FILM STAR SEAGAL AT SWEARING IN OF VLAD
PORN STAR’S TESTIMONY
VLADIMIR Putin was sworn in for his fifth term as Russian President in front of 2,500 guests, who included Hollywood action hero Steven Seagal and Night Wolves biker gang leader Alexander Zaldostanov, also known as The Surgeon.
At the ceremony inside the gilded Grand Kremlin Palace, Putin placed his hand on the Russian Constitution and vowed to defend it.
He first became the country’s leader in May 2000, pledging at the time to “preserve and develop democracy” and “take care of Russia”.
He has since launched a full-scale war on Ukraine, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties, and extinguished all opposition either through arrest, assassination or during the recent questionable election.
Contest
Officially, Putin won more than 87 per cent of the vote in the March presidential ballot but he had faced no serious challenger in a contest widely seen as neither free, nor fair.
Russian opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya, whose husband Alexei died, aged 47, in prison in February, said ahead of yesterday’s ceremony that Russia is being led “by a liar, a thief and a murderer”.
She vowed: “This will come to an end.”
As he entered the hall, Putin was greeted with applause from his guests, who his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said had been invited to the ceremony.
Senior members of the Russian government, including Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, lined the red carpet as he strode in.
DONALD Trump told porn star Stormy Daniels she reminded him of his daughter before he had sex with her, a court heard.
The actress testified yesterday in the former US president’s hush money trial.
If found guilty, he could be imprisoned for up to four years.
The case centres on an alleged $130,000 (€121,000) payment to Daniels, who had been in talks with the National Enquirer to sell her story.
It is alleged lawyer Michael Cohen paid her to prevent the allegations emerging ahead of the 2016 presidential vote, which Trump won, and that Trump later paid back Cohen, obscuring the real nature of the payments in internal business papers.
Daniels yesterday gave trial jurors a detailed account of an alleged tryst with Trump (77) after a golf tournament in 2006. She said Trump told her at the golf event in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, he was impressed that she worked behind the camera as well as acted.
Daniels told jurors: “He said, ‘You direct, too. You must be the smart one’.”
Blonde
Commenting on her also being intelligent and blonde like his second child Ivanka, Daniels said Trump remarked: “You remind me of my daughter.”
She testified that she had been due to have dinner with colleagues when Trump invited her to his hotel suite.
She said her publicist advised her to skip the dinner in favour of seeing Trump, as it would make a good story.
Once in the suite, Daniels said she teased Trump for wearing silk or satin pyjamas, saying he looked like Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner.
“I told him to change, and he obliged, very politely,” Daniels added.
She said he came back into the room wearing trousers and a shirt and, as they chatted, seemed unconcerned about his relationship with wife Melania, who had just given birth to their son Barron. Daniels claimed: “He said, ‘Don’t worry about that. We don’t even sleep in the same room’.”
To the court’s amusement, she said she rolled up a magazine with Trump’s face on the cover and spanked him with it in a semi-serious chastisement for what she perceived as his arrogant behaviour.
After a trip to the hotel suite’s bathroom, she said she re-emerged to find Trump sitting on the bed wearing just his boxer shorts.
It was “like a jump scare”, she said, adding: “And that’s when I had that moment where I felt like the room spun in slow motion.”
She said she thought: “Great,
I’ve put myself in this bad situation.”
Daniels added: “The next thing I know, I was on the bed, somehow on the opposite side of the bed from where we had been standing.
“I had my clothes and my shoes off.” She confirmed to prosecutor Susan Hoffinger that they then had sex.
She said a condom was not used. Daniels was asked whether she felt anything unusual during the sex with Trump, but judge Juan Merchan upheld defence lawyers’ objections and the question was not answered.
The porn star said that after the brief sex with Trump, he said to her: “Oh, it was great, let’s get together again, Honeybunch.”
“I just left as fast as I could,” she testified. During her testimony, Trump sat silently at the defence table with no