By Mark Cohen
Mark Cohen is an attorney and former general counsel at HIAS.
Until February 2024, I had never heard of Laura Loomer, the woman who reportedly persuaded President Donald Trump last week to fire the head of the National Security Agency along with several members of the National Security Council, and whom Trump, while denying her influence, called a “very good patriot.”
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
So it came as quite a shock when the communications department at my then-employer, HIAS (formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), discovered that she had called me out in a post on X as the attorney for Jeffrey Epstein’s procurer and for a notorious crypto mega-scammer.
The only fact Loomer got right in her post is that a lawyer named Mark Cohen was general counsel at HIAS. That was I. But if a lawyer named Mark Cohen represented Ghislaine Maxwell and Sam Bankman-Fried, it most certainly was not I.
Advertisement
Loomer is Jewish. So she must know that “Cohen” is like the “Smith” or “Jones” of Jewish surnames and that a significant number of Jews are lawyers.
Follow Trump’s first 100 Days
Loomer professes to be an investigative journalist. Had she undertaken a 20-second search of Martindale-Hubbell’s free online directory of U.S. lawyers, she would have found more than two dozen attorneys named Mark Cohen. Thus, there was a less than 5 percent chance I was the Mark Cohen who purportedly represented Maxwell and Bankman-Fried. But in Loomer’s fevered “aha moment,” she informed her 1.6 million X followers that I “must be the lawyer hired by elite, Jewish criminals.”
Far more concerning, Loomer accused HIAS of “actively facilitating the invasion of the US with taxpayer money,” echoing the justification offered by the man who killed 11 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.
For the record, HIAS is the world’s oldest refugee protection organization, initially founded in 1903 to assist Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. Today, it is one of 10 primarily faith-based nonprofit organizations selected by the federal government to help legally recognized refugees settle in the United States, and it assists asylum applicants fleeing human trafficking and persecution in entering the country lawfully.
That someone as reckless as Loomer apparently has the president’s ear should keep every sane person up at night.
P.S. There is more than one Mark Cohen in Silver Spring, Maryland, where I live.
Mark Cohen is an attorney and former general counsel at HIAS.
Until February 2024, I had never heard of Laura Loomer, the woman who reportedly persuaded President Donald Trump last week to fire the head of the National Security Agency along with several members of the National Security Council, and whom Trump, while denying her influence, called a “very good patriot.”
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
So it came as quite a shock when the communications department at my then-employer, HIAS (formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), discovered that she had called me out in a post on X as the attorney for Jeffrey Epstein’s procurer and for a notorious crypto mega-scammer.
The only fact Loomer got right in her post is that a lawyer named Mark Cohen was general counsel at HIAS. That was I. But if a lawyer named Mark Cohen represented Ghislaine Maxwell and Sam Bankman-Fried, it most certainly was not I.
Advertisement
Loomer is Jewish. So she must know that “Cohen” is like the “Smith” or “Jones” of Jewish surnames and that a significant number of Jews are lawyers.
Follow Trump’s first 100 Days
Loomer professes to be an investigative journalist. Had she undertaken a 20-second search of Martindale-Hubbell’s free online directory of U.S. lawyers, she would have found more than two dozen attorneys named Mark Cohen. Thus, there was a less than 5 percent chance I was the Mark Cohen who purportedly represented Maxwell and Bankman-Fried. But in Loomer’s fevered “aha moment,” she informed her 1.6 million X followers that I “must be the lawyer hired by elite, Jewish criminals.”
Far more concerning, Loomer accused HIAS of “actively facilitating the invasion of the US with taxpayer money,” echoing the justification offered by the man who killed 11 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.
For the record, HIAS is the world’s oldest refugee protection organization, initially founded in 1903 to assist Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. Today, it is one of 10 primarily faith-based nonprofit organizations selected by the federal government to help legally recognized refugees settle in the United States, and it assists asylum applicants fleeing human trafficking and persecution in entering the country lawfully.
That someone as reckless as Loomer apparently has the president’s ear should keep every sane person up at night.
P.S. There is more than one Mark Cohen in Silver Spring, Maryland, where I live.
Last edited:
