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.
A hearing Tuesday to determine whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from prosecuting former President Donald Trump's Georgia election racketeering case was big on gossip but spare on financials, a confused legal expert says.
Karen Agnifilo, former Manhattan Chief Assistant District Attorney, appeared on CNN's "The Situation Room" to discuss what she described as a baffling day in court.
"It's very strange to me why none of the testimony either on the first day of the hearing or this day today of the hearing focused on a financial conflict of interest and things like, 'How did you decide to hire him?' 'What was the process?' Was he vetted?' 'Who discussed the amount of money you are going to pay him when he submitted his hourly invoices?' 'Was somebody looking at those invoices and was their quality controls in place?' Or whatever it was?" said Agnifilo.
"There could have been a whole line of questioning that established a potential financial conflict of interest, regardless of when a relationship started between Fani Willis and Nathan Wade."
Tuesday's two-hour session marked another day in the evidentiary hearing in which Terrence Bradley, former divorce attorney for special prosecutor Nathan Wade, took the witness stand.
Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for Trump's co-defendant Michael Roman, seemingly tried to prove that both Willis and Wade perjured themselves about when the relationship began.
Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, brought Bradly back in after determining Wade's interactions with the attorney were not covered by attorney-client privilege.
In court, he reminded the public that a “disqualification can occur if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one."
Agnifilo identified the central question she thinks matters the most; and that is whether someone can "establish that there is a disqualifying financial conflict of interest."
So far, she doesn't believe any of the attorneys for all of the defendants taking cracks at questioning the central players involved has been even attempted to answer.
