clinical trials of AZT, a drug initially synthesized to treat cancer but later developed as the first anti-HIV agent for AIDS patients. He insisted to his dying day that his disease was liver cancer. He died on August 2, 1986, in Bethesda, Maryland, of complications from AIDS, at the age of 59. At death, the IRS seized almost everything he had. One of the things that the IRS did not seize was a pair of diamond cuff links, given to him by his client and friend, Donald Trump. According to Roger Stone, Cohn's "absolute goal was to die completely broke and owing millions to the IRS. He succeeded in that." He was buried in Union Field Cemetery in Queens, New York. While his tombstone describes him as a lawyer and a patriot, the AIDS Memorial Quilt describes him as "Roy Cohn. Bully. Coward. Victim." It is this latter description that made Tony Kushner interested in Cohn. Reputation In 1978, Ken Auletta wrote in an Esquire profile of Cohn: "He fights his cases as if they were his own. It is war. If he feels his adversary has been unfair, it is war to the death. No white flags. No Mr. Nice Guy. Prospective clients who want to kill their husband, torture a business partner, break the government's legs, hire Roy Cohn. He is a legal executioner—the toughest, meanest, loyalest, vilest, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America." Politico writer Michael Kruse wrote of Cohn: "He was preening and combative, look-at-me lavish and loud. It was an act. The truth was he hated what he was—a lawyer who hated lawyers, a Jewish person who hated Jewish people, and a gay person, fiercely closeted if haphazardly hidden, who hated gay people, calling them 'fags'..." Maureen Dowd wrote in an article for The New York Times which described Matt Tyrnauer's film Where's My Roy Cohn?: "Roy Cohn understood the political value of wrapping himself in the flag. He made good copy. He knew how to manipulate the press and dictate stories to the New York tabloids. He surrounded himself with gorgeous women. There was always something of a nefarious nature going on. He was like a caged animal who would go after you the minute the cage door was opened." Several people have asserted that Cohn had considerable influence on the Presidency of Donald Trump, e.g. Ivy Meeropol, director of Bully,