He's all about power moves and just like sitting down
Speaker 1: and taking food from someone's plate is that is absolutely
Speaker 1: a power move. Is disgusting. I don't know where you go.
Speaker 1: Then you're sleeping with half of New York weirdo. So power,
Speaker 1: the kind of power that lets you say, take food
Speaker 1: off the table of the Duke of windsor like power
Speaker 1: is what elevated Roy above the other gay men who
Speaker 1: lived in the United States at the time, including the
Speaker 1: ones he's slept with. It's a big part of why
Speaker 1: he didn't consider himself homosexual because homosexuals in this period,
Speaker 1: in Roy's eyes, homosexuals are weak, They're downtrodden, They're an
Speaker 1: oppressed class. And Roy was a powerful man, with a
Speaker 1: thousand men of influence and wealth at his beck and
Speaker 1: call whenever he needed them. For years, this separated Roy
Speaker 1: from the other game, and both in his own head
Speaker 1: and in the heads of his wealthy and powerful conservative friends. Right,
Speaker 1: this is what elevates him. I have elevated myself above
Speaker 1: the you know, I'm I'm not gay because gay people
Speaker 1: are weak and oppressed and I am powerful. That's what
Speaker 1: separates him from them. And because he felt so separated
Speaker 1: from them, Roy took public positions against gay rights even
Speaker 1: after the Lavender Scare. When the City of New York
Speaker 1: proposed legislation that would have provided gay people with protections
Speaker 1: under the law, Roy fought against it on behalf of
Speaker 1: his client, the Catholic Church. He argued that the legislation
Speaker 1: would dangerously influence young Americans, possibly turning them gay. At
Speaker 1: one point, Roy was asked by yeah, so sorry. The
Speaker 1: idea that you could just fucking live like a normal life,
Speaker 1: which earn you gay. Fuck you Roy homebuck you so hard. Oh,
Speaker 1: I hope you're writing in hell. At one point, Roy
Speaker 1: was asked by gay rights activists to represent a teacher
Speaker 1: who had been fired for his sexual orientation. He refused,
Speaker 1: and he told them, I believe homosexuals are a grave
Speaker 1: threat to our children and have no business polluting the
Speaker 1: schools of America. Well that's you, you're thinking about yourself.
Speaker 1: But in the end, Roy's power could not save him
Speaker 1: from the AIDS epidemic that his good old body Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan failed completely to control, le or contain. As we
Speaker 1: covered in our episode on the Reagans and AIDS, the
Speaker 1: disease was initially referred to as the gay plague, and
Speaker 1: since it only affected homosexuals, it didn't only affect homosexuals,
Speaker 1: but that's what it was seen as. Right Initially, people
Speaker 1: thought this is just something that gay people deal with.
Speaker 1: No one in power really cared about it, with a
Speaker 1: notable exception of see Everett Coope, the Surgeon General who
Speaker 1: gets some credit. Roy Cone contracted HIV and nineteen eighties six,
Speaker 1: most probably from one of the young men he had
Speaker 1: brought to him every single day. When it became obvious
Speaker 1: that Roy was not just sick, but sick with the
Speaker 1: gay plague, an illness that would irrevocably brand him as
Speaker 1: a gay man in polite society, Roy turned to his
Speaker 1: usual tricks. He lied. He claimed he had liver cancer,
Speaker 1: but the world did not believe him, and the rich
Speaker 1: and powerful men he'd courted and collected all of his
Speaker 1: life abandoned him one by one. Donald Trump stopped taking
Speaker 1: his calls. When Trump was invited to speak at an
Speaker 1: event hosted by the White House, he thanked Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: for appointing his sister to a judge ship, but didn't
Speaker 1: mention Roy Cone at all. Roy was devastated by this.
Speaker 1: Donald pisses ice water. He said, oh, oh, for not
Speaker 1: mentioning you, Okay, there's so many and for ignoring him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many great things about Like so often people
Speaker 1: don't get their come up in in their lifetime, you know,
Speaker 1: So for the last years of his life to be
Speaker 1: painful alone, which we already know he didn't like, so
Speaker 1: so wonderful. What's what's really appropriate is that he has
Speaker 1: spent his life persecuting gay people as a gay man
Speaker 1: and denying that he is elevating himself above it because
Speaker 1: of his power. And finally, this is like what happens
Speaker 1: to Roy at the end of his life, is proof that,
Speaker 1: like you know this, you were always a part of
Speaker 1: this community, even though you hated it and persecuted it,
Speaker 1: and you you like the fact that, like, finally, something
Speaker 1: bad was done to them that you couldn't elevate yourself from.
Speaker 1: You could elevate yourself from the persecution, legally, you could
Speaker 1: elevate yourself from that, but you aunt elevate yourself away
Speaker 1: from from a fucking virus. You know, your money could
Speaker 1: not save you here, although it might have if you
Speaker 1: have thrown some of it into research and help protect
Speaker 1: your brothers and sisters in a very scary time. I
Speaker 1: will also say that it brings me a lot of
Speaker 1: joy that Tony Kushner got to explore this in a
Speaker 1: place because literally, yeah, it's define never to end. It's
Speaker 1: called Angels in America. If you haven't seen Hbos in
Speaker 1: a pretty good rendition of it. Nathan Lane recently played
Speaker 1: him on Broadway, and it's just wonderful. I think that
Speaker 1: the gay community gets an opportunity to constantly be like, no,
Speaker 1: funk that guy, and also to future generations, don't be
Speaker 1: that fucking guy. Don't be that fucking guy, because you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't actually funck over your as you said, your
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters and get away with it like you
Speaker 1: will eventually. It's the same thing that happened to It's
Speaker 1: kind of in a in some ways, it's the same
Speaker 1: thing that happened to Roy's uncle, like your wealth and
Speaker 1: power will only temporarily like elevate you to the ruling class.
Speaker 1: And as soon as something happens like this, like you
Speaker 1: are ut another gay man to them. Are you listening,
Speaker 1: Candice Owens? Do you hear what we're saying. Yeah. As
Speaker 1: Cone grew sicker and sicker, the law finally caught up
Speaker 1: with him. He was disbarred by the New York appoll
Speaker 1: At Court after being convicted on four different counts of facory.
Speaker 1: In one case, he failed to pay back a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar loan from a client. Losing his license to
Speaker 1: practice the law was one thing that hurt Roy more
Speaker 1: than any other blow ever. Could He learned about the
Speaker 1: judgment watching the nightly news Oddly enough, the only one
Speaker 1: of Roy's old friends who didn't totally abandon him in
Speaker 1: his hour of need was Ronald Reagan. UM. Now, Reagan
Speaker 1: did completely cut social ties with him, but he showed
Speaker 1: some mercy and approved Roy to be added to the
Speaker 1: testing pool for an experimental AIDS drug. It didn't work, though.
Speaker 1: On August second, nineteen eight six, Roy mcne died at
Speaker 1: age fifty nine. The I r S confiscated everything he owned,
Speaker 1: as he'd wished. Roy died penniless and deeply in debt
Speaker 1: to the federal government. Roy is not missed by anyone
Speaker 1: but Donald Trump, but he is remembered. There is a
Speaker 1: single square in the AIDS Quilt dedicated to Roy m cone.
Speaker 1: His epitaph is three words bully, coward, victim, God, damn it. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: well god, I love my community. What a way to
Speaker 1: just stick it to somebody like, not only did you die,
Speaker 1: not only do we understand who you were, but we
Speaker 1: still included you in our quilt statements. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't escape that one thing you try to do
Speaker 1: your whole life. We're going to make sure death you
Speaker 1: cannot get out of it. Oh funk. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: That is so awesome. I do not expect a happy
Speaker 1: ending when we started, but you know, every once in
Speaker 1: a while, Robert is like, you know what, here's some
Speaker 1: like sprinkle of joy. Friends. This was happy, rewarding. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The happy part of the ending is that Roy, unlike
Speaker 1: what I suspect Roger Stone and to some extent, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump are going to get away with their crimes. Roy didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, he's the one who's responsible for them, and
Speaker 1: he did. He died not able to It's not that
Speaker 1: he died, it's that he died unable to pretend that
Speaker 1: he wasn't what he was and unable to separate himself
Speaker 1: from the people that he had attacked and harmed his
Speaker 1: entire life. Well, Rod and hell Roy again, you gigantic
Speaker 1: piece of ship, really bad person, just a just a monster,
Speaker 1: A class a monster though as monsters go, a very
Speaker 1: fascinating one. Yeah. We were fascinated by the Hitlers and
Speaker 1: the hannibal Lecters of the world because we don't know
Speaker 1: how you how did this happen? What quite wrong? And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I'm just I'm so so so happy that
Speaker 1: he got what he deserved in the end. And it's
Speaker 1: It's fascinating to me because we talked about how you know,
Speaker 1: the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare were allowed to
Speaker 1: continue until Roy and McCarthy picked on a young white
Speaker 1: man right like like and then it fell apart for them.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of the case that the AIDS epidemic
Speaker 1: was allowed to completely rage out of control and no
Speaker 1: one in power cared until like young white boys who
Speaker 1: had hemophili started getting AIDS and then people had to
Speaker 1: deal with it. Um. It's just I mean that through
Speaker 1: line is so consistent in American history that like, we
Speaker 1: will ignore this problem until it affects like fresh faced
Speaker 1: white boys, and then then we'll start to deal with
Speaker 1: it because reason exactly the reason we have to constantly
Speaker 1: be in their face about it because know it's impacting
Speaker 1: my life. Now, Yes, deal with it. Stuff, good stuff,
Speaker 1: Roy Cone, fun story. Yeah. I really do recommend both
Speaker 1: Bully Coward Victim, the documentary about Roy and uh, Where's
Speaker 1: My Roy Cone? The other documentary. Now they're they're actually
Speaker 1: both very good. And Roy is you just look at
Speaker 1: the man's face, you can like it's not like you
Speaker 1: could if you met him on the streaming like that
Speaker 1: is a person, and I need to stay the funk
Speaker 1: away from No. Clearly, I was looking when we were
Speaker 1: talking about Donald Trump in his twenties and then we
Speaker 1: were talking about David and like all of that. I
Speaker 1: was like, well, what did Roy look like in his twenties?
Speaker 1: He looked like an old man. Yeah, he looks like
Speaker 1: he looks like a ghoul. He's a gollum, he's a monster.
Speaker 1: You've been through too much, Roy, because you clearly there's
Speaker 1: no youthfulness in you. There's no none of that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: young Spryan Guide's twenty here. You know you were just
Speaker 1: born an old, crotchety man with hate in your heart.
Speaker 1: And that's sad. Yeah, he's he's just a bad person anyway, Joel, Yes,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about Roy Cone? No, not at all.
Speaker 1: But I do feel enriched by his story. I do
Speaker 1: feel able to better target some of the assholes that
Speaker 1: are currently running ship and be like, oh, I'm seeing
Speaker 1: the direct line, I'm seeing the ship's kind of pool.
Speaker 1: Did that? The extent to which Roy Cone taught Donald
Speaker 1: Trump everything he knows and Roger Stone is really remarkable
Speaker 1: to me because it is and it's an effective strategy.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things. There's this um if you
Speaker 1: talk about um like military strait and not like grand
Speaker 1: strategy but like actual like like tactical level combat. Here's
Speaker 1: this thing called the ODA loop, which is observed, orient, decide, act,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a it's an acronym for the series
Speaker 1: of decisions you go through in like a dangerous situation.
Speaker 1: In order to like, like you're being shot at, you
Speaker 1: have to like see who's shooting at you, orient yourself,
Speaker 1: figure out like where they are where you are, decide
Speaker 1: what to do in response, and then do it. And
Speaker 1: that's how you respect. Like going through that ODA loop
Speaker 1: is how you respond effectively to violence. And part of
Speaker 1: successfully winning combat in that sort of sense is to
Speaker 1: disrupt the opponent's ODA loop, stop them from either seeing
Speaker 1: what's happening, which is why you have we use like
Speaker 1: a smoke grenade, stop them from oriented themselves, stop them
Speaker 1: from deciding what to do, or stop them from acting.
Speaker 1: You have to disrupt that ODOR loop. And it's the
Speaker 1: same thing in any sort of confrontation. And Roy's strategy
Speaker 1: and the strategy that Donald Trump picked up from him,
Speaker 1: is to be constantly disrupting that loop in his opponents
Speaker 1: that's what You're always on the attack. That's why you
Speaker 1: never respond to anything they say. That's why you never
Speaker 1: answer any of the questions they raised about you. You
Speaker 1: just keep making more attacks because if they attack you back,
Speaker 1: they're wanting you to respond, and if you ignore that
Speaker 1: and just throw another hit out at them, you can
Speaker 1: disrupt them, get them off balance, and that's how you win. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very effective. It's effective in the moment, but I
Speaker 1: think as we're seeing with Donald Trump long term, unless
Speaker 1: you happen to have like work one level genius, you
Speaker 1: just can't. It doesn't stand up like it doesn't eventually
Speaker 1: people are like, okay, but we do need to solve Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the reason we came here. You you eventually run
Speaker 1: into a problem that you can't defeat that way. And
Speaker 1: actually for both Roy Cohne and for Donald Trump, it
Speaker 1: was a virus us right, like the AIDS virus, Like
Speaker 1: you can't you can't attack the AIDS virus like you
Speaker 1: can't yell at it into submission, you can't scare it.
Speaker 1: And there's the same thing with the with the coronavirus,
Speaker 1: you can't. There's only so far lying can get you.
Speaker 1: With a virus um, and now I'm thinking about just
Speaker 1: the role of fear and how just a combination of
Speaker 1: ignorance and fear has totally warped our country multiple times,
Speaker 1: like almost systemically throughout its existence. Has been fundamentally changed
Speaker 1: by the fact that people didn't know enough, and then
Speaker 1: we're horrified to try to do anything to stop it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only reason Trump got in the first
Speaker 1: time is information and fear and greed on behalf of
Speaker 1: the media because he was good for business. Yeah yeah, yeah, stuff,
Speaker 1: take a nap now that awful. Okay, thanks for being
Speaker 1: on um. This has been behind the bastards. I don't know, go,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like something on fire whatever, be you
Speaker 1: live your truth, so let your roy Cone don't do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we're done.