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.
Putting Stormy Daniels on the stand to testify under oath paid off for prosecutors in Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial, according to one legal expert.
While Daniels didn't provide smoking-gun evidence that the former president falsified business records to cover up hush-money payments he made to her in 2016, former federal prosecutor Duncan Levin thinks Daniels came off as not only credible but said her "terrible" tale needed to be told.
"Remember that, at the end of the day, it solidified what came out on the direct examination, which is that Trump was almost like a predator," Levin said while appearing on MSNBC's "Alex Wagner Tonight". "There is this testimony in direct examination that he's sitting there in his hotel suite in his silk pajamas like he's Hugh Hefner, her hands are shaking as she's putting on her gold heeled shoes."
"That was very credible, real stuff that portrayed him in a terrible light."
During much of the time she was on the stand, Trump was seen scowling and shaking his head and at one point "cursing audibly."
But Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles tried to depict Daniels as an extortionist who was determined to gain cash and fame by making her claims.
Levin saw their strategy veer "into all these details to dirty her up and say 'You just shouldn't believe anything she says because she is a porn star and a porn star in a hotel room with Trump couldn't be uncomfortable because she is a porn star."
But Levin also saw it as a calculated risk.
"They didn't really need to call her because, arguably, they've already at this point in the trial established the elements of the crime, they've established the false business records, they've established the intent to defraud the voters, they've established the intent to conceal this conspiracy between The National Enquirer and Michael Cohen and Donald Trump, they've established all of this," he explained.
He continued by contending that "the reason they called her is that it gives voice to this horrific story that Trump was so desperate not to come out, right on the heels of the 'Access Hollywood' [tape], he found out, the Trump campaign found that these two women, Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels were about to sell their stories — and the jury got to hear what that story was and it was terrible."
