M.L. Nestel joined Raw Story in 2023. An award-winning writer and editor, his work has been published in New York Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine and The Guardian, among other titles. He also produces and writes for true-crime genre TV shows. Prior to that, he served on the Newsweek masthead as a senior writer, wrote as a correspondent at ABC News and held the titles of West Coast bureau chief and senior writer at The Daily Beast. Priors also include working as senior national correspondent at The Daily Mail and investigative reporter at all three NYC tabloids: The New York Post,The New York Daily News and Newsday. He traveled around the country as a national correspondent at The Daily. M.L. published hundreds of stories about underground music and cinema — most notably as a critic for Box Office Magazine and the New York editor at Soma Magazine. He also headed development at Fountainhead Films. M.L. splits his time between Los Angeles and New York.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) was left speechless after CNN's Laura Coates recounted the jury's instructions that led to former President Donald Trump's hush money trial conviction.
The Florida Republican, who is being considered as a prospect to join Trump's 2024 ticket as vice president, suggested that Trump had every right to raise hell at Thursday's presidential debate in Atlanta over his criminal conviction, calling it a "travesty that happened in Lower Manhattan."
"Of course he talks about what happens in Lower Manhattan because at the end of the day his constitutional rights were violated in that courtroom in Manhattan," Donalds said. "And every legal commentator, virtually every legal scholar all agree that that case is going to be overturned at the appellate level because he didn't even know what he was defending himself against."
Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the a scheme to buy the silence of an adult film star.
But they had to reach unanimous verdict on each of the 34 counts.
While Trump is slated to be sentenced on July 11, he has vowed to file an appeal.
Donalds questioned those instructions and expects they will be the centerpiece to Trump's appeal.
"The Supreme Court just came out the other day and said that if you're going to try to convict somebody that that the jury has to be consistent about the actual crime," he said. "That did not occur in Lower Manhattan."
Donalds is likely referring to the case Erlinger v. United States, where the Court ruled in the felon's unlawful possession of a firearm that "the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury to make the determination beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant's past offenses were committed on separate occasions."
That's where Coates, a former federal prosecutor, pounced, telling Donalds and viewers about the "nuance of the New York jury instruction where they did not have to agree on the underlying predicate crime that would elevate it from a misdemeanor to a felony but they had to be unanimous in their overall decision. I'll be very curious to see how that plays out at the appellate level."
