The Lawyer Who Represented Terrorists Heads to Prison, as Unapologetic as Ever

Photo by Celeste Sloman

Stanley Cohen in his Lower East Side apartment sporting a kaffiyeh — a symbol of Palestinian independence.

Stanley Cohen abruptly stops responding to voicemails. When you dial his cell, you hear the telltale sound of an overseas phone call, followed by a hold message in Arabic.

Cohen is known to friends and foes alike as an eccentric of the highest order, a foul-mouthed criminal-defense attorney with unruly gray hair, a Saddam Hussein-straight-out-of-the-spider-hole beard, and a long history of representing enemies of the people the world over. In a 2002 profile, the Washington Post's Richard Leiby described him as "possibly one of the most hated lawyers in [New York City]." In his Lower East Side apartment, which doubles as his office, he displays photos of himself wearing a wide grin alongside Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of the Middle Eastern terrorist organization Hamas. Only weeks ago he wore a black-and-white-checked kaffiyeh for a press conference outside the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan where he'd just unsuccessfully defended Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the highest-ranking Al Qaeda member ever tried in a civilian court.

But going AWOL like this is a puzzling turn of events even by Cohen standards.

He is, after all, awaiting word on when and where to report to federal prison to serve an eighteen-month sentence for tax crimes. Granted, the date has been delayed repeatedly, but what judge in his right mind would allow Stanley Cohen to...disappear?

"Before you go to prison, you know, you have a party, you see your friends," posits one longtime friend of Cohen's. "This is the kind of guy he is."

Others speculate he has turned government informant.

On October 16, Cohen tweets that he's in Kuwait: "No, I have not dropped off of the face of the earth, I am in the ME for a very short but essential trip."

Six months earlier.

Cohen arrives without fanfare at the courthouse in Plattsburgh, off Interstate 87 on the shores of Lake Champhttps://twitter.com/StanleyCohenLawitlain. He has dressed sharply for what will likely be his last trial before heading off to prison — pinstripe suit, hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, beard tamed — but he looks harried as he ducks in a side door.

His client, 85-year-old Ronald Trombly, is on trial for vehicular manslaughter. Tests showed Trombly's blood-alcohol level was just over the legal limit on the spring evening in 2013 when his Buick struck and killed Ashley Poissant, age twenty-seven. A mother of three, Poissant had been out jogging on a rural road just shy of the Canadian border with a friend and the woman's teenage children. Rescue workers had to fish one of her pink Reeboks out of a tree.

Cohen considers this area his home turf, to a certain extent. He says he understands north-country people. Still, as he rises to question the would-be jurors, he seems out of place. Representing a cross-section of far-northeastern New York State, the members of the jury pool all speak with clipped, Canadian-sounding accents. Cohen's brogue is straight out of Port Chester.

In Clinton County, roughly the size of Rhode Island but with a population of only 80,000, the accident was big news, all the more so after a grand jury initially declined to pursue charges against Trombly. Amid the social-media fury that followed, the district attorney took the unusual step of convening a second grand jury. This one handed down an indictment.

The exchange clearly rattles Trombly. He is in poor health and will likely die in prison if convicted. Perhaps noticing the worry on his client's face, Cohen places a hand on the defendant's back and asks quietly if he's OK. Trombly nods, managing a weak smile. Cohen smiles too, then leans back in his chair, crossing his legs and slouching a little, tugging at his beard.

When the elevator door opens onto the Avenue D apartment/office, the lawyer is seated on a brown leather couch, a BlackBerry pressed to his ear, wearing tattered gray sweatpants, a vaguely Middle Eastern-looking tunic, and a pair of imitation-leather Crocs with the straps turned down, which is to say as close to untied as Crocs can get.

With the Trombly case headed for a plea deal by the end of the summer, it's hard not to conclude that Cohen's career is winding down. It has been months since he pleaded guilty in his own case: violating Title 26, Section 7212(a) of the United States Code by "impeding the IRS." It's a catchall charge stemming from a federal probe that revealed Cohen had taken cash payments from some clients, accepted labor in lieu of fees from others, commingled business and personal expenses, and failed to declare large cash transfers — all in order to avoid paying income tax, the government alleged.

The formal conviction, when it comes, will mean the revocation of Cohen's law license. The cadre of bloggers who faithfully rail against him now gleefully append "disgraced attorney" or "tax cheat" to their headlines. Some clients are having second thoughts about keeping him on as counsel.

Cohen simply shrugs.

"I'm busier than ever," he says, and with the wave of a hand proceeds to tick off a list. "I'm in the final draft of an appeal on U.S. v. Amina Ali, which is due August 23. I'm preparing for a trial on a significant drug-and-gun conspiracy in the Northern District of New York sometime in mid- to late September. I currently have a lawsuit against Egypt in the African Union. I'm about to file a lawsuit against Israel in Belgium. I'm still up to my neck in the debate and discussion about whether to go to the International Criminal Court for Palestine. I'm writing a brief on a trial I did in upstate New York in family court; we're writing the sentence memo on Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, and I've probably got another ten federal cases that are in their final stages." He smiles. "So yeah, I'm winding down."

In Cohen's telling, the Trombly prosecution isn't all that different from his standard fare. To him, the narrative isn't about a girl who gets mowed down by a pinch-faced old man who now faces his second DUI-related charge; it's the story of an overzealous prosecutor targeting a frail, unpopular geriatric, and a community in search of a scapegoat.

"Look, I think it sucks that you go after an 85-year-old," he says. "This was an accident. This was a tragedy. No one's a winner.

"He was getting fucked around by a prosecutor who's a political animal," Cohen goes on, one hand resting absently on the head of his chocolate lab, Emma, who lies on the couch beside him. "It was To Kill a Mockingbird without the religious component."

And yeah, he responds a little hesitantly when it's brought up, seemingly unaware he has implied the comparison: He's Atticus.

Scan a list of Stanley Cohen's past clients and you might get the sense he's deliberately trying to piss people off.

In 1986 he briefly represented Larry Davis, a Bronx drug dealer accused of shooting six NYPD officers. In 1990 it was separatist Mohawk Indians who'd seized disputed land and a major bridge in Quebec, killing a cop in the ensuing standoff. Then came the 13th Street squatters, who occupied swaths of the Lower East Side and did battle with police sent to evict them. Cohen has advised and occasionally represented the political leadership of the militant Palestinian organization Hamas for nearly twenty years. More recently he defended the group known as the PayPal 14, a faction of Anonymous that launched a cyberattack on the e-commerce site in support of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Interspersed with these cases flowed a steady stream of run-of-the-mill criminals and lower-profile terrorism defendants: In 2003 Cohen defended a group of North Carolina men accused of smuggling cigarettes as part of a funding scheme for Hezbollah; in 2013 it was two young men from New Jersey who tried to go to Somalia and join Al-Shabaab.

Cohen applies a two-stage litmus test before taking on a case: a personal affinity for the client and a genuine belief in his or her cause. He has represented Hamas not because he believes in the right to due process but because he likes Hamas. He's a fan. An advocate, even. He makes no apologies.

"I have never hidden from anyone that I one hundred percent support Hamas. I think it's the nightmare of our generation, what's going on in Palestine," Cohen says.

His disdain is deep, wide, and nonpartisan. He's no fan of Republicans, but ask him what he thinks of Barack Obama (whom he invariably refers to as "I Have a Drone") and he'll tell you, "I despise him. I think Nixon was a more honorable person than him. I think his life has been one big huge fraud. I think he's a bean counter. I think he's been concocted. That he's a creation of the people that sell us American democracy."

Cohen often speaks in complete paragraphs, in a shrill New York tenor that makes "huge" come out yooj. The hardest part is knowing when to close quotes. "I think his politics are as repressive and reactionary, and as dangerous and damning, as anyone we've ever had."

Is there a president Cohen did support? you might ask. "I liked Abe Lincoln," he deadpans. "Though I disagreed with him at times."