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.
"I think that this is a real sign of the lawyers not being able to say 'No!' to their client," Weissmann said.
The tactic to take it to the prosecutors comes as both his attorneys and special counsel Jack Smith feud over the extent activity in the federal election subversion case that can be completed while there's a freeze until the former president's appeal of a decision from U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan that the president isn't a king and is therefore not immune from prosecution.
While the case is in stayed, prosecutors have sought the Supreme Court to intervene, provided access to discovery materials and continued to get the judge to prevent Trump from bringing up specific arguments once trial is underway.
“The prosecutors repeatedly engaged in that exact conduct, disobeying the Stay Order at least three times in just two weeks,” reads Trump’s attorneys' filing. “The prosecutors have no justification for their misconduct.”
Weissmann reduced the motion as a document that was below the professional bar.
"As somebody in the legal profession, it's disappointing; this is so far from contempt motion," he said. "The idea is that there is a stay. The stay is really to protect Donald Trump, saying that Donald Trump doesn't need to do anything until something's resolved on appeal."
"The government had said, 'We're going to continue meeting the deadlines'; they can look at the material or not look at the material... So they continued filing things and gave discovery to the defense."
He found it absurd that the defense would be in such a tizzy.
"Usually that's not something that the defense complains about," he explained. "They want discovery. They don't have to look at it and they don't want to."
The main whole purpose of a contempt motion Weissmann suspects is that they can't keep "control" their client and "that they are writing this for an audience unrelated to the court, meaning the sort of MAGA base, and it's really not how you litigate...this is just not done."
