International
Trump, portrayed by his former lawyer: Fixation for silencing porn actress and reluctant to pay

The testimony of Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, during this Monday’s session in the criminal trial faced by the former president in New York portrayed him as someone with such a fixation for silencing the ‘affair’ with porn actress Stormy Daniels as a will to try to dodge payments.
Emails, invoices and even a recording of an audio of Trump himself were provided today by the Prosecutor’s Office during Cohen’s statement, which assured that the former president, accused of forging accounting documents to silence Daniels and thus protect his 2016 campaign, prioritized his political career over his marriage.
“I want it to be hidden until the elections are passed (2016). If I win, it will have no relevance because I will already be president; if I lose, I won’t even care,” Cohen paraphrased Trump to add that Trump’s obsession with silencing the adult film performer “was for the campaign, not for Melania (his wife).”
Melania – who has not accompanied the former president on any day of this trial – and Trump met in 1998, when he was 52 years old and she was 28, and the couple arrived at the altar in 2005, just a year before the alleged slip with Daniels; an adventure that, if proven, would have happened when she was pregnant.
Despite Cohen’s quiet face, these harsh statements provoked some of Trump’s most agitated-headed denial movements today. Meanwhile, a hundred journalists and ordinary citizens scrutinized their gestures with maximum expectation from the court or a surrounding room to follow the process.
Cohen, sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 for illicit financing of the Republican presidential campaign two years earlier, defined as “catastrophic” the possibility that the alleged sexual relationship between him and Daniels would come to light.
“Women are going to hate me… Men may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign,” the former head of the U.S. Executive allegedly said according to Cohen’s account.
Trump agreed to seal an agreement in 2016 with Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, to send the story to limbo for $130,000, but the transfer was postponed again and again, and the porn actress’s legal team began to become impatient to the point of threating with publishing the story in the Daily Mail media, according to the lawyer, who is now disabled.
He then detailed multiple meetings with Allen Weisselberg, former financial director of the Trump Organization, to solve the problem.
Among the proposals that were considered were, according to Cohen, creating an event of the institution whose entries were aimed at paying for it or presenting it as a “business opportunity” to the related tabloid The National Enquirer to buy the story and apply the ‘catch and kill’ technique, for which history would never see the light.
The former president, who even boasted with his condition of “billionaire”, avoided the payment and this then fell to Cohen, according to his version, who agreed to advance the money and then receive it through a screen company and under the false concept of legal services provided to the Trump Organization.
Finally, the premium that was paid to advance the money was “disappointing” for Cohen, who said that he was very angry with this undisclosed amount and that he let Weisselberg know: “I expressed how angry he was in a very clear language (…) I was even surprised how irritated I was,” he said as Trump sketched a half-smile.
Cohen also corroborated today the scheme set out by the Prosecutor’s Office in which, as a former lawyer for the former president, he allegedly worked hand in hand with the former editor of The National Enquirer, David Pecker, to acquire the exclusive rights of other extramarital Trump scandals and exercise ‘catch and kill’, as well as favoring the publication of positive news towards the future Republican candidate, along with other negative news about his political rivals.
International
Trump urges Putin to reach peace deal

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his desire for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “reach a deal” to end the war in Ukraine, while also reaffirming his willingness to impose sanctions on Russia.
“I want to see him reach an agreement to prevent Russian, Ukrainian, and other people from dying,” Trump stated during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House.
“I think he will. I don’t want to have to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil,” the Republican leader added, recalling that he had already taken similar measures against Venezuela by sanctioning buyers of the South American country’s crude oil.
Trump also reiterated his frustration over Ukraine’s resistance to an agreement that would allow the United States to exploit natural resources in the country—a condition he set in negotiations to end the war.
International
Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links

A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.
Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.
However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”

The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.
“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.
The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.
His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”
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