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 ink barely dried on the Supreme Court's immunity ruling before Donald Trump's lawyers filed papers to compel New York Judge Juan Merchan to sideline his hush money trial guilty verdict and push back his sentencing.
He didn't have to name the players prosecuting Trump and others being tested after the ruling, including special prosecutor Jack Smith, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County DA Fani Willis; not to mention state judges like Merchan and Fulton County Superior Court Scott McAfee overseeing the Georgia RICO election interference case.
It also includes federal judges such as U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon overseeing the confidential documents case in Florida, and Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal election subversion case in Washington D.C.
The decision grants presidents astonishing powers without legal reprisal if they are considered core official acts. Private acts are fair game.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor blamed the court for playing kingmaker.
"The president is now a king above the law," reads her dissent.
Honig marveled: "This opinion is a godsend from heaven for Donald Trump."
It's especially favorable because of the lack of specifics that define what exactly defines an "official act."
"The way that the Supreme Court defines 'official act' is astonishingly broad," said Honig. "...It's also so vague that it's going to be almost impossible for Judge Merchan for Judge Chutkan to apply it."
