Claire Conger

I opened Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits, by attorney James Zirin, and I thought: Too long to read; but the book turns out to be quick and fascinating.

Yes, you read that right, 3,500 lawsuits. How is that even possible?

Trump started at age 27, by Mr. Zirin’s telling, because he didn’t want to abide by the Fair Housing Act. He meets Roy Cohn, the nefarious lawyer who worked for Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt. He learns to counterattack. He sues and counter sues, then settles and declares himself the winner no matter the outcome. He litigates because he likes to, and it’s essentially free for him because he pays his lawyers if he likes the outcome, but not if he doesn’t. It’s Litigation for Lunch!*

It’s a well organized book. James Zirin doesn’t try to go into each lawsuit. Instead he organizes the book in chapters such as “Trump and the Mob” (a lot of cement involved) and “The Professor of Fraud.” (Remember the fake university? No? Well, so much has happened since.) Mr. Zirin definitely did his homework—sixty-five pages of notes!

The most interesting part for me was in the chapter “Trump and His Women” in which Mr. Zirin takes Anderson Cooper to task for not asking pertinent questions of Stormy Daniels when he interviewed her for 60 Minutes, questions like “Who did you understand was paying you $130,000?” Cooper instead focused on Ms. Daniels’s encounters with Trump and his henchmen. It seems that The Donald dangled in front of her the possibility of being a contestant on The Apprentice. He played Harvey Weinstein’s game, but Ms. Daniels was not fooled and she did not need to please The Donald to be successful in her trade. The henchmen are another story.

Mr. Cooper, I guess, just wants to entertain. Maybe that’s why he keeps showing up to work, yes work, looking tawdry in a polo shirt. When he interviewed Ms. Daniels, though, he had the grace to wear a suit.

* “Litigation for Lunch” is a chapter title