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.
He debunked MyPillow's Mike Lindell's $5 million challenge and now a federal judge is paving the way for him to collect the prize.
Robert Zeidman, a Nevada-based computer forensics expert who happened to vote for former President Donald Trump, produced a 15-page report to prove false Lindell's supposed evidence that the Chinese interfered with meddling with the voting machines in the 2020 election.
The "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge" was accepted by Zeidman and today in Minneapolis, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim ruled Zeidman “is awarded $5 million plus post-judgment interest beginning April 19, 2023, to be paid within 30 days of issuance of this Order, per the Arbitration Award.”
Lindell is expected to appeal the decision in what he called a “corrupt” case.
Shortly after the gains in court, Zeidman appeared on CNN's "Out Front" to tease what he will do should Lindell pay him the reward he earned, noting he's already preparing to do good with the windfall.
"...if I do get this money, I plan to put it towards nonprofits that look into election reliability and I'm already working with Nevada Policy Research Institute where I live in Nevada because I think I wish that people from both parties would come together," Zeidman said. "I knew people in the 2020 sorry, 2000 election, Bush v Gore, and it was mostly Democrats who said the machines were hacked or not working, then again, recently it's the Republican saying this.
"It seems like reasonable people can come together and come up with systems we agree we need."
Despite all the good intentions, Zeidman remains cautiously optimistic he'll see a dime of Lindell's dough.
"I still have some doubts that I'll see it," he said. Lindell has some ability to keep appealing and I think the appeal should be denied pretty quickly."
"There's really no grounds for appeal at this point, but he can drag it on for awhile until unfortunately, there are rumors that he's running out of money and it doesn't surprise me."
