International
Trump’s defense doubts Cohen’s honesty on his second day of cross-examination
The defense of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) attacked on Thursday the credibility of Michael Cohen, who was a lawyer and right-hand man of the former president, during his second day of cross-examination in the criminal trial against the Republican politician.
During the examination of the star witness of the prosecutor’s office on Thursday morning, Trump’s chief lawyer, Todd Blanche, focused on exposing Cohen’s honesty before the jury and not so much on discussing specific issues of the case.
This week, Cohen testified that Trump ordered him to pay $130,000 to silence Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claims to have had relations with Trump in 2006, and detailed how he later reimbursed him for his expenses.
According to The New York Times on Thursday, the tycoon has asked his lawyer to be especially incisive in his interrogation, something that was seen in his questions today.
One of his tactics to call Cohen’s credibility into question before the jury was to tell Trump’s former lawyer to tell the lies he told the 2017 House Intelligence Committee, where Cohen lied under oath, which cost him to be accused of perjury in 2018.
Blanche relied on the fact that Cohen acknowledged under oath in Trump’s civil fraud trial that he had lied at the time.
“And he lied again when he met with the special prosecutor on August 7 (2018), right?” Blanche asked him, to which Cohen responded with a: “Correct.”
Cohen, who was extremely serene during the first three hours of the cross-examination, said he accepted the responsibility for lying under oath.
However, he pointed out that he did it because it was what Trump wanted, and also because “whis at stake (him) personally affected.”
Cohen served a prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2018 to federal campaign funding charges related to the plan to silence the extramarital scandal during Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
Blanche unsuccessfully sought Cohen to admit to having lied about the reason for the calls at the end of 2016 to Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard, indicating that it was not to negotiate Daniels’ payment, as he has testified, but to talk about a series of harassment calls from a 14-year-old prankster.
Another way that Blanche used this Thursday was to emphasize Cohen’s hatred of Trump – whose loyalty disintegrated in 2018 – and asked the former lawyer if he believed that his podcast ‘Mea Culpa’ and interviews he has given to the media helped Donald Trump be accused.
“I gave myself some credit, yes,” Cohen said with a calm tone.
The defense, in addition, today showed several clips of Cohen’s program using rude language to refer to Trump.
In one of the excerpts that were shown this Thursday, the one who was the right-hand man of the Republican politician called Trump “fool Donald.”
Trump’s legal team also hinted at the jury at a possible vendetta by the lawyer part of Trump’s close circle for not having climbed further on the White House’s work scale.
As well as his lack of professionalism in general when pointing out that he had been disabled and that he used an artificial intelligence (AI) program to generate legal summons to his lawyers, a response that turned out to be a hallucination – with a correct structure, but false information – of the software.
Trump, accused in this trial of 34 serious crimes of falsification of commercial records, attended the court today with an entourage of Republicans, something that is not unusual.
His son Eric and more than ten Republican lawmakers sat behind Trump this Thursday, showing that, despite having to spend four days every week in the Manhattan Criminal Court, the boss is in the middle of his campaign for this year’s presidential election.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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