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 GOP congressman admitted that he and other lawmakers probing President Joe Biden and his son's actions to build up an impeachment inquiry were aware the key witness testimony in the case was shaky.
With the star witness in the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden facing felonies for cooking up a bogus story shaped by high-level Russian intelligence contacts pinning the president and his son Hunter for taking $5 million apiece in bribes — Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) came forward to acknowledge that they knew it wasn't solid well in advance.
With Alexander Smirnov being accused of telling tall tales to the FBI, only to turn around and admit that "officials with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story" about Hunter Biden — Buck, who isn't running for reelection, appeared on CNN's "The Source" with Kaitlan Collins stressed that the revelation wasn't a surprise to him.
"Obviously, this witness, and we were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness's testimony, we were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known, and yet people, my colleagues went out and talked to the public about how this was credible and how it was damning and how it proved President Biden's — at the time Vice President Biden's — complicity in receiving bribes."
Without saying their names, he was clearly referencing the public faces attempting to put both Biden and his son Hunter on the hot seat, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY), and criticizing them for making public declarations about the solid evidence Smirnov supplied to buttress the case.
Buck said that the impeachment effort as it stands is crumbling.
"It appears to absolutely to be false and to really undercuts the nature of the charges," he said. "We've always been looking for a link between what Hunter Biden received in terms of money and Joe Biden's activities or Joe Biden receiving money.
"This clearly is not a credible link at this point."
