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.
The fixer saw his one-time boss and became comfortably numb.
"It wasn't until I took the seat by the judge's stand that I was confused on how I was gonna be," Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's one time "fixer" and attorney told CNN's Erin Barnett on "Out Front" during an appearance Wednesday night.
"...I felt nothing," Cohen said. "It was so weird that here I am sitting directly across from Donald Trump and felt absolutely nothing."
The same ambivalence came over him when he noticed Trump's son, Eric, seated in the gallery behind his dad.
All in all the disgraced attorney saw a once powerful figure cut down to size.
"I said to myself 'What a sad-looking, pathetic, deflated individual."
Cohen had admitted to carrying out a series of payouts to women who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump.
Trump contended their stories were untrue.
He was then pressed about cooking his boss's books and that he suspects Trump will be forced to pony up as much as $600 million in damages.
As for conflicting statements he made on the stand in the fraud trial this week and those made in 2019 before congressional testimony, Cohen tried to explain that he didn't lie and that it was a matter of decoding the "specific language" of how orders were issued while working for Trump.
Burnett then pressed Cohen to explain his role in exaggerating Trump's wealth.
"Donald Trump speaks like a mob boss... He'll say "You know, I'm not worth $5 billion. I'm worth $6 [billion]. Why don't you guys go and figure it out.'"
The only way to do it is to increase the value of the assets in that statement of financial condition.
"We did it."
Not only that but Cohen said he actually hand-delivered the marked up documents for Trump's green light.
"We then returned to his office, and it took a couple of days, with hand-marked-up documents for his approval...
Not only was it explicit -- there were some that he didn't think were high enough; that he felt we should go back and increase it there too."
