LUTHMANN NOTE: Patrick Feeney of Shelton, Connecticut, submitted a gag motion that looks less like child protection and more like strategic censorship wrapped in the pretext of parental concern. His teenage son deserves genuine privacy; Patrick does not get immunity from scrutiny. A self-advertised hedge-fund and crypto expert cannot present modest support-income figures while a million-dollar portfolio screenshot hangs over the case, leave sworn concerns about his stability unanswered, and then demand that the courthouse punish future reporting. No court has adjudicated him a fraud or declared him mentally ill—not yet. But that makes evidence more necessary, not questions less permissible. Produce the financial records. Authenticate the crypto account. Address Matthew Maynard’s affidavit. Supply the relevant adult evaluation or a competent rebuttal. After thirteen years of family-court warfare, Judge Kowalski should protect the child without turning him into a human privacy shield. The courthouse cannot gag arithmetic—and Patrick Feeney cannot litigate his way out of answering the questions. This piece is “Patrick Feeney’s Million Dollar Mystery,” first available on The Family Court Circus.

By Rick LaRivière with Richard Luthmann

The Divorce That Would Not Die—And the Motion to Make Questions Disappear

(STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT) — Michelle and Patrick Feeney’s divorce sits before Superior Court Judge Ronald Kowalski in Stamford under docket FST-FA12-4023662-S. The Superior Court previously entered an uncontested dissolution judgment on February 19, 2013. Thirteen years later, the case remains trapped in postjudgment warfare, its docket swollen beyond 500 entries with contempt motions, emergency custody applications, professional appointments, discovery disputes and repeated attempts to renegotiate a family that Connecticut supposedly divorced long ago.

Now Patrick Feeney wants a gag order.

In an August 5 motion, he asks Judge Kowalski to prohibit Michelle from discussing broad categories of the family litigation with journalists while postjudgment proceedings remain pending. He seeks restrictions on medical, therapeutic, educational and custody information concerning their minor son; removal or requested removal of certain future publications; six months of parenting classes for Michelle; and a proposed $2,500 fine for every new article—or even a repackaged version of an existing one—that allegedly violates the order.

Patrick says the motion is about protecting his teenage son’s privacy and emotional welfare.

But Patrick’s motion reaches further. It attacks Michelle’s participation in media coverage, accuses her of having “perhaps even paid” journalist Richard Luthmann, and attempts to place future reporting under a judicial threat.

After thirteen years of litigation, the obvious question is unavoidable: Is Patrick protecting his child—or trying to make the questions about Patrick disappear?

Patrick Feeney’s Million Dollar Mystery: The Screenshot and the Poverty Math

Patrick publicly presents himself as a sophisticated money man. His “Feeney Factor” profile boasts more than 20 years trading at hedge funds and promises “proprietary algorithms” for stocks and crypto. It is also larded with pictures of him and his teenage son—the same one he asks Judge Kowalski to “protect” with a gag order.

Another profile says he created and sold Bitcoin Nation within ten months. Blockworks described him as a former quantitative hedge-fund portfolio manager.

The family-court numbers tell a less glamorous story.

A Blockfolio portfolio screenshot from 2021 shows a “Total Portfolio Value” of approximately $1.01 million, including $215,000 in U.S. dollars, 9.19 bitcoin, and approximately 135 ether.

Professional analysis shows that Patrick Feeney is worth millions.

Meanwhile, in child-support worksheets from April 2022, Patrick used a gross weekly income figure of $1,096.

Michelle’s April 2022 contempt motion separately alleged that Patrick owed $5,736 in child support, $38,295.25 for his share of extracurricular expenses, $21,705.50 in guardian-ad-litem fees and other amounts. Another motion alleged that he failed to produce documents by a court-ordered January 4, 2022 deadline and had not updated a November 2021 financial affidavit.

Assets are not income, and a million-dollar display does not, by itself, prove fraud. But when a self-advertised trading expert presents modest support income while his former spouse produces a seven-figure portfolio image and alleges obstructed discovery, “trust me” is not an accounting method.

In Connecticut, “trust me” is a demand for forensic disclosure. It’s also Yiddish for “F-You.”

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Patrick Feeney’s Million Dollar Mystery: The Mental-Health Record

Patrick also wants the court to stop Michelle from discussing treatment providers, diagnoses, and other psychological information involving their son, while Patrick uses the same teenager as a marketing tool.

In reality, it is Patrick’s own condition and conduct that is squarely at issue.

In a notarized 2019 affidavit, licensed marriage and family therapist Matthew Maynard wrote that he was “concerned about Patrick Feeney’s stability.” Maynard described Patrick’s speech as pressured, his focus and expression as tangential and defensive, and his reactions as increasingly “hostile and extreme.” He recommended a custody study. Those are sworn professional observations. They are not, standing alone, a psychiatric diagnosis.

In November 2022, parenting coordinator Heather Ehinger withdrew, describing an “unhealthy atmosphere” in which she felt “uncomfortable, threatened, harassed” and unsafe. Her letter was addressed to both parents and did not identify which one caused the atmosphere. It cannot be pinned exclusively on Patrick, but raises an additional red flag.

Michelle makes more explosive claims. She alleges that Patrick disclosed a cyclothymic diagnosis and suicidal ideation, later exhibited paranoia and delusional behavior, and was identified in a court-ordered custody evaluation as having bipolar disorder with psychotic features. She says the evaluator recommended treatment.

That distinction matters. “Mentally ill” remains a disputed question, not a published diagnosis. Yet Maynard’s affidavit is not gossip, Dr. Ehinger’s concerns cannot be lightly dismissed, and thirteen years of emergency filings cannot be erased by shouting “privacy.” Patrick can rebut the allegations, authorize release of his own relevant adult records, or identify contrary findings.

A gag order answers none of these concerns.

Patrick Feeney’s Million Dollar Mystery: The Crypto Prophet, the FTX Myth, and the Price of Silence

Patrick’s financial persona depends on projection: veteran trader, algorithm builder, bitcoin entrepreneur and market seer. CryptoSlate reported that he claimed he had escaped the FTX collapse by studying Sam Bankman-Fried’s body language.

An Instagram capture contains an FTX-sponsored advertisement. Patrick’s November 6, 2022 caption says: “FTX sign up? Nah. Head for the door.” That evidence tends to show that he avoided the SBF scandal and probably retained substantial crypto assets, none of which have been disclosed to Judge Kowalski.

The evidentiary record establishes an unmistakable collision between Patrick’s public branding and an unresolved family-court record: sworn professional concern about his conduct, disputed mental-health allegations, and a thirteen-year litigation campaign now accompanied by a request to restrict future speech.

Connecticut’s Supreme Court has warned that a gag order can improperly penalize future expression as a prior restraint. See Lafferty v. Jones, 336 Conn. 332 (2021) (discussing the danger that a gag order may improperly penalize future speech as a prior restraint).

Child privacy can justify narrow protections. It does not automatically justify suppressing scrutiny of an adult litigant who himself comes to the court with unclean hands.

Patrick Feeney’s Million Dollar Mystery: Questions Unanswered

Patrick Feeney did not respond to a request for comment before publication of “The Divorce That Never Ends.” We sent detailed questions and gave him every opportunity. Here is what we asked:

From: Richard Luthmann <richard.luthmann@protonmail.com>
Date: On Monday, July 27th, 2026 at 2:57 PM
Subject: REQUEST FOR COMMENT: “The Divorce That Never Ends” — Feeney v. Feeney
To: patrickfeeney@hotmail.com
CC: RickLaRiviere@proton.me, RALafontaine@protonmail.com, mthomasnast@protonmail.com, frankparlato@gmail.com, frankiepressman@protonmail.com, mvolpe998@gmail.com, juliea005@proton.me, msully0916@gmail.com

Mr. Feeney:

We are a group of independent journalists preparing a reported series on Feeney v. Feeney, Connecticut Superior Court docket FST-FA-12-4023662-S.

The working title is: THE DIVORCE THAT NEVER ENDS – Michelle Feeney escaped the marriage in 2013. Connecticut Family Court keeps the war alive in 2026.

The public docket shows that the divorce was filed in 2012, finalized by uncontested judgment in February 2013, and remained active through 2026 with more than 500 docket entries. Those entries include repeated contempt motions, custody modifications, emergency ex parte applications, subpoenas, professional appointments, parenting agreements, and continuing post-judgment proceedings.

We intend to report extensively on the August 2025 custody episode. Court records show that an emergency application filed on August 20 was denied and that another application filed on August 29 was granted, resulting in temporary sole legal and physical custody being awarded to you. Michelle Feeney disputes the allegations in your application and claims that school, medical, therapeutic, and communication records contradict them. She also alleges that notice and scheduling problems prevented a timely, meaningful contest before her relationship with her son was drastically restricted.

We are offering you a full opportunity to respond.

Please address the following:

1. Why did you seek emergency sole custody in August 2025, and what evidence supported each allegation of educational, medical, and psychological harm?
2. Why was a substantially similar application filed nine days after the August 20 application was denied?
3. What materially changed between the denied application and the application that was granted?
4. Did you inform the court that the earlier application had been denied? Please identify where that disclosure appears in your filing.
5. Michelle claims that the child was attending school, activities, and treatment and that your allegations can be disproved by third-party records. What is your response?
6. Why did you seek to prevent or sharply restrict Michelle’s contact with the child rather than request narrower relief pending a full hearing?
7. When and how did you notify Michelle that you had obtained temporary sole custody?
8. Did you oppose unsupervised telephone, electronic, or in-person contact between Michelle and the child? On what factual and clinical basis?
9. The docket reflects numerous emergency custody applications over several years. How many did you file, how many were granted, and why was emergency relief repeatedly necessary in a case governed by detailed parenting agreements?
10. The 2022 agreements required parenting coordination and, in some circumstances, mediation before renewed litigation. Did you complete those procedures before filing the August 2025 application? If not, why not
11. Michelle alleges that you have used repetitive filings, wellness checks, reports and emergency applications to continue the conflict long after the divorce ended. What is your response?
12. Michelle has also made serious allegations concerning your mental-health history, including prior suicidal ideation, paranoia, psychiatric diagnoses and findings allegedly contained in a court-ordered custody evaluation. Do you deny those claims? Did the evaluation recommend that you participate in therapy before custody was reconsidered?
13. Do you authorize release of the relevant portions of the custody evaluation, treatment recommendations and hearing transcripts so the public can assess those competing claims?
14. How much have you spent on lawyers, evaluators, therapists, coordinators and other family-court professionals since the 2013 judgment?
15. Do you believe thirteen years of post-judgment litigation has served your son’s best interests? What, in your view, would finally end the case?

Please provide any responsive court orders, transcripts, school records, medical communications, emails, or other documents you believe correct the record. Material submitted on the record may be quoted or published.

We will accurately report your position and will distinguish established facts, disputed allegations, and personal opinion. A refusal to respond will also be noted.

Please reply as soon as possible, as we seek to go to press soonest. If we do not hear from you until after press time, we will incorporate your responses into a follow-up.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Regards,

Richard Luthmann
Writer, Journalist, and Commentator
Tips or Story Ideas:
(239) 631-5957
richard.luthmann@protonmail.com
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Patrick Feeney’s August 5 motion is now his loudest documented response: stop Michelle from talking, constrain the press pipeline, and attach a price tag to future coverage.

That is not exoneration. It is gasoline.

A Family-Court ‘Forever War’ With No Exit Strategy

Patrick Feeney’s motion does not close this file. It opens another front. A divorce entered in 2013 has consumed thirteen years of postjudgment motions, emergency applications, evaluators, therapists, coordinators, lawyers and labor. Now the courthouse is being asked to supervise what Michelle may say about the machinery that kept the conflict alive.

That is mission creep with a docket number. Every supposed ceasefire produced another dispute. Every professional intervention became another layer of process. Every emergency filing forced a response, another appearance and another expenditure.

The original marriage ended; the war acquired its own bureaucracy, vocabulary and survival instinct.

“If Patrick Feeney wants the questions to end, the answer is not censorship. Produce the financial records. Address the affidavit. Supply the adult evaluation or a competent rebuttal. And explain the discrepancies,” Richard Luthmann said. “This case has the feel of a family-court ‘Forever War,’ dragging on with no purpose and no end in sight. Everyone wants answers.”

The demand is not complicated. Patrick can authenticate or disprove the million-dollar portfolio screenshot. He can identify what assets were disclosed and when. He can answer Maynard’s sworn observations with competent evidence. He can produce the relevant adult evaluation, identify contrary findings, or explain why Michelle’s account is false. Connecticut law already has the mechanism in place.

Billington v. Billington, 220 Conn. 212 (1991) fits Patrick Feeney’s financial record with uncomfortable precision. Connecticut’s Supreme Court held that parties in domestic relations matters owe the court and each other “full and frank disclosure,” and that a material misrepresentation of assets or income strikes at the heart of the judicial process.

If the million-dollar portfolio screen is authenticated—and if Patrick failed to disclose those assets when submitting financial affidavits, negotiating support agreements, or obtaining financial orders—the court should not limit itself to calculating obligations prospectively. It should go back and examine every stipulation and order materially affected by the alleged nondisclosure, particularly the 2022 support proceedings.

Billington eliminated any argument that Michelle Feeney should lose because she failed to discover the deception sooner: the duty belonged to the person legally required to disclose the assets. Silence, concealment, and false financial affidavits cannot become permanent merely because the courthouse once relied upon them.

None of that requires exposing the child’s confidential school or treatment records. Patrick is entitled to contest every accusation. He is entitled to seek narrowly tailored protection for his son.

He is not entitled to transform “child privacy” into an evidentiary blackout over his own finances, behavior, or public claims. Nor is child privacy a shield for fraud on the court.

A family court is supposed to decide disputed facts, not make the questions disappear.

Patrick Feeney seeks a protective order, but he cannot ask Judge Kowalski to sanction the truth from coming out while he has unclean hands in his own disclosures. The courthouse cannot gag arithmetic—and silence cannot audit a million-dollar screenshot.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Family Court’s most vicious weapon is not always the final order. Sometimes it is the temporary order that never dies. An accusation gets filed, an emergency gets declared, and delay quietly delivers the practical result before anyone proves a damn thing. That is not due process. It is punishment by calendar. Paul Gillis’s claims remain disputed. His financial disclosures and outside-work evidence demand examination, not assumptions. Elizabeth “Black Widow” Faulkner’s papers are advocacy, not findings. Judge Jose-Decker can settle the entire controversy the old-fashioned way: put witnesses under oath, admit competent evidence, permit cross-examination, and rule. Until then, the courthouse owns the delay—and the shame. This piece, “Bacon and Bullshit,” is written in the “classical style” of The Family Court Circus, offence intended. Reader discretion advised.

By Richard Luthmann

(ULSTER COUNTY, NEW YORK) – This is not a bruised tomato forgotten behind a warehouse pallet. It is a child’s life. Yet Ulster County Family Court has treated the Garber-Gillis case like judicial freezer meat: slap on temporary restraints, stack up accusations, shove the whole mess into cold storage, and hope nobody notices the date.

Everybody noticed.

The family-offense petition filed by Paul Gillis on September 5, 2025, is now approaching its first birthday without a completed fact-finding hearing. Temporary has become a sick joke.

The current judge holding the bag is Hon. E. Danielle Jose-Decker. She did not create every order in this sprawling circus. Judge Sarah Rakov handled earlier phases and recused herself on October 31, 2025, expressly to avoid even the appearance of impropriety after the specter of a court-involved pedophile ring was raised.

Other judges performed kosher butchering on interim orders. Fine. That history does not hand Jose-Decker a lifetime hall pass. By June 10, 2026, she had consolidated the protection and custody matters and scheduled trial for July 29.

“Everybody showed up that day, but the promised trial dissolved into an hours-long lawyers-only conference,” a protected source with knowledge said.

Blog legal analyst and Family Court political martyr Paul Boyne’s verdict is blunt: dismiss for failure to prosecute.

“Gillis has produced accusation, theater and delay—not proof—and that the court has allowed an ex parte emergency posture to become the permanent weather system,” Boyne said. “The cure for that is to rain bacon with their bullshit all at once in Ulster County Family Court.”

This is an Article 8 civil family-offense proceeding, and his central outrage lands squarely: a court cannot use the word “temporary” as embalming fluid. New York law permits a temporary order of protection for good cause, but it also says such an order is not a finding of wrongdoing. That distinction becomes toilet paper when the court delays the actual hearing for months and years while the temporary order governs real life.

Appellate courts, in related family and protection-order settings, have recognized the obvious due-process problem: when an interim order severs or sharply burdens family contact, the restrained person is entitled to an expedited chance to challenge it. No honest court or functional judicial brain needs a constitutional seminar to understand that emergency relief is supposed to be a bridge to adjudication, not a substitute for it.

The child trapped inside this judicial slaughterhouse has already endured years of parental warfare. She is not a docket number. She is not a bargaining chip. She is not a laboratory rat for a pack of robe-wearing bureaucrats who apparently believe childhood can be adjourned indefinitely.

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Yet Paul Gillis has operated the Family Court machinery like his own private leverage factory: file another accusation, scream “emergency,” demand another temporary restriction, and then sit back while the calendar crawls through the sewer. Every delay rewards the litigant who weaponizes delay—and Gillis appears perfectly happy to keep cashing the checks.

And Gillis’s credibility problem is written all over the exhibits. He minimized his freelance work under oath while contemporaneous calendar entries, a sworn motion, LinkedIn records, and Fortune’s own public photograph pointed toward an additional professional relationship demanding full financial discovery.

Even his family-offense petition says the physical was arranged “without” his consent while its own exhibit quotes him saying, “She needs the physical. So I will allow it.” That establishes a documentary truth gap wide enough to drive a subpoena truck through.

No matter. The temporary-order conveyor belt keeps rolling in his direction. And that is the obscenity. Gillis does not have to prove his accusations if Judge Jose-Decker allows the accusations themselves to become the punishment. Why bother winning a final judgment when delay already delivers control, disruption, crushing legal bills, emotional exhaustion, and another month in which a child’s life is governed by stale emergency paperwork?

The longer this judge stalls, the more Gillis’s version hardens into courthouse folklore—not because witnesses testified, exhibits survived scrutiny, or truth emerged under cross-examination, but because nobody wearing a robe has demonstrated the backbone to finish the damn hearing.

Meanwhile, the child eats the damage. Gillis files. The Black Widow, Faulkner, feeds the paper furnace. Lawyers invoice. Judge Jose-Decker adjourns. Gillis keeps shoveling lard-and-bullshit accusations, selective narratives, and financial fog into the Family Court machine, and the machine keeps swallowing without chewing. Then everyone pretends the resulting wreckage is parenting.

It is not parenting. It is procedural hostage-taking. Gillis supplies the paperwork. Faulkner ties the knots. Ulster County Family Court hands them the rope. Every closed-door conference postpones the only event that matters: witnesses sworn, exhibits tested, credibility measured, findings made. Until then, allegations are allegations—no matter how many times Elizabeth Faulkner photocopies them or Gillis repeats them.

For a year.

The farce gets uglier because Judge Jose-Decker is not merely some overwhelmed visiting jurist wandering the hallway with a broken stapler. In March 2026, New York’s court system, the Office of Court Administration, made her Administrative Judge of the entire Third Judicial District while she continued serving as an Acting Family Court Judge. She now helps oversee the machinery whose delay she is presiding over. That makes the excuse drawer awfully shallow. If the regional boss cannot move one child-centered case from temporary orders to tested facts, what exactly is she administering?

Let us be precise. The present record proves delay, temporary restraints, and an aborted trial date. The charitable explanation is administrative incompetence. The uglier explanation is institutional comfort with a process that keeps one family bleeding and the lawyers billing. Stupid or in on it? The documents do not answer that. Judge Jose-Decker’s conduct makes the question inevitable.

Judge Jose-Decker can end the disgrace: hold the hearing, enforce strict time limits, make findings, and stop governing a child’s life through stale emergency paper. Until then, shame is not overheated rhetoric. It is the only honest caption for the “Ulster County Bacon and Bullshit Show.”

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LUTHMANN NOTE: This article is part of our continuing investigative series on Phillip Kenner, Ken Jowdy, and the competing financial narratives surrounding the Kenner prosecution and Jowdy’s Cabo empire. Federal prosecutors convicted Kenner after arguing that he diverted millions of dollars belonging to NHL-player investors from a Hawaii real-estate venture into Jowdy’s Mexican golf developments, where the money was allegedly lost. But governing documents, sworn investor testimony, lawsuits, and FBI notes indicate that Kenner had authority to make loans, that the transfers were discussed with investors, and that Jowdy promised repayment with interest once permanent Cabo financing arrived. The bridge loans went bad, Jowdy failed to repay millions, and Kenner went to federal prison. Years later, the documentary record forces the question the government never squarely answered: Who was the real criminal—the man who arranged the loans, or the man who took the money and never paid it back? The series will continue to examine the money, the witnesses, the changing stories, and the federal evidence record. This piece is “Loans Ken Jowdy Couldn’t Erase,” first available on NY News Press.

By Richard Luthmann

Loans Were Not Forbidden

(CENTRAL ISLIP, NEW YORK) – The federal prosecution of Phillip Kenner in the Eastern District of New York ultimately sold jurors a clean story: client money intended for Hawaii was diverted to Mexico, concealed and stolen. Whether that was the truth or fiction, Kenner was convicted under the government’s theory, sentenced to 17 years for wire fraud, lost his post-trial motions, and lost his appeal.

Those judgments stand as the legal facts our justice system produced.

But the surviving documents pose a problem for anyone who tries to turn that conviction into a certificate of innocence for high-profile golf-course developer Ken Jowdy. The money did not vanish into a theoretical Mexican fog.

Complaints, disclosures, grand jury testimony, multiple lawsuits to recover the loans, arbitration testimony, and FBI notes repeatedly identify Jowdy as the borrower or beneficiary of loans from Hawaii-related investment entities.

The governing document is the proper starting point. The 2004 bylaws for Little Isle IV described the company as an investor group established to pursue a series of opportunities selected by its managing member.

More importantly, the bylaws expressly stated that Little Isle IV could “participate as a lender” when the managing member believed lending was in the company’s best interest.

A separate projects provision authorized investment in real estate, outside ventures, private-equity funds and lending opportunities. Phillip Kenner was identified as managing member, while John Kaiser signed as a member through Moana View Estates LLC.

That does not resolve whether every loan was prudent, fully disclosed or legally authorized under every applicable agreement. It destroys the false simplicity that lending itself was alien to the company’s purpose. The entity was expressly empowered to lend.

The remaining questions are factual:

• Who approved the Jowdy loans?

• What security was promised?

• What disclosures were made?

• What interest was due?

• What repayments occurred?

• And why did Jowdy retain the benefit when the expected repayment allegedly failed?

The bylaws do not acquit Kenner. They place Jowdy’s debt where it belongs—at the center of the accounting.

Loans Ken Jowdy Couldn’t Erase: What the Investors Said Under Oath

Former NHL Star Turner Stevenson gave the Southern District grand jury a blunt description of the Hawaii-to-Cabo decision.

Asked whether Hawaii money could be used for Mexico, Stevenson testified that the investor group got together because land in Mexico had to be secured while permanent financing was pending.

Asked whether he agreed to transfer money into Cabo, he answered yes.

Asked who made the decision, he said, “I think all of us as a group.” Asked who belonged to that group, he replied, “All the guys who were invested in it,” including Kenner’s clients and other investors associated with Jowdy.

Bryan Berard’s 2009 arbitration testimony was similarly difficult to reconcile with a secret-theft narrative. Berard testified that he knew money was being lent to Jowdy, understood it would earn interest for investors, and described the transaction as lending Jowdy money for the Mexican property.

He also testified that his family lawyer reviewed documents before he signed them.

John Kaiser’s 2009 arbitration testimony went further. Kaiser said unused Hawaii funds could be loaned while land acquisitions were pending. He testified that the money going to Jowdy was supposed to be a short-term loan lasting approximately three to six months. He said he had raised additional money from friends and family who expected to participate.

Kaiser described the loan as backed by land and carrying a 15 percent interest rate. He testified that he would not have lent the money absent the expectation that Jowdy would repay it when the Cabo financing closed.

Asked whether he blamed Kenner for Jowdy’s nonpayment, Kaiser said no.

These witnesses could be mistaken. Their memories could be incomplete. But sworn testimony from multiple investors cannot be converted into nothing simply because it complicates the winning prosecution narrative.

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Loans Ken Jowdy Couldn’t Erase: The FBI Notes Point Back to Jowdy

The FBI’s own interview notes add another layer. Notes attributed to John Kaiser’s October 2010 interview record meetings with Jowdy in New York, including at Jowdy’s restaurant, Trust, and at another bar. The notes state that Hawaii and funding from Hawaii to Mexico were discussed.

They further record that Kaiser saw Jowdy in Mexico and discussed Jowdy’s desire to borrow money from Hawaii, with repayment expected after a closing. Another page states there “was Agreement to borrow $ from Hawaii” and records assurances that the money would come back and be repaid.

The interview notes attributed to Jowdy are even more consequential. They are handwritten agent notes referencing Baja Development Corporation, owned by Jowdy; money coming from Kenner or his entities; Little Isle funds going to Diamante Del Mar; and amounts being treated as loans or converted to equity.

They also reference promissory notes, Baja Management, and investor funds.

The point is simple: the government possessed records in which Jowdy and Kaiser were questioned about loans from Hawaii-related entities into Jowdy’s Mexican projects.

The loans were not invented in a prison cell after Kenner’s conviction. They appeared in lawsuits, investor disclosures, arbitration testimony, grand-jury testimony and FBI interview notes as many as six years earlier.

There’s still a conviction supported by facts the government learned through investigation from the people who knew of and authorized all of it; yet it was required to ignore witness testimony requiring amnesia.

But why? That won’t be solved now.

That leaves Jowdy with a debt problem and the government with a narrative problem:

• If the loans were entirely fictitious, why did so many contemporaneous documents describe them?

• If they were real, why was the public story allowed to collapse into the proposition that the money had only one possible criminal explanation?

• How did every testimony for years discuss, acknowledge, sue for, and corroborate authorized and expected loans to Jowdy, and their repayment?

• Empirical records tell the spine of truth; why Kenner and not the recipient of the loan?

Even with delayed amnesia, the money delivered nothing to Kenner, only Jowdy.

Loans Ken Jowdy Couldn’t Erase: The Lawsuits Supplied the Dollar Amounts

The Arizona complaint filed by Little Isle IV, Ula Makika and Kenner alleged that Jowdy repeatedly requested financing for his personal and business ventures, promised repayment within months and directed where the money should be wired. The complaint alleged that approximately $8 million was paid to Jowdy, his creditors or companies he controlled and that the money was not fully repaid.

It listed transaction after transaction involving Baja Development Corporation, Diamante Del Mar, aircraft-related entities, management companies and other recipients. For Little Isle IV alone, the complaint alleged payments totaling approximately $6.15 million and repayments of roughly $1.1 million.

For Ula Makika, it alleged $1.485 million in payments and approximately $1.123 million returned, all of it highly specific and tied to dates, amounts, and bank records.

The 2009 Arizona conflict disclosures, signed independently by Darryl Sydor and Michael Peca, and by 19 Little Isle investors, advised them that the purpose of the litigation was to recover approximately $5 million allegedly loaned to Jowdy and not repaid. The disclosure stated that Jowdy denied the transfers were loans, characterized them as investments, asserted statute-of-frauds and limitations defenses, and disputed the signature on a promissory note.

The same documents listed a remarkable network of concurrent litigation involving Jowdy and professional athletes. In Jowdy’s litigation defeat of nearly a million-dollar unpaid loan to Glenn Murray, Jowdy admitted the loan agreement as authentic. Months later, he verified it to the FBI.

Those disclosures are proof that the investors were told about litigation seeking recovery of alleged Jowdy loans six years before the Kenner trial. The fight was open, documented, and adversarial.

Kenner’s conviction settled Kenner’s criminal liability while still unable to pinpoint exactly what that concealment was. It did not answer the separate accounting questions surrounding Jowdy:

• What did he receive?

• What did he repay?

• What collateral did he provide?

• What became of the permanent financing expected to retire the bridge loans?

A guilty verdict against the lender does not stamp PAID IN FULL across the borrower’s ledger.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Dave Weigel did not ask permission from the family-court machine before turning its locked files, dirty tricks, and professional protection racket into a public evidence trail. He took the pain they meant to bury him under and forged it into an army. That is why this award matters. Weigel is not selling surrender, therapy-speak, or courthouse excuses. He is demanding records, names, numbers, sworn testimony, and consequences. Now FCFWP is preparing to document whether coercive separation, civil jailing, retaliation, and psychological destruction cross international torture lines. Let the black-robed machine answer the evidence. The warriors are watching—and they are multiplying. This piece is “Family Court Warrior Honored,” first available on The Family Court Circus.

By Rick LaRivière and Richard Luthmann

The Father Who Found the Machine

Dave Weigel did not enter family-court reform through a think tank, campaign, or fellowship. He entered through the grinder. Before becoming the founder of the Family Court Fraud Warrior Project, Weigel built a career in finance, managed fixed-income strategies, and completed Columbia’s Certified Portfolio Manager program. He was trained to follow money, test claims against numbers, and distrust narratives that could not survive an audit.

Then his own divorce and custody litigation dragged across more than a decade, and the analyst became the case study.

Weigel says the experience cost him time with his children, money, his reputation, and his liberty. He has described arrests arising from civil family-court disputes, confinement at Rikers Island, holiday-season complaints, and years of proceedings in which he believed allegations outran evidence.

The suffering he describes is neither abstract nor polished for a conference room.

“They’ve taken my savings, my reputation, and time with my kids,” he said in a 2024 interview. “But I’m still here.”

That sentence is the hinge in the Weigel story. Family court did not turn him into a quiet casualty. It turned him into an investigator. He began treating dockets, orders, assignments, disciplinary outcomes, financial incentives, and repeated litigation tactics like market data.

His conclusion was that the system’s failures were not random. They formed patterns.

The Wall Street fiduciary had found a new portfolio to analyze: American families fed into a courthouse machine that too often rewards conflict while accountability disappears behind sealed files, judicial discretion, and professional immunity.

Family Court Warrior Honored: When Pain Became Evidence

The origin of the Family Court Fraud Warrior Project was not a logo or launch party. In his 2026 award speech, Weigel traced it to a telephone call during a holiday crisis. He said an attorney for his former wife was advancing what he regarded as a sixth false-arrest narrative—this time threatening Christmas with ten nieces and nephews at his home.

Mike Houlahan directed him to Americans For Legal Reform President Gary Jacobs. Jacobs spent an hour helping him locate counsel and plan a public presentation of the records.

Weigel says the strategy worked: put evidence where people could see it, make the accusation answerable, and deny secrecy its advantage.

“It gave birth to this idea that we can create an alternative system based on the court of public opinion,” he told the Americans For Legal Reform gathering.

That was not a substitute court with power to decide custody, guilt, or liability. It was an accountability mechanism—a public ledger where orders, transcripts, complaints, statistics, and firsthand testimony could be preserved, compared, and challenged.

From there, pain became proof—or, more precisely, material that could be tested for proof. FCFWP developed around permanent records, artificial-intelligence tools, quantitative review, video testimony, public education, and pressure campaigns. Its website describes a mission of exposing systemic dishonesty through transparency, while its “My Three Minutes” initiative invited parents to tell framed stories in their voices.

A traumatized parent’s account is evidence of what that person reports experiencing. Weigel’s contribution was recognizing that thousands of isolated voices become harder to ignore when their claims are organized around documents, dates, outcomes, and repeatable methods.

Family Court Warrior Honored: Building the Warrior Army

What began as Weigel’s defense became infrastructure for other families. FCFWP assembled a website, Facebook community, video channels, organizing calls, intake operation, digital archive, and two contrasting public ledgers: a Judicial Wall of Shame for documented accusations of misconduct and a Hall of Fame for officials and advocates the organization believes acted with integrity.

The project’s preliminary international petition reported that its Facebook community had grown to more than 22,100 members by July 31, 2026, and the petition remains a working document.

Weigel calls this a “behavioral change machine.” The phrase captures both the ambition and the risk. Scrutiny can force institutions to answer records they would prefer to bury. It can also be criticized as reckless if accusation is confused with adjudication.

FCFWP’s strongest model is as an evidence army: parents, grandparents, whistleblowers, researchers, journalists, lawyers, and citizens trained to preserve filings, obtain public records, compare sworn statements, protect children’s identities, and separate what is known from what is merely suspected.

That army now moves across cases and jurisdictions. Its YouTube channel turns court records into public testimony. Its website seeks to convert financial and procedural patterns into reform demands.

Its preliminary Inter-American Commission on Human Rights petition uses reference matters—including those of Weigel, Charles Brice Chapman, Kristin Lynn Vermeulen, and Cindy Lynn Adams—while proposing a uniform protocol requiring complete court files, disciplinary records, informed consent, objective documentary anchors, and protection of minors.

The project’s proposition is blunt: family-court survivors do not have to remain scattered, ashamed, and unheard. They can become investigators of government. They can fight for truth without surrendering accuracy—and demand justice without pretending an allegation is a verdict.

The Family Court Circus

Family Court Warrior Honored: Advocate of the Year

Americans For Legal Reform recognized that transformation by naming Weigel its 2026 Advocate of the Year—an honor the organization described as its highest award.

Yet Weigel did not appear at the annual barbecue. He delivered a remote acceptance video from what he called “parts unknown,” saying he feared returning would expose him to imprisonment long enough to destroy his livelihood and kill the project.

He also alleged that criminal records had been created for arrests that could not have occurred because he was outside the state or country. The speech firmly established Weigel’s position.

What followed was less an acceptance speech than a battlefield dispatch. Weigel introduced himself as FCFWP’s founder and leader but said he was equally proud to be a “foot soldier” for Americans For Legal Reform, praising Jacobs, Carl Lanzisera, Jim Kelly, James Fegel, and advocates whose work preceded his own.

He spoke about the Wall of Shame, emphasized the Hall of Fame, and asked supporters to become involved.

“They need to see our size,” he said, warning that the rule of law cannot be defended by a handful of familiar names.

Then he refused the hero’s pedestal.

“I don’t deserve this award,” Weigel said, placing himself on the shoulders of reformers and the families destroyed before social media gave victims a mass distribution system.

That humility was paired with unmistakable anger. He asked legal professionals to inspect FCFWP’s work and prove its conclusions wrong.

This is the proper challenge. An advocate’s award recognizes the work, endurance, and mobilization. Weigel accepted it by inviting scrutiny—and calling an army back to its feet.

The Next File: Torture

The next FCFWP campaign will test whether the family-court machine’s worst practices belong in a category more serious than bias, malpractice, or corruption: torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

In coordination with the Institute for the Advancement of Justice & Human Rights and international human-rights experts, the project is preparing to document allegations involving coercive confinement, forced transport, intensive reunification programs, prolonged parent-child separation, retaliatory process, and state-linked conduct that may inflict severe physical or psychological suffering.

The word “torture” is not clickbait. Under the United Nations Convention Against Torture framework, the analysis turns on demanding elements: severity, intent, purpose, official involvement or acquiescence, and the surrounding facts. The IAJ’s July 2026 enforcement guide maps mechanisms—including civil-rights, obstruction, retaliation, unlawful-restraint, assault, and official-misconduct laws—while identifying gaps between America’s treaty promises and its enforcement architecture.

A companion project matrix treats civil contempt detention, forced reunification, and punitive separation as fact-dependent candidates for Article 16 treatment and, in extreme cases, Article 1—not automatic conclusions.

FCFWP’s job will be to build files that survive hostile review: complete records, verified timelines, medical and psychological documentation, informed testimony, state action, digital evidence, and protection for children.

The preliminary petition styled Weigel et al. v. United States argues that deliberate separation and arbitrary civil detention, proven within structurally compromised proceedings, reach psychological torture or cruel-treatment thresholds.

It is not yet a final filing, and its allegations remain unadjudicated. But the broader human-rights record is also a warning about what advocates and journalists operating from exile can face: legal, physical, and digital threats.

Weigel’s award looked backward at endurance. His next campaign points forward—to dossiers, experts, and testimony that may force the world to look inside America’s family courts.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Danesh Noshirvan made accusation a business model: pick a target, borrow an allegation, sharpen it into a criminal label, and unleash the audience. Colombia put that machinery squarely under examination. The ruling is not automatically enforceable in Florida, and its future-speech restrictions face First Amendment barriers. But defamation is not protected simply because an influencer calls it commentary. The Colombian findings now sit in Fort Myers Federal Court Judge Kyle Dudek’s docket as evidence of pattern, notice, intent, and absence of mistake. Danesh demanded accountability from everyone else. Now Joey Camp, Richard Luthmann, and the American courts are demanding receipts from Danesh for his behind-the-camera work. This piece is “Danesh Faces Digital Exile,” first available on FL Gulf News.

By Richard A. Luthmann

(FORT MYERS, FLORIDA) – Danesh Noshirvan, the Antifa-linked “accountability influencer,” built an internet brand by placing other people on trial without a courthouse, a jury, or rules of evidence. He selected the target, framed the accusation, delivered the verdict and dispatched the audience.

Now an actual appellate court has judged the judge.

On July 2, 2026, the Fourth Civil Decision Chamber of the Superior Court of the Judicial District of Bogotá reversed a lower-court ruling and granted constitutional protection to Joseph Anthony “Joey” Camp. The three-judge panel found that Noshirvan’s publications violated Camp’s fundamental rights to honor, good name, and human dignity.

The tribunal did not merely criticize Danesh. It issued commands.

Meta Platforms, as operator of Instagram, and Substack Inc. were ordered to remove identified publications within 48 hours of notification. Noshirvan was separately ordered to stop publishing future digital content accusing Camp of criminal conduct without support in a judicial decision.

That is not yet a global account ban. It is something potentially more dangerous: a judicial blueprint for stripping Danesh’s accusation machine apart, platform by platform and post by post.

The critical question is no longer whether Danesh likes the Colombian ruling. The question is whether he, Meta, Substack and the other companies distributing his content intend to obey it—and what happens if they do not.

Danesh Faces Digital Exile: The Verdict He Cannot Edit

The case is Joseph Anthony Camp v. Danesh Noshirvan, Colombian filing No. 11001310300320260029301. Camp, an American legally residing in Colombia, brought an acción de tutela seeking immediate protection of constitutional rights he said were being violated through Noshirvan’s online publications.

A lower court rejected the petition on June 11. Camp appealed. The Bogotá Superior Court reversed.

The appellate tribunal reviewed Noshirvan’s publications describing Camp as a “Child Stalker,” an apparent “registered sex offender,” a “white supremacist who targets women and children with sexual assault for a fee,” and a “Real Rapist.”

Those phrases are reproduced because they appear in the judicial decision. This publication does not adopt them as true.

The court found that the statements were not merely harsh opinions, name-calling, or subjective commentary. They were factual imputations of criminal conduct presented to a massive audience without a supporting judicial decision.

The judges also examined a geographically targeted call for Noshirvan’s followers to spread his podcast throughout Bogotá so the city would know Camp’s identity. The ruling discussed the publication of Camp’s location, email address, immigration status and other personal information. According to the tribunal, Noshirvan acknowledged that the disputed material relied upon allegations, reports or publications produced by third parties—not judicial findings.

Danesh’s defense was effectively that he was reporting what other people had alleged. The Colombian court’s answer was that repackaging somebody else’s accusation does not transform it into an adjudicated fact.

The tribunal expressly preserved Noshirvan’s right to criticize Camp. It did not order the removal of every opinion, insult, or negative statement. It drew the line at presenting unsupported accusations of criminal conduct as fact.

Then came the remedy.

Meta and Substack were ordered to remove the specified statements and “any other content” that imputes criminal conduct to Camp without support from a judicial decision. Noshirvan was ordered to refrain from publishing such content in the future. The proceeding was transmitted to Colombia’s Constitutional Court for possible discretionary review, but tutela judgments are structured for immediate compliance.

This was not Camp issuing a press release about what he hoped a court might do. It was an electronically signed appellate judgment issued in the name of the Republic of Colombia.

Danesh did not merely lose an argument. The court rejected the architecture of his defense.

Danesh Faces Digital Exile: The Platforms are Now on the Dock

The ruling does not expressly terminate Noshirvan’s Instagram or Substack accounts. As of August 4, his Substack profile remained publicly accessible and advertised more than 3,200 subscribers. So no—the Colombian court has not yet deplatformed Danesh.

But the order places Meta and Substack in a legally uncomfortable position. They were notified of the Colombian proceeding and, according to the appellate decision, did not participate. They now have an order directing them to remove specified publications within 48 hours. As of the time of publication, they have not complied.

The platforms can seek clarification and contest jurisdiction or enforcement. They can restrict the material inside Colombia, and they can remove it globally. What they cannot credibly do is pretend the judgment does not exist.

Colombian tutela courts retain authority to supervise compliance. Articles 27 and 52 of Decree 2591 of 1991 provide mechanisms for enforcing tutela judgments and pursuing contempt against those responsible for disobedience. The practical reach of contempt sanctions against an American creator who remains outside Colombia is uncertain. Colombia cannot simply email an order to Florida and expect American marshals to enforce it.

The platforms are different. Meta operates worldwide. Substack distributes content globally. Both possess the technical ability to remove posts, restrict visibility, or suspend an account. A company may resist a foreign judgment in an American courtroom while independently deciding that a repeat violator is no longer worth the regulatory risk.

That is how “effective deplatforming” could happen. One Colombian order does not erase Danesh. But repeated violations can produce repeated compliance demands. Additional tutela petitions could target TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Threads, podcast hosts, and payment processors.

Camp says he intends to pursue further proceedings, though that remains his stated litigation position—not a completed judicial result.

If multiple platforms receive orders involving the same creator, the calculation changes. Danesh stops looking like an isolated moderation complaint and starts looking like an international compliance problem.

The digital executioner could find himself slowly disconnected from the machinery he used against everyone else.

FL Gulf News

America Will Not Rubber-Stamp Bogatá

Camp can ask an American court to recognize the Colombian judgment. That does not mean an American judge must enforce it. The casual term is “domestication.” Florida’s streamlined statute applies to foreign judgments that grant or deny a sum of money. The Colombian judgment is primarily injunctive. It orders content removed and restricts future publications. It does not award Camp a fixed monetary judgment that can simply be recorded with a Florida clerk.

To obtain American enforcement, Camp would likely need an independent recognition or enforcement action based on international comity.

Noshirvan and the platforms could then raise jurisdictional, statutory, and constitutional defenses.

The biggest barrier is the federal SPEECH Act. Under 28 U.S.C. § 4102, an American court may not recognize a foreign defamation judgment unless the party seeking enforcement proves that the foreign proceeding provided at least as much protection for speech as the First Amendment and applicable state law—or that the defendant would have been liable even under American constitutional standards.

The statute also requires the foreign court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction to satisfy American due-process requirements. Noshirvan’s participation in Colombia is relevant, but the SPEECH Act expressly says that appearing in the foreign proceeding does not waive the right to contest recognition in America.

The burden becomes even steeper against platforms. A foreign defamation judgment against an interactive computer service cannot be recognized unless enforcement would be consistent with Section 230.

Florida law erects its own barricade. Section 55.605 allows courts to reject a foreign defamation judgment that did not provide protections equivalent to the United States and Florida constitutions. Section 55.6055 gives Floridians facing foreign defamation judgments access to declaratory relief concerning whether those judgments are recognizable.

The Colombian decision also collides with a fundamental difference between the two countries’ speech rules. Bogotá treated the absence of a supporting judicial decision as decisive. American law does not require a prior criminal conviction before a person may truthfully report or discuss criminal conduct.

American defamation law instead examines whether a statement is false, whether it is protected opinion, what level of fault applies, and whether the plaintiff is a public figure. Where public figures or public controversies are involved, the actual-malice standard may apply. Even a private plaintiff generally must prove falsity and legally sufficient fault.

The order against future statements presents an additional First Amendment problem. American courts treat judicial commands restricting future speech as prior restraints carrying a heavy presumption of unconstitutionality. A narrowly tailored injunction removing specific statements after a full American adjudication of falsity might survive.

What makes the Colombian ruling especially significant is that it does not rest on speech the First Amendment would necessarily protect. Defamation is not immunized merely because it is delivered through a podcast, Instagram account, or self-styled “accountability” platform. Although the Colombian judgment cannot be transplanted wholesale into an American courtroom—and its future-speech restrictions face serious constitutional obstacles—the tribunal’s factual analysis remains powerful evidence.

At minimum, it documents Noshirvan’s modus operandi: selecting a target, converting third-party accusations into declarative criminal labels, broadcasting them to a mass audience, directing followers toward the target, and then defending the campaign as commentary.

Danesh Faces Digital Exile: Luthmann Puts the Judgment on the Federal Table

On July 22, Richard Luthmann filed the Colombian decision in Luthmann v. Noshirvan, No. 2:25-cv-00337-KCD-NPM, pending in the Middle District of Florida.

Document 103 is captioned “Plaintiff’s Notice of Supplemental Authority.” It includes the Spanish decision and an English translation and directs the federal court to Bogotá’s distinction between protected opinion and unsupported factual accusations of crime.

The notice also tells the court that Luthmann participated in the Colombian proceeding as an interested third party alleging similar conduct by Noshirvan. The filing does not render the Colombian tribunal’s decision a binding precedent. U.S. District Judge Kyle C. Dudek remains obligated to apply federal constitutional law, Eleventh Circuit precedent, and Florida substantive law.

But Luthmann’s filing puts three things in front of Dudek. First, a foreign appellate court examined Noshirvan’s publishing practices and rejected his attempt to classify concrete criminal accusations as protected commentary.

Second, Noshirvan had notice of the proceeding, participated in it, and defended his publications.

Third, the Colombian court’s findings bear directly on disputed questions of characterization, notice, republication, and state of mind now circulating through the Florida litigation.

The judgment may be difficult to enforce as an American injunction. It may still be potent as evidence.

That may be the more immediate threat.

Steele is Gone – Dudek has the Files.

The judicial terrain in Fort Myers has also shifted beneath Noshirvan’s feet. Senior U.S. District Judge John E. Steele, who presided over the sprawling Noshirvan v. Couture litigation, died July 14 at age 77. President Bill Clinton nominated Steele to the federal bench in 2000.

Steele had already issued consequential rulings in the case. He sanctioned Noshirvan and his attorney over litigation misconduct and later awarded Garramone Plastic Surgery $62,320 in attorney fees. He allowed counterclaims brought by Jennifer Couture, Dr. Ralph Garramone and Garramone Plastic Surgery to survive dismissal—meaning the allegations were legally sufficient to proceed.

The Danesh-related Fort Myers docket universe is now concentrated before Judge Kyle C. Dudek.

President Donald Trump nominated Dudek on June 16, 2025. The Senate confirmed him on September 9, and his judicial commission was issued two days later. Dudek previously served as a magistrate judge in the same district.

All things being equal, this change is terrible for Noshirvan. Dudek does not need a guided tour of the battlefield. As a magistrate judge, he handled discovery disputes in Noshirvan v. Couture before his elevation to the district bench. He has already encountered the parties, attorneys, subpoenas, and collateral accusations.

Now the overlapping cases sit before a judge capable of seeing the entire mosaic: Noshirvan’s claims against Couture and Garramone, the counterclaims against him, Luthmann’s separate defamation case, the sanctions record and the Colombian appellate judgment.

Litigants benefit when a dispute is fragmented. One judge sees a discovery fight. Another sees a defamation claim. Another sees an allegedly threatening publication. Nobody sees the machine.

That advantage disappears when one judge holds the files.

Danesh Faces Digital Exile: The Digital Verdict

The Colombian court has not shut Danesh down. Not yet. It has done something more important: it converted Camp’s complaints into an appellate judgment, imposed duties on the platforms and created a record that can follow Noshirvan into every future courtroom and moderation proceeding.

American recognition remains an uphill fight. The SPEECH Act, Florida law, Section 23,0 and the First Amendment stand between the Colombian order and any automatic American enforcement.

But Danesh does not need to lose a domestication case to suffer the consequences.

Platforms can act voluntarily. Colombian courts can supervise compliance. Camp can pursue additional proceedings. Luthmann can use the ruling to establish notice and challenge the claim that Noshirvan’s criminal accusations are merely harmless opinion. Dudek can examine the Colombian record alongside the domestic pleadings, publications and sanctions history.

The man who monetized accusation is now surrounded by adjudication.

For Danesh Noshirvan, the danger is no longer one lawsuit, one country or one platform. It is convergence.

And the walls are closing in.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Family court gives extraordinary power to psychologists, evaluators, parenting coordinators and guardians whose conclusions can reshape custody, reputations and entire lives. Deborah Koricke’s testimony may help Max Miller politically, but one high-profile deposition cannot tell the public whether her broader professional record deserves confidence. That answer must come from documents, court records and firsthand experience—not partisan spin or internet rage. We are opening the files. If Koricke was fair, careful and effective, we want to know. If she missed evidence, favored one side or worsened conflict, we want that too. Good, bad or indifferent—bring receipts. This piece is “Psychologist in the Crossfire,” first available on The Family Court Circus.

By Richard Luthmann

A Congressional Divorce Detonates

(CLEVELAND, OHIO) – The divorce war between Ohio Republican Congressman Max Miller and Emily Moreno Miller has become more than a private domestic relations case. It is now a political blood feud conducted through court filings, press coverage, and competing claims of abuse, credibility, and parental fitness.

Emily Moreno Miller has accused her former husband of violent and frightening conduct, including allegations involving hot water and harm to their young daughter. Miller denies abusing his former wife or child and has pursued a defamation action built around the argument that the accusations are false, exaggerated and politically destructive.

ABC News reported that U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, Emily’s father, called for Miller to leave the House after allegations concerning the couple’s daughter became public. The accusations remain disputed.

What makes the case especially revealing for The Family Court Circus is Miller’s reliance on Deborah A. Koricke, Ph.D., the psychologist serving as parenting coordinator. Her May 12, 2026 deposition in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court gives Miller powerful material, but not a magic wand.

Koricke testified under oath in Max L. Miller v. Emily Moreno Miller, Case No. 24 DR 401120, before Judge Debra L. Boros. The transcript shows a bitter, high-maintenance co-parenting case with domestic-violence litigation, child-welfare investigations, disputed recordings, medical-access problems and constant warfare over parenting time.

It is the family-court machine in miniature: one child, two warring parents, armies of lawyers and a professional whose judgment may shape the public narrative as much as the courtroom record.

Psychologist in the Crossfire: Koricke Was Not Convinced

Koricke’s testimony gave Miller the central line his defenders wanted. Asked whether Emily had been given an opportunity to support accusations that Miller abused her or their daughter, Koricke said yes.

Asked whether the material presented convinced her that Miller committed that abuse, she answered no. She testified that she is a mandatory reporter regarding suspected child abuse and had never made a report accusing anyone of hurting the child. She also said two Children and Family Services investigations did not find Miller responsible for the incidents examined.

In one matter, she testified that a daycare worker was later believed responsible for the child’s injuries. In another, involving a broken collarbone, Koricke said she and another child psychologist did not suspect either parent or the nanny and discussed the possibility that the toddler fell from a crib.

The most politically combustible testimony concerned what Koricke called the “water incident.” She said Emily showed her a photograph of redness on her chest. Miller, according to Koricke, admitted spraying water from a kitchen sink sprayer but described the episode as fooling or goofing around. Emily viewed it differently and treated it as a serious event near the end of the marriage.

Koricke noted that Emily did not seek an in-person or virtual medical examination, and Koricke said she could not determine the origin of the redness because she is not a physician.

Later, when asked about press accounts accusing Miller of abuse, Koricke said she believed they were “greatly exaggerated.” She also suggested the timing might be connected to the escalating divorce conflict and Miller’s election year, while making clear that this was her guess rather than a proven fact.

The Family Court Circus

Psychologist in the Crossfire: Evidence, Not Exoneration

That testimony is important, but it must not be inflated beyond what the transcript proves. Koricke did not complete the custody evaluation she began in 2024; she testified that the parties settled before it was finished. Her later role was parenting coordinator, focused on helping the parents resolve disputes affecting their daughter.

She did not issue a judicial finding that every allegation against Miller was false. She did not testify that the water event never happened. Her account was that both parties agreed water was sprayed in the kitchen but disputed the context, severity, and meaning.

Miller can fairly cite Koricke as a professional who was not persuaded by the abuse evidence shown to her. He cannot fairly convert that into a court verdict clearing every accusation.

The cross-examination also ran counter to a one-sided rescue narrative. Koricke acknowledged that Miller had described Emily as bipolar, but she had seen no evidence supporting that diagnosis. She also testified that Miller fired the child’s concierge pediatrician without consulting Emily.

Elsewhere, the deposition portrayed failures and questionable decisions on both sides: communication restricted by a domestic-violence civil protection order, disputes over medical information, fights about nannies and sleeping arrangements, and breakdowns over parenting schedules. Koricke called the assignment one of her most high-maintenance parenting-coordination cases.

Her credentials are substantial: the Center for Effective Living identifies her as a clinical and forensic psychologist who routinely works in local, state and federal courts. Psychology Today lists divorce, parenting, domestic abuse and domestic violence among her practice areas.

Credentials justify attention; however, they do not place her conclusions beyond scrutiny.

Psychologist in the Crossfire: Calling All Cars

That is why The Family Court Circus is issuing a calling-all-cars request to the Ohio family-court community. We want to hear from parents, lawyers, guardians ad litem, evaluators, therapists, domestic-violence advocates, former clients, and professionals with direct experience involving Deborah Koricke. The question is not whether she helped Max Miller. The question is whether her work across cases demonstrates a consistent method worthy of confidence:

• Did she read the full record?

• Did she distinguish bruising allegations from verified evidence?

• Did she understand coercive control and post-separation abuse?

• Did she identify strategic or exaggerated claims when they appeared?

• Did she treat mothers and fathers with equal skepticism?

• Did she revise conclusions when new evidence arrived?

• Did her involvement calm conflict, or become another expensive gear inside the family-court machine?

We want the good, the bad, and the ugly. Praise matters. Criticism matters. Documentation matters most:

• Send court orders, reports, recommendations, invoices, correspondence, deposition excerpts, hearing transcripts, and sworn statements.

• Identify the case, court, dates, and your role.

• Separate firsthand knowledge from hearsay.

• Protect children’s identities and avoid disclosing private medical information unnecessary to the public-interest issue

Send information to:

• Richard Luthmann – richard.luthmann@protonmail.com

• Michael Volpe – mvolpe998@gmail.com

This is not a summons for a digital mob, and it is not a verdict against Koricke. It is a reporting call triggered by the public weight now being placed on her judgment.

Miller is relying on Koricke’s testimony because it helps him answer allegations that could destroy a political career. Emily Moreno Miller and her supporters say the underlying conduct was far more serious. The courtroom will decide what the law permits it to decide.

The family-court community can help determine whether the professional standing between those stories has earned the trust now being placed in her.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: This is not about whether Lisa Lee knows a subpoena exists. It is about whether Jeremy Hales and Randy Shochet may transform somebody else’s bankruptcy into a private intelligence operation against a YouTube content creator, her guests, and her audience. They want the public broadcast, private messages, financial records, editorial preparation, metadata, and the identities of viewers. That is not a request. It is a raid. Rule 45 protects nonparties from undue burden; it does not hand vexatious litigants a crowbar. If Hales wants to know whether Preston was paid, ask Preston. The rest looks like retaliation, intimidation, and another invoice-producing fishing expedition. This piece is “Litigation By Exhaustion.”

By Richard Luthmann

The Process Server’s Fairy Tale

(GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA) – Jeremy Hales and his attorney, Randall “Randy” Shochet, have opened another front in their expanding campaign of litigation-by-exhaustion.

This time, the target is Lisa Lee, host of “Two Lees in a Pod,” a nonparty YouTube content creator and commentator who provided a public forum for discussion of the Lynette Preston bankruptcy controversy. Rather than narrowly seek a copy of a public broadcast, Hales and Shochet unleashed a sprawling subpoena demanding private communications, financial records, editorial materials, metadata, promotional files, and the identities of viewers and subscribers. It is not discovery in any ordinary sense. It is a dragnet aimed at the newsroom, the audience, and the critic simultaneously.

The service attempt was equally troubling. Lee says process server Mark Newby first contacted her by telephone and admitted the subpoena had to be delivered directly to her. She says she told him she was away from home. The next morning, Newby allegedly approached her husband, Gabriel Weeks, without asking his name or whether Lee was present.

According to Lee and Weeks, Newby announced that “Lisa told me I could leave this with you.” Lee says that was false. She never authorized substitute delivery and never appointed Weeks to accept federal process.

Lee also says her security cameras captured the encounters. During the podcast, she described Newby approaching neighbors, misidentifying another woman as Lee, entering the enclosed patio area, and ultimately leaving the papers after Weeks walked away. Those allegations turn a disputed service attempt into a credibility contest with video evidence potentially waiting in the wings.

When federal contempt power may ultimately be invoked, the service record must be clean. This one appears contaminated from the start.

Litigation By Exhaustion: The Fishing Expedition Comes Into Focus

The subpoena’s scope reveals why Lee views the maneuver as retaliation disguised as discovery. Hales and Shochet did not stop at requesting the July 11 broadcast. They demanded months of communications between Lee, Preston, John Cook, and anyone supposedly acting on Preston’s behalf. They sought revenue records, payment logs, scripts, promotional material, metadata, and the identities of viewers and subscribers. In practical terms, they asked for the operating system of Lee’s reporting platform: her sources, internal discussions, business data, and audience.

During the podcast, Lee called the subpoena a fishing expedition designed to obtain through the bankruptcy court what Hales failed to secure in earlier litigation. She pointed to prior federal claims involving Hales, Shochet, Lee, and other critics that were dismissed with prejudice. Her argument was simple: Hales already tried to build claims around criticism and online commentary. Now he is attempting to mine a separate bankruptcy case for private information that might support another lawsuit, another accusation, or another content cycle.

Luthmann agreed with the central characterization. He advised Lee that the subpoena should be met with written objections and a motion to quash, arguing that the demands sweep far beyond any legitimate question concerning whether Preston was compensated for appearing on the program. If that is the real issue, the narrow solution is obvious: ask Preston, examine her financial records, or accept a declaration stating whether Lee paid her.

Viewer identities prove nothing about an estate asset. Private editorial communications do not establish compensation. Full platform revenues do not show money paid to Preston. The subpoena is not calibrated to answer a bankruptcy question. It appears calibrated to identify people, map relationships, and create leverage.

That is why the conduct looks vexatious.

FL Gulf News

Litigation By Exhaustion: Cameras, Enclosures, and the Paper Trail

The podcast discussion also supplied details that may become important if Shochet or Newby submits a contested affidavit of service. Lee said she had multiple security-camera recordings covering the process server’s visits. She described Newby entering the front patio enclosure after being unable to gain access through one entrance and then approaching through the side. Luthmann reacted that the alleged entry made the situation more serious because Newby was no longer simply standing at a public-facing threshold.

The legal significance should not be overstated before the footage is reviewed. But the evidentiary significance is considerable. Video may establish where Newby stood, whether Weeks accepted the papers, whether Newby retained them as he walked away, whether anyone asked for Lee, and whether the account eventually placed in an affidavit matches the physical events.

That is the difference between rhetoric and evidence. Hales may post a triumphant video claiming Lee was served. Shochet may rely upon a process server’s return. But a timestamped camera does not care about anyone’s litigation narrative. If the footage shows Weeks walking away without accepting the papers, or Newby departing with them still in hand, any contrary affidavit would face immediate impeachment.

Lee said she filed a complaint concerning Newby’s conduct and intended to challenge any claim of valid service. She also emphasized that she is a nonparty. She was not commanded to attend a deposition under this subpoena; she was ordered to produce documents. Yet the rhetoric surrounding the dispute quickly escalated online into suggestions of warrants, federal agents, and dramatic enforcement.

That theater became a joke on the podcast.

The humor lands because the underlying intimidation strategy is so obvious: inflate ordinary discovery into a federal manhunt and hope the target panics.

Litigation By Exhaustion: The Vexatious-Litigation Machine

There is now a recognizable pattern. Hales and Shochet repeatedly transform criticism into litigation, reporting into discovery, and public commentary into alleged misconduct. Every disagreement becomes another docket entry. Every critic becomes a potential defendant, subpoena target, copyright respondent, or object of public denunciation. The apparent objective is not merely to obtain discrete evidence. It is to impose cost, fear, distraction, and attrition.

That is the essence of vexatious behavior.

Vexatious litigation does not always arrive as a frivolous complaint with a scarlet label across the caption. Sometimes it comes dressed in procedural clothing: a subpoena broader than the proceeding, a demand for irrelevant audience identities, a threat of sanctions before any court has found wrongdoing, or a disputed service account built around consent the target denies ever giving. Each maneuver is presented as routine. Together, they form a machinery of harassment.

Lee’s proposed response exposes that machinery. She intends to contest service, challenge the subpoena’s procedural foundation, invoke the protections owed to nonparties and journalists, and resist the effort to identify viewers and subscribers. She has also offered a practical alternative: if Hales truly lacks the public broadcast, provide it; if he genuinely wants to know whether Preston was paid, answer that narrow question by declaration.

That should satisfy any legitimate bankruptcy purpose.

If Hales wants to know what Preston said publicly, he can watch the program. If he wants to know whether she received money, he can ask her. What he should not receive is Lisa Lee’s newsroom, audience list, private correspondence, and commercial records merely because he dislikes her coverage.

The bankruptcy court is not Hales’s private intelligence bureau. Rule 45 is not Randy Shochet’s fishing license. And federal process should never become a prop in an online retaliation campaign. At some point, vexatious tactics must meet firm judicial resistance.

This is that point.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: She left the EDNY US Attorney’s Office for private practice, and the first order of business was to sue Donald Trump. Moira Kim Penza helped build the Summer Zervos case against the 45th and 47th President and the government’s case against me by stacking accusations, inferences, and ugly suppositions until they resembled a verdict. Now the spotlight has reached her household, and suddenly the lawfare-media cartel wants velvet ropes around the uncomfortable questions. No. Nathan Cullerton’s conduct belongs to Cullerton, but Penza owns the public brand she sold: fearless examiner of sex, secrecy, credibility and unequal power. Penza does not get to declare supposition admissible against defendants and forbidden when it reaches her own door. Same microscope. Same inferences. Same rules. This piece is “The Kid the Scandal Erased,” first available on NY News Press.

By Richard Luthmann

The Child Erased From the Scandal

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK) – Everybody reported the kiss. Almost nobody reported the kid. Maybe we’ll have to wait for the divorce papers in New York Supreme.

Nathaniel D. Cullerton, 45, a married Wachtell litigation partner, was identified by the Daily Mail, New York Post, and other outlets as the man filmed passionately kissing 29-year-old associate Kelsey A. Borenzweig on a Central Park bench. Wachtell lists them in the same department and credited both on the OpenAI team that defeated Elon Musk‘s blockbuster lawsuit.

The Daily Mail tracked Cullerton to the $2.3 million Upper East Side co-op he shares with Moira Kim Penza, called Borenzweig his underling and presented Penza as the accomplished, humiliated wife.

It found the lawyers, the apartment, the marriage and the money. Yet the family portrait still had a person missing.

I state from firsthand knowledge that Penza and Cullerton have a son, now roughly 8 or 9 years old. I will not publish his name, school, photograph, exact birthday, or any detail that could expose him. My assertion can be independently confirmed and corroborated by dozens of New York attorneys who know the scandal-engulfed (soon-to-be-former) couple, and no reliable source has established that the couple is childless, either because they can’t.

If my firsthand account is correct, Cullerton was not merely gambling with a marriage and a reported $4 million income. He was detonating the stability, privacy, and financial security of a child’s home.

The Financial Times and Post reported that Wachtell placed him on leave and that Gibson Dunn abandoned or rescinded a lucrative offer. A story sold as elite-lawyer sex gossip may therefore be a family-court prequel with a child absorbing consequences he never created.

The kid is not tabloid garnish. He is the moral center every glossy recap managed to crop out.

The Kid The Scandal Erased: Parlato Says Just a Kiss

Renowned investigative reporter Frank Parlato sees a different scandal. In Frank Report, he argues that Jay Guapo monetized humiliation, that no child appears in the 39-second video, and that two consenting adults committed no crime.

He stresses the chasm between NXIVM’s coercion and Cullerton’s apparently voluntary kiss.

No blackmail. No starvation. No branding. No complainant. Parlato says Wachtell and Gibson Dunn counted views before finding facts and let an influencer’s camera become judge, jury and economic executioner.

His civil-libertarian point is serious. Public shaming can become digital vigilantism, and a lawful kiss does not become unlawful at 10 million views.

Parlato also argues that Penza is accused of nothing in the Central Park bench episode and was trapped into three losing choices: stay, leave, or remain silent.

I disagree because Parlato answers the criminal-law question and ducks the family and workplace questions. Cullerton did not get caught violating a kissing statute. He got caught behaving like a cheater: a married partner kissing a younger associate from his department and major client team in broad daylight.

Here’s the part that no one can dispute: the incident involves a powerful partner, a junior colleague, a recent shared representation, a reported multimillion-dollar employment consequence, and the husband of a former federal prosecutor whose public reputation was built substantially through cases about sex, coercion, credibility, secrecy, exploitation, and power.

Unless some undisclosed marital arrangement changes the facts, the obvious inference is betrayal. Consent between Cullerton and Borenzweig does not supply consent from Cullerton’s wife, child, partners, clients, or colleagues who may bear the fallout. They owe fiduciary duties to others greater than the “morals of the meat market.”

Nor does consent erase hierarchy. Wachtell’s reported investigation and Gibson Dunn’s reported retreat show that the institutions saw more than romance.

Parlato asks what crime occurred. I ask what obligations were torched, what disclosures were skipped, what favoritism questions now infect the team, and which innocent family member pays when a multimillion-dollar career implodes.

A kiss can be legal and consensual yet still reveal catastrophic judgment.

NY News Press

The Kid The Scandal Erased: Dominatrix Claims and Dirty Fed Whispers

Moira Kim Penza has always been the hypocrisy story. She built prestige by prosecuting Keith Raniere, marketing herself around sex trafficking and powerful abusers, and joining Summer Zervos’s politically radioactive case against Donald Trump.

Her firm says she can “go for the jugular.” I know that posture because she led the prosecution against me.

Penza and the EDNY lawfare machine portrayed me as a dangerous cartoon assembled from cooperators, insinuation, and worst-case supposition. My record is public. So is my position that prosecutors inflated the narrative, struck foul blows, and converted accusations into punishment before anyone tested the whole picture.

No one had a better bullshit detector than the late great Judge Jack Weinstein. On Moira Kim Penza, Jack called bullshit.

Penza mastered reputational prosecution. Now her household has entered the dock of public opinion. Good. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Put the claims on the record where they belong: as claims. I have long alleged that Penza engaged in dominatrix activity and that sex-related items were discovered in the Cadman Plaza desk she left behind. As an AUSA, she would show up to court in fishnet stockings, see-through pants, and greasy hair. It didn’t look like she was coming to work from Fifth Avenue, unless the co-op has a basement dungeon.

In blunt terms, I have her “banging” an FBI agent connected to the Raniere investigation. Ask her who else was up in Ithaca when Cornell Law School gave her an award. It must have been one hell of a “celebration,” but they weren’t stupid enough to do it on a bench in the quad. The public record confirms work with FBI agents like Michael Weniger, Michael Lever, Delise Jeffrey, and Maegan Rees.

Penza has not publicly answered these specific claims. The bench video proves none of them. But it reopens my longstanding question: did the celebrated sex-and-power prosecutor live by one moral code publicly while operating under another privately?

Sexual coercion and sexual-misconduct litigation are unusually prominent in Moria’s public identity: the Raniere prosecution is the centerpiece of her biography; her firm expressly credits that case with helping pave the way for later prosecutions of powerful individuals; the firm promoted her Zervos role; and it highlights her pro bono representation of sexually harassed restaurant workers.

Living by one moral code publicly while operating under another privately? It is precisely the kind of question Penza’s agents and prosecutors would have used to squeeze a target.

The Kid The Scandal Erased: The Daily Mail Halo

Then there is the Daily Mail treatment. Its reporters tracked the pair, approached Cullerton near the Fifth Avenue home and sought comment from the lawyers and Wachtell. But the narrative placed a flattering halo around Penza: star NXIVM prosecutor, elite partner, wronged wife in a $2.3 million co-op.

It reads like a crisis-communications storyboard whether or not any publicist touched it.

No evidence reviewed here shows that Penza, her firm, or an operative planted, paid for, or controlled the story. Still, its frame performs the same function. Cullerton becomes the reckless husband. Borenzweig becomes the young underling. Penza becomes the decorated innocent. The unreported child disappears, and Penza’s disputed history never enters the frame.

The hypocrisy question cannot be buried. Marriage does not transfer Cullerton’s guilt to Penza. But she owns the brand she sold: fearless truth-teller, champion of victims, examiner of secret sexual power, and prosecutor willing to infer motive from circumstances.

The lawfare-media machine demands moral discovery for defendants while requesting velvet-rope privacy for its own. I reject that privilege. Cullerton was caught in conduct outlets treated as cheating. Parlato calls it consensual and victimless.

I see it differently. I see a wife, a workplace hierarchy, a lost fortune, and a minor son the press erased. I also see unresolved allegations about Penza that deserve answers, not automatic belief.

The verdict is not that every rumor is true. It is that Moira Kim Penza cannot call supposition evidence when government uses it—and forbidden gossip when the spotlight reaches her door.

Same microscope. Same inferences. Same rules.

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Richard Luthmann joined Lisa Lee and Robbie Keszey on Two Lees in a Pod for a wide-ranging discussion centered on Lisa Lee’s disputed subpoena in the Lynette Preston bankruptcy matter and the broader litigation tactics of Jeremy Hales and attorney Randall “Randy” Shochet.

The central issue was whether Lee had been properly served. Lee said process server Mark Newby first acknowledged by telephone that the subpoena had to be delivered directly to her.

The following morning, however, Newby allegedly approached her husband, Gabriel Weeks, and stated that Lisa had authorized him to leave the papers with Weeks. Lee denied ever giving that authorization. She said Newby did not ask Weeks his name, did not establish that he was authorized to accept service, and did not personally hand the subpoena to her.

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Lee also described security-camera footage that she said documented the process server’s visits, including his approach to neighbors, his alleged misidentification of another person as Lee, and his entry into an enclosed patio area. She said she filed a formal complaint regarding his conduct and intended to challenge any affidavit claiming valid personal service.

Luthmann framed the subpoena as a fishing expedition rather than legitimate bankruptcy discovery. He argued that Hales and Shochet were attempting to use Preston’s bankruptcy case to obtain Lee’s private communications, financial information, editorial materials, and audience data for possible collateral litigation or public retaliation. Lee agreed, noting that prior litigation involving Hales and several critics had already been dismissed with prejudice.

The discussion emphasized that Lee is a nonparty and that the subpoena appears far broader than necessary to determine whether Preston received compensation for appearing on the July 11 broadcast. Lee said she had not paid Preston, Luthmann, or Keszey to appear. The panel argued that any legitimate inquiry could be answered through a limited declaration or review of Preston’s own financial records rather than an invasive demand for Lee’s entire communications and business operation.

The panel also mocked online claims that the disputed subpoena could immediately trigger FBI action or an arrest warrant. Luthmann explained that awareness of a subpoena is not the same as valid service and advised Lee to file written objections and a motion to quash.

Overall, the appearance portrayed the subpoena as part of a broader pattern of vexatious litigation, intimidation, and content-driven lawfare. The panel’s message was that Lee should preserve evidence, challenge service, resist disclosure of viewer identities and private editorial information, and force Hales and Shochet to justify the subpoena before the bankruptcy court.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: The pied-à-terre controversy deserves investigation, but New Yorkers should recognize political misdirection when they see it. A million-name property roll guarantees outrage, celebrities and easy headlines. Election auditing demands records, mathematics, subpoenas and institutional courage. Mamdani can absorb accusations that he is targeting millionaires. That fight energizes his base. What he cannot absorb is a documented showing that New York’s election system cannot validate enough voters to cover his margin. The press should stop chasing shiny objects and demand receipts from the Board of Elections. Tax lists may embarrass City Hall. A failed election audit could delegitimize it. This piece is “Mamdani’s Enemies-List Distraction,” first available on NY News Press.

By Richard Luthmann

The Million-Name Smoke Bomb

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK) – Zohran Mamdani’s administration has handed New York’s media exactly the kind of political spectacle it knows how to cover: wealthy property owners, identifiable addresses, class-war rhetoric and a government database critics quickly branded an “enemies list.”

The controversy erupted after the city published a supplemental property roll containing roughly 960,000 residences and owners who could potentially fall within the new pied-à-terre tax process—even though officials initially estimated that only about 10,000 to 13,000 properties would ultimately be taxed.

The city later sent approximately 17,000 notification letters, including some to longtime primary residents who say they were wrongly swept into the dragnet.

The Mamdani administration says the roll is legally required, preliminary and broader than the universe of properties that will actually owe the surcharge. City officials describe the law as an annual tax on certain high-value New York City properties not used as primary residences. The Department of Finance has created an exemption and appeal process, while Mamdani extended the deadline after confusion and public backlash.

That explanation does not erase the political effect. Names and addresses were dumped into public circulation. Newspapers hunted for celebrities, financiers and supposedly rich targets. Critics cried doxxing, witch hunt and socialist intimidation.

Mamdani’s defenders answered with lectures about public property records and taxing absentee millionaires.

The entire city began shouting about who might be taxed.

However, Mamdani’s strategy was not an accident. The property-list uproar functions as an enormous political smoke bomb, consuming headlines at precisely the moment a far more dangerous question is being raised: Can New York election officials prove that Mamdani legitimately won the election that placed him in City Hall?

Mamdani’s Enemies-List Distraction: The 230,000-Vote Question

Election-integrity activist Marly Hornik says her organization, RealAmerica.Vote and New York Citizens Audit, examined approximately one million voter records associated with the 2025 mayoral election. She claims the review found substantial categories of voters whose identities, Social Security information, or New York City residency could not be verified.

Hornik has publicly aggregated those disputed records into approximately 230,000 potentially unlawful or invalid votes—more than Mamdani’s certified margin over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The official Board of Elections certification reports 2,218,647 applicable ballots. Mamdani received 944,950 votes on the Democratic line and 169,234 on the Working Families line, for a combined 1,114,184. Cuomo received 906,614, leaving Mamdani with a 207,570-vote advantage.

Hornik is not claiming she has proved that every challenged registration generated a fraudulent ballot, that every questionable vote went to Mamdani, or that Cuomo actually won. She has repeatedly framed the issue more carefully: New York’s election boards may be unable to prove that the certified electorate was composed entirely of qualified voters.

That is an allegation demanding investigation.

The distinction is essential. A faulty registration record is not automatically a fraudulent vote. Database mismatches can result from name changes, incomplete public records, stale addresses, or clerical mistakes.

But those possibilities do not excuse election officials from answering the audit. They are the reason officials must reconcile each challenged category against authoritative records.

How many questioned individuals actually cast ballots? How many were legal city residents? How many records were duplicates, errors, or genuinely fictitious identities? Until those questions receive documentary answers, the election result remains certified—but the public confidence beneath it remains exposed.

That is the real political bomb under City Hall.

NY News Press

Mamdani’s Enemies-List Distraction: Follow the Diversion, Audit the Election

The pied-à-terre controversy is genuine. Government should not casually publish sprawling lists of citizens and then force innocent homeowners to prove they do not belong on them. The rollout appears overbroad, confused and politically inflammatory.

Even the city’s own response—new guidance, an appeal mechanism and a delayed deadline—suggests the execution was hardly the clean administrative triumph Mamdani’s allies initially advertised.

But the media imbalance is impossible to miss. The alleged “enemies list” generated immediate stories about billionaires, celebrities, property values, tax bills and class warfare.

The election challenge received nowhere near the same sustained institutional attention, even though Hornik’s headline number exceeds the official margin of victory.

The conclusion is that Mamdani benefits enormously from the imbalance—and may have calculated the rollout accordingly. No public evidence presently establishes that the property list was released for the purpose of suppressing election coverage. Yet political operatives do not need formal coordination when spectacle itself does the work.

A million-name tax roll is catnip to the press. A technical examination of voter eligibility requires documents, patience, statistics and the courage to offend the permanent political class.

The correct response is not to ignore the tax controversy. It is to refuse the false choice. Investigate both.

New York should publish a technical response to Hornik’s methodology, disclose how challenged voter records were verified and explain what post-election audits were performed. Federal investigators should state whether they received the underlying evidence and whether any inquiry is active.

Hornik should release enough anonymized methodology and documentation for independent experts to reproduce her results.

Mamdani can survive hostile headlines about rich homeowners. What he cannot politically survive is proof that the election system cannot validate the votes that installed him.

Forget the smoke. Audit the fire.

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By Richard Luthmann and Michael Volpe

(TUSCON, ARIZONA) - Arizona Rep. Lisa Fink joined Michael Volpe and Richard Luthmann for a wide-ranging examination of the Alec and Lydia Act, Arizona’s new family-court law addressing domestic violence, coercive control, parenting time and judicial accountability.

Fink opened by explaining that the law was intended to apply to all active family-court cases after its June 22 effective date, not merely cases filed afterward. She said implementation has already become inconsistent, with judges in different counties taking different positions on whether the new standards apply to pending matters. Her public statement, she explained, was meant to clarify legislative intent and push Arizona courts toward uniform enforcement.

The central purpose of the law is to force judges to take domestic violence seriously when making decisions about both legal decision-making and parenting time. Fink said the prior law allowed courts to acknowledge abuse while still returning children to dangerous parents. The Alec and Lydia Act removes the vague qualifier “significant” from the domestic-violence analysis and requires judges to make written findings explaining how their decisions serve the best interests of the child.

That reform was born from tragedy. Alec and Lydia were killed after their father received overnight parenting time despite warning signs that, according to reform advocates, should have kept him away from the children. Fink argued that the case exposed a fundamental failure in the family-court system: judges could recognize troubling conduct, minimize it as insufficiently serious and still award parenting time without fully explaining why.

The new law also incorporates coercive control into Arizona’s domestic-violence framework. Fink described coercive control as a pattern that may include isolation, financial domination, threats, jealousy and control over a partner’s daily activities. She said the concept was drawn in part from laws adopted in other states and from domestic-violence lethality screening used by first responders.

Luthmann challenged the evidentiary structure of the law. He questioned why lawmakers selected the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard rather than clear and convincing evidence, particularly when the consequences can include severe restrictions on parenting time. He also pressed Fink on the absence of a formal corroboration requirement and whether an accusation supported only by one parent’s testimony could become decisive.

Fink defended the preponderance standard as appropriate for civil family-court proceedings. She argued that courts must look at the totality of the evidence, recurring patterns and the opportunity for the accused parent to rebut the allegations. She maintained that the new law does not require judges to accept every accusation, but instead requires them to evaluate the evidence and explain their conclusions in writing.

Volpe then raised the risk that the statute could create a new litigation industry built around domestic-violence allegations. He argued that lawyers and parents may quickly recognize that an allegation of coercive control offers a powerful route to reducing the other parent’s access to the child. Broad concepts such as isolation, financial control, name-calling and threats, he warned, could be stretched to describe ordinary dysfunction in a failed relationship.

Fink responded that allegations alone should not be enough. She again emphasized the requirement of evidence, written findings and a meaningful opportunity to rebut. She said the law is intended to protect children, not to provide one parent with an automatic mechanism for removing the other from the child’s life.

The discussion sharpened around false allegations. Luthmann and Volpe both warned that family court already rewards aggressive litigation and that a powerful new domestic-violence framework could be weaponized by dishonest litigants or lawyers seeking strategic advantage. Fink acknowledged that unintended consequences are possible, particularly when judges fail to properly examine the evidence.

Temporary orders emerged as another major concern. Fink said temporary custody and parenting-time orders can remain in place for six months, a year or even longer, sometimes becoming the practical final order because the case never reaches a timely resolution. The new law requires judges to make written findings showing how temporary decisions account for domestic violence and the child’s best interests.

The interview also exposed Arizona’s lack of meaningful family-court data. Fink acknowledged that she did not yet have a defined set of metrics for determining whether the law is succeeding. Volpe argued that lawmakers should require courts to report how often domestic violence is alleged, how often it is substantiated, how parenting time is divided and whether individual judges display extreme or recurring patterns.

Without those statistics, the panel concluded, it will be difficult to know whether the Alec and Lydia Act is saving children, producing more litigation or simply generating longer hearings and thicker judicial orders.

Judicial training became another point of disagreement. Fink argued that family law is a specialized field and that judges need continuing education to understand domestic violence, coercive control and the manipulation that can occur in high-conflict cases. Volpe questioned why judges are placed in family court if they are not already qualified to handle such matters.

Luthmann countered that politically selected judges often reach the bench with little or no family-law experience, making specialized training necessary even when the appointment process should have demanded greater competence.

The conversation then shifted to Arizona election security. Fink discussed the conflict between Maricopa County officials, access to election servers, voting-machine failures, rejected ballots, voter rolls and ballot chain of custody. She urged voters to make sure their ballots are accepted by the tabulation machines rather than placed into unsecured containers for later processing.

Fink also raised concerns about voter eligibility and claimed that more than 200,000 individuals connected to Arizona’s voter rolls had eligibility problems. She presented that figure as evidence that the state must continue examining voter-registration records and election procedures.

Volpe directly challenged the broader election-fraud narrative. He argued that administrative mistakes, machine problems and isolated incidents do not prove that enough fraudulent votes existed to alter statewide election results. Fink replied that repeated irregularities, chain-of-custody failures and public distrust justify continued scrutiny, even where the ultimate effect on an election remains disputed.

The final portion of the interview turned to Arizona’s broader family-court reform movement. Fink discussed proposals involving jury trials, limits on temporary orders and greater judicial oversight that failed to reach the governor’s desk. She said lawmakers would continue working on those measures, while Luthmann and Volpe questioned whether committee politics, personality conflicts and legislative rivalries had prevented common-sense reforms from receiving fair consideration.

The interview ultimately presented the Alec and Lydia Act as both a major child-safety reform and a serious due-process test. Fink defended it as a necessary response to judges who ignored warning signs and failed to explain dangerous parenting decisions. Volpe and Luthmann pressed the opposite danger: that vague standards, weak oversight and financially motivated litigation could transform a protective law into another weapon of the family-court machine.

The law’s success will depend not merely on its language, but on whether Arizona judges apply it consistently, examine evidence fairly, protect accused parents from manufactured claims and place the safety of children ahead of courtroom convenience.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Washington has constructed a political Ponzi scheme that depends upon tomorrow always being larger than today. More workers, more taxpayers, and more economic growth were supposed to arrive automatically and finance every promise the permanent political class refused to pay for itself. But the cradles are emptying while the Treasury’s printing presses keep running. Politicians cannot endlessly expand entitlement promises, import debt and punish family formation through unaffordable housing, childcare and taxation. A civilization that will not produce, protect and prepare its next generation is not planning for a future. It is liquidating one. This piece is “The Great American Shrink,” also available on FL Gulf News.

By Greg Maresca

Throughout American history, economic and population growth have paced together. A growing population means more workers, more consumers, more taxpayers, and more families investing in the future.

Today, however, two troubling trends are moving in opposite directions as the population is in decline, while the national debt continues to grow. It is a dual threat to which few seem to be concerned.

According to CDC data, the American birthrate continues its historic decline, with a one percent decrease in births in 2025, a trend that began in 2007. The total fertility rate is now 1.57 births per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1.

Moreover, the Institute for Family Studies said the U.S. population will begin shrinking by 2054. A shrinking population will affect nearly every aspect of national life, from economic growth and national security to retirement and community stability.

Economies depend upon a continuous supply of workers entering the labor force. When birth rates fall below replacement levels, fewer fill jobs, start businesses, buy homes, and support an aging population.

Shrinking school attendance, aging communities, and slowing economic growth are all symptoms of the same demographic decline.

Japan and most of Europe are struggling with this reality. Americans have avoided this due to our historically higher birth and legal immigration rates, but the demographics are promptly changing.

FL Gulf News

Compounding the problem is the enormous debt of the federal government that grows unabated. Much of the national debt represents promises made today that future taxpayers must finance. The problem turns grave when the number of future taxpayers dwindles.

Social Security, Medicare, and numerous other government obligations rely on a large working population to support retirees. If fewer Americans are born while life expectancy remains relatively long, the ratio of workers to retirees shrinks. A smaller workforce must carry a larger financial burden.

This, in turn, will cause taxes to increase, while benefits would be reduced. None of these options are politically easy, yet demographic realities will force difficult decisions.

The combination of population decline and mounting debt creates a dangerous cycle. Slower population growth reduces economic growth, which makes it more difficult to service debt. Growing debt will limit the government’s ability to invest in infrastructure, research and defense. Those reductions would make the country less competitive and less prosperous, further complicating efforts to encourage family formation and economic opportunity.

Beyond economics lies a broader cultural concern. A nation confident in its future invests in the next generation. Families, schools, churches, civic organizations and local communities all depend upon the young to carry traditions forward. When fewer children are born, society is more focused on maintaining the present than building the future. Innovation and risk-taking will decline.

None of this means America’s future is predetermined, nor is the country’s decline inevitable. Demographic trends can change. Legislation can help make it easier for families to afford housing, childcare, and education. Economic growth can create optimism that encourages family formation. Legal immigration can help offset labor shortages.

A society that values children and plans beyond the next election cycle can rewrite its future.

Yet ignoring the facts would be a mistake. The report’s projection that our country will be shrinking by 2054 should serve as a wake-up call rather than just another headline.

A nation cannot endlessly borrow against a future that contains fewer people to pay the tab. Debt and demographics are not separate challenges; they are on a collision course.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Tiger Woods designed a golf course. Davis Love III designed another. Neither man audited Ken Jowdy’s bank statements, verified the promised investor liens, or explained why project money entered Jowdy’s personal account. Celebrity associations are not certificates of financial innocence. They are the architectural steel Jowdy used to reinforce a public identity that court records repeatedly challenge. The issue is not whether Diamante eventually became magnificent. It did. The issue is whether investors were honestly treated as Jowdy transformed himself from a financially pressured promoter into a world-class developer. Success can build a resort. It cannot launder the unanswered questions beneath its foundations. This piece is “The Man Behind The Brochure,” first available on NY News Press.

By Richard Luthmann and Fernando Jiménez Burke

The Visionary in the Golf Shirt

Ken Jowdy’s official biography is polished until it shines like a new driver beneath the Cabo sun. Diamante Cabo San Lucas calls him the “visionary” behind its master plan, the founder and chief executive personally involved in major decisions involving financing, construction, permitting, sales and operations.

The resort’s public history credits Jowdy with assembling the team that transformed Pacific dunes into a global golf destination: the Davis Love III-designed Dunes Course, Tiger Woods’ El Cardonal and an expanding luxury community wrapped in championship names, ocean views and PGA Tour prestige. That is the Jowdy story sold to homeowners, golfers, investors and the sporting world.

It is the brochure version—clean, triumphant and expensive.

Tiger Woods’ own website confirms the scale of the halo. El Cardonal opened in December 2014 as the first completed course from Tiger Woods Design, joining Davis Love III’s course at Diamante. Woods later celebrated the opening beside Jowdy, who announced another Woods-designed course.

Jowdy was no longer merely a developer. He had become a man photographed beside greatness, using the most valuable names in golf as architectural steel around his reputation.

But reputations built on golf legends do not erase bank statements. Long before Diamante became a PGA Tour showcase, Jowdy was raising money for another Baja dream called Diamante Del Mar. The documents from that project reveal a second Jowdy—not the master developer standing beside Tiger Woods, but a financially pressured promoter moving investor money through an early maze of companies, accounts and promises.

The first crack in the brochure did not appear in a newspaper. It appeared on a bank statement.

The Man Behind The Brochure: The Account Opened at Zero

The August 2002 statement for Baja Development Corporation begins with the most honest number in the entire Jowdy saga: zero. The account opened with no money. Then investor funds arrived. The statement records deposits totaling more than $3.3 million during the month, including large incoming transfers identified in the attached annotations as funds associated with Jason Woolley, Dimitri Khristich and Phillip Kenner.

The underlying bank statement—not the annotations—is the evidence. It shows money entering a newly opened Baja Development Corporation account and then leaving through a rapid succession of transfers, wires and debits.

It does not independently establish criminal intent or identify the ultimate beneficial owner of every receiving account. It does establish that the early capital did not sit untouched waiting for bulldozers, engineers and golf-course architects.

The first statement is especially damaging to the sanitized mythology because it captures the project at birth. There was no accumulated operating history, no sprawling completed resort and no mature cash-management system. There was a fresh account, fresh investor money and immediate movement.

On August 6, two $40,000 transfers left the account. Additional transfers followed to other deposit accounts in amounts including $79,020, $35,000, $22,000, $15,000 and numerous smaller sums.

On August 16, $2.5 million was moved into an account held by LMJ Management LLC, followed by a $250,000 outgoing wire from that account. The documents require explanation, not decoration.

One attached December 2002 letter from Bill Najam to Hudson United Bank makes the problem more concrete. Najam instructed the bank to wire $100,000 from Baja Development Corporation to Jowdy’s personal account, while depositing Jowdy’s personal check into Baja Management and then moving money again into the Diamante Del Mar account.

The letter does not prove laundering merely because an annotation uses that label. It does show circular movement among a project company, Jowdy’s personal account,unt and related entities.

That is not a brochure. That is a money trail. These Jowdy capital account funds belonged to other investors, not Jowdy. Najam moved them as Jowdy’s personal contributions.

No investor records reconcile these highly undocumented transfers that migrate to “Jowdy capital contributions,” as his 2010 FBI interview verified.

NY News Press

The Man Behind The Brochure: Promises Written on Other People’s Land

The early sales pitch was not merely that investors were buying into a speculative Mexican venture already under Jowdy’s purchased control. This was untrue. Written documents promised security.

On September 9, 2002, attorney Thomas Harvey told investor Owen Nolan that Baja Development Corporation would secure a $500,000 promissory note by filing a lien against approximately 10,000 acres near El Rosario.

Harvey wrote that shares of the Mexican landholding company would be transferred to Baja Development Corporation.

He also represented that two other $500,000 notes would be protected through liens and that Nolan would receive a golf-club membership and an ocean-view building lot. The note would be repaid after 100 members joined the proposed club.

Those were not casual barroom assurances. They were representations from counsel involving identified collateral, corporate transfers, and promised liens. They also create obvious factual questions:

• Were the shares transferred?

• Were the liens filed?

• Did the investor-controlled entity ever obtain the property interest it was promised?

• Did the collateral remain available when later financing was placed against the land?

We reached out to Diamante and invited Jowdy and Harvey to answer these questions with recorded instruments, corporate books, and title documents. If they cannot, it stands to reason that investors may have been misled.

By April 2005, the underlying Diamante Del Mar property had real value. A KPMG appraisal valued the fee-simple and leasehold interests at approximately $68.9 million: cash owned.

The report described approximately 9,727 acres and noted that legal counsel represented that Diamante Del Mar had acquired good, marketable, and insurable title to significant portions of the land.

The appraisal also identified ambitious development plans that would require hundreds of millions in future spending.

The question is therefore not whether the Baja property was worthless. It plainly was not. The question is how a project backed by millions in investor cash and land appraised at $68.9 million could become the subject of claims that investors never received promised title protection, liens or a transparent accounting.

This was potentially a valuable development. That makes the missing protections more serious, not less.

The Man Behind The Brochure: The First Development Becomes the First Warning

The 2009 California investor complaint concerning Diamante Del Mar presents the investor version of what happened next. It alleged that professional hockey players invested millions in the project, that Jowdy was paid a substantial salary and expenses to manage their capital, and that the promised golf courses, residences and supporting infrastructure did not materialize.

The plaintiffs alleged that approximately $10 million was spent over several years while the most visible completed improvement was an airstrip. They further alleged that Jowdy later obtained a $3 million hard-money loan against the property without investor knowledge or consent and that the use of those proceeds remained unexplained.

Bank records verify that Jowdy and Najam drained the loan funds for personal use, as corroborated by FBI records associated with Jowdy’s subpoenaed bank records. Jowdy received the funds unbeknownst to the Del Mar investors. Jowdy and Najam dispersed them into personal accounts and purposes. Investors lost a $10 million cash investment and $68.9 million appraised land in default.

Jowdy moved on: protected.

Yet allegations become harder to dismiss when they align with contemporaneous records. The bank statements show immediate transfers from the first investor-funded account. Harvey’s letter promised liens and a transfer of landholding shares. The KPMG appraisal documented substantial property value. The complaint later alleged that the land was encumbered while investors remained without the development and protections they believed they purchased.

That is a coherent factual sequence requiring answers.

The point here is not to pronounce Jowdy guilty of fraud from the editorial desk. It is to strip away the immunity created by celebrity golf associations.

Tiger Woods designed a golf course. Davis Love III designed another. Neither fact audits Jowdy’s early bank accounts, verifies that promised liens were filed, nor explains how investor-funded property moved through later financing.

The conventional Jowdy story begins in 2009 when the Dunes Course opened, and paradise emerged from the sand.

The other story begins seven years earlier with an empty bank account, incoming investor millions, and money moving almost immediately toward personal and related-company accounts.

That is the origin story the brochure leaves out.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: A divorce decree is supposed to close a failed marriage, not establish a permanent government receivership over the family. Yet Michelle Feeney’s case survived every supposed ending: the 2013 judgment, later parenting agreements, professional interventions and repeated efforts at settlement. Each attempted solution generated new obligations, new disputes and new reasons for the same courthouse cast to remain involved. The machine did not extinguish the conflict. It processed it. It scheduled it. It appointed professionals around it. Then, in August 2025, an emergency ex parte order proved that thirteen years after the divorce, Connecticut could still turn Michelle’s parental life upside down without an ordinary evidentiary trial. This piece is “The Divorce That Never Ends,” first available on The Family Court Circus.

By Richard Luthmann

Final Judgment, Permanent Litigation

(STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT) – Michelle Feeney filed for divorce in 2012. The Connecticut Superior Court entered an uncontested dissolution judgment on February 19, 2013. By every ordinary understanding of the English language, the marriage was over. The parties were divorced. The judgment was final.

Yet thirteen years later, now in the summer of 2026, the same case remains active, still swallowing motions, affidavits, subpoenas, objections, contempt claims and requests for further judicial intervention. The docket has climbed past 500 entries. A case opened during Barack Obama’s first term was still producing hearings as America approached the 2026 midterms.

Connecticut called it post-judgment litigation. Michelle Feeney experienced it as a torture sentence without an expiration date.

The docket has become a decades-long battlefield of contempt motions, custody modifications, emergency applications, child representatives, lawyers, evaluators, therapists, parenting coordinators and repeated agreements that promised peace but delivered only another procedural checkpoint. The marriage ended, but the machinery built around the failed marriage kept expanding.

Every dispute could become a motion. Every motion could produce an objection. Every objection could trigger a hearing, continuance, professional appointment, new agreement or emergency request. The litigation became its own living institution, detached from the simple legal event that supposedly created it: the divorce.

The case did not simply involve Michelle and Patrick Feeney; it accumulated a professional cast around their child and their conflict:

• Attorney Kirk Bennett appears in the docket as guardian ad litem for the minor child.

• Heather Ehinger was written into the 2022 agreements as parent coordinator and family therapist—the professional the parties were repeatedly instructed to consult before returning to court.

• Robert Horowitz was Michelle’s reunification therapist and required “substantial professional intervention” before disputes could supposedly become motions.

• Dr. John Collins of New Haven, a psychologist, conducted the court-ordered custody evaluation. His underlying report is a central document.

• Attorney Heidi Opinsky later entered a limited appearance for Patrick.

• Attorney Scott Weston was designated in the California-relocation agreement to receive a $7,500 retainer to adapt the Connecticut arrangement to California law.

• Attorney Nancy Aldrich, well known to avid readers of the Blog, urged additional legal action (surprise, surprise).

• Matthew Maynard was Jack’s former therapist.

• Tim Walsh was a later therapist.

• Dr. John Samanich was a treating psychiatrist involved in medication communications.

These were not incidental bystanders. They formed the expanding ring of lawyers, child advocates, coordinators, evaluators and therapists through which a 2013 divorce remained institutionally alive more than a decade later.

Michelle’s central claim is blunt. Connecticut’s family-court system does not merely fail to stop destructive conflict. In cases like hers, she says, the process becomes the instrument through which conflict is prolonged, professionalized, and monetized.

The court does not extinguish the fire. It builds offices around it, schedules conferences beside it, and sends invoices through the smoke.

The parties may lose their savings, sanity, and children’s childhoods, but the case survives.

The Divorce That Never Ends: The Emergency Order That Changed Everything

The nightmare returned to full crisis mode in August 2025. Patrick Feeney filed an application for an emergency ex parte custody order alleging that Michelle had removed their son, Jack, from Connecticut, obstructed contact, failed to enroll him properly in school, neglected medical needs and isolated him from friends and activities.

The filing demanded immediate temporary sole legal and physical custody. It also sought severe restrictions on Michelle’s access and authority. The accusations were sweeping, urgent and framed in the language family courts are trained to fear: educational neglect, medical neglect, psychological harm and parental alienation.

The docket shows an August 20 application was denied. Nine days later, another emergency application was filed and granted.

In one stroke, a thirteen-year-old divorce case again became an emergency proceeding. Patrick obtained temporary custody without the ordinary full evidentiary contest that would accompany a final custody adjudication. Hearings were scheduled, moved, and continued.

Michelle says she appeared for dates that did not resolve the matter, then relied on the online docket, which indicated that an October hearing was marked off. She says Patrick later notified her by email that he had obtained sole legal and physical custody and did not intend to permit contact unless he approved it.

Michelle disputes the emergency allegations and says they can be disproved through school, medical, therapeutic, and communication records. This is precisely why the episode matters. A drastic order affecting the most fundamental relationship in a parent’s life was issued through an emergency process amid disputed facts, alleged notice failures, and procedural confusion.

The child became the territory. The docket became the weapon. A divorce finalized in 2013 had suddenly returned to the legal equivalent of martial law.

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The Divorce That Never Ends: Peace Treaties Written on Court Paper

The August 2025 crisis did not erupt because the parties lacked agreements. They had agreements thick enough to stop a door. In February 2022, Michelle and Patrick entered a detailed modification governing custody, parenting time, exchanges, holidays, travel, education, medical care, communication and dispute resolution. The document said both parents would minimize Jack’s exposure to harmful parental conflict. It installed a parenting coordinator, established written decision-making procedures and provided that Michelle would retain final decision-making authority after the required consultation process had been exhausted.

The plan attempted to regulate nearly every foreseeable point of friction.

Months later, another sweeping agreement modified support and parenting arrangements in light of a proposed California relocation. That stipulation required Michelle to pay Patrick $300,000 as prepaid child support, fund a $15,000 annual travel account and assume extensive medical, educational and extracurricular expenses. It created procedures for travel, school schedules, vacations, baseball, missed parenting time, and professional intervention. It even required the parties to work through parenting coordination and mediation before returning to court.

Outstanding motions were supposed to be withdrawn. The document was not merely a parenting plan. It was a private constitution for a family that had already spent years being governed by judicial decree.

Yet the agreements failed at their central purpose. They did not end litigation. They became new sources of litigation.

Each detailed obligation created another potential allegation of breach. Each enforcement mechanism opened another route back to court. Each professional assigned to reduce conflict added another person, process, and expense to the architecture surrounding the family.

After the 2022 settlements came more emergency custody applications, contempt motions, clarification requests, caseflow filings, subpoenas and appeals; the ceasefire became another front.

Connecticut family court had accomplished the impossible: it transformed agreements designed to end litigation into fuel for continuing litigation.

The Divorce That Never Ends: Mental Illness, Money and Judicial Fuel

Michelle says the court’s gravest failure was its refusal to confront Patrick’s alleged psychiatric instability. Patrick disclosed mental-health diagnoses and suicidal ideation early in their relationship. She describes later episodes of paranoia, delusional thinking and extreme aggression, including an alleged 2018 episode involving beliefs that the FBI and business associates intended to harm him.

She further claims that a court-ordered custody evaluation identified bipolar disorder with psychotic features and recommended therapy before custody questions were revisited.

We contacted Patrick Feeney for comment. As of press time, we have received no response.

Michelle’s larger accusation is not dependent on armchair diagnosis. Her argument is that the system repeatedly treated extreme filings, serial emergency applications, courtroom belligerence and escalating accusations as ordinary “high-conflict” litigation. Instead of determining whether a litigant’s conduct reflected impairment, manipulation or genuine danger, the machinery accepted each new filing as another billable event to process.

Judges could schedule hearings. Lawyers could enter appearances. Guardians ad litem, coordinators, evaluators and therapists could remain embedded. The family could be placed under increasingly elaborate supervision without the system ever answering the most basic question: was continued litigation protecting the child, or feeding the pathology?

Money and power matter. A distressed litigant without resources eventually runs out of paper, lawyers, or stamina. A litigant with money can keep filing, hiring, and escalating.

The Connecticut model can reward endurance rather than truth because every new accusation forces the other parent to respond or risk losing by default.

Michelle’s case therefore raises a brutal institutional question. What happens when a wealthy and allegedly unstable litigant discovers that family court will convert every obsession into process? The answer may be sitting in a 500-entry docket.

The Connecticut Family-Court Machine

Michelle Feeney’s case is not merely a divorce story. It is a case study in how Connecticut family-court conflict can become self-perpetuating, with recurring emergency motions and repeat professionals keeping a family under continuing legal supervision long after the marriage itself ended.

The evidence is not hidden in rumor. It is visible in the docket’s sheer duration, the repeated emergency applications, the proliferating agreements and the continuing motion practice through 2026. Final judgment did not produce finality. It produced a permanent jurisdictional hook.

The court will say children’s circumstances change and custody orders must remain modifiable. That is legally true. No responsible person argues that courts should ignore genuine danger.

But continuing jurisdiction is supposed to be a safeguard, not an annuity. Emergency relief is supposed to address emergencies, not function as a recurring litigation strategy. Guardians, coordinators and evaluators are supposed to reduce harm, not become permanent fixtures around a child whose parents cannot escape the system’s orbit.

The Feeney series will examine how this happened. It will follow the post-judgment docket, the emergency custody pattern, the agreements that failed, the professional network surrounding the case and Michelle’s claim that allegations of mental instability were repeatedly subordinated to the family-court machine’s appetite for continued process.

It will test claims against documents, transcripts and witnesses.

It will identify what is proven, what is disputed and what the court never seriously addressed.

But the first fact requires no interpretation. Michelle Feeney divorced Patrick Feeney in 2013. In 2026, Connecticut was still administering their broken marriage.

The vows ended. The litigation did not.

And somewhere inside that contradiction is the business model of a system that claims to resolve families while keeping them permanently within reach.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: The legal establishment will hide behind count structures, plea credits, and sentencing guidelines because the raw numbers are indefensible. James Lebuhn mailed bullet imagery directly to federal judges and received a 6-month sentence. Paul Boyne published offensive political speech, contacted no judges directly, hadn’t set foot in the Nutmeg State for decades, and received a 20-year sentence. No one must approve of Annapolis Graduate, former U.S. Navy nuclear engineer and defense contractor, devout Roman Catholic, and self-described “White Christian Nationalist” Boyne’s rhetoric to recognize a grotesque abuse of proportionality. Connecticut did not sentence a violent predator. It buried an elderly, medically fragile critic of its family-court machine, which he believes is infiltrated by pedophiles and designer child traffickers. When mercy depends on which judges were targeted and which institutional narrative the defendant offended, justice stops being blind. It becomes a political weapon wearing a black robe. This piece is “Six Months for Bullets,” first available on The Family Court Circus.

By Frankie Pressmann and Richard Luthmann

(NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT) – Paul Boyne is 64 years old, medically fragile, and serving a sentence likely to consume what remains of his life. Connecticut Superior Court Judge Peter Brown sentenced him to 20 years in prison, followed by 10 years of special parole, after a jury convicted him on 18 stalking-related counts arising from inflammatory blog posts about Connecticut judges. Boyne had no prior criminal record. He did not shoot anyone. He did not travel to a judge’s home. He did not mail ammunition, display a weapon or carry out an act of physical violence. He wrote words—sometimes ugly, sometimes reckless, sometimes plainly offensive—on a website devoted to exposing what he believed was corruption inside Connecticut’s family-court machine.

Then there is James Lebuhn.

Lebuhn mailed letters to two federal judges containing photographs of bullets. The letters warned that citizens knew what the judges were doing, disliked their actions, and believed they were damaging “our democracy.” The message concluded with an unmistakable warning: be careful, because public anger was rising. The apparent targets were U.S. District Judges Matthew Kacsmaryk and Aileen Cannon, both appointed by President Donald Trump. Lebuhn also admitted sending similar letters to federal employees.

His sentence was six months.

Not six years. Not 20 years. Six months.

The lawyers will immediately reach for procedural distinctions. Lebuhn pleaded guilty. Boyne went to trial. Lebuhn accepted responsibility. Boyne remained defiant. Boyne faced more counts under different statutes. Those differences exist, but they cannot carry the moral weight being placed upon them. They do not explain how one government treats bullet imagery mailed directly to judges as a six-month offense while another government treats political blogging as grounds to bury an elderly, sick man beneath a sentence ordinarily associated with killers, armed predators and career criminals.

Six Months for Bullets: Mercy for the Approved Narrative

Federal Judge Sara Ellis did not excuse Lebuhn’s conduct. She recognized that threatening judges is serious and that judicial families should not have to fear that political anger will arrive at their front doors. That is correct. A government that cannot protect judges from genuine threats cannot preserve an independent judiciary.

But Ellis also saw Lebuhn as a human being.

His lawyer described a man who had collapsed under financial and family stress, lost his job as a financial analyst, taken work as a bus driver, and cooperated with federal investigators. He confessed. He expressed shame. The court considered the circumstances surrounding the offense and imposed incarceration, but it stopped at six months. Lebuhn received punishment tempered by proportionality and mercy.

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Paul Boyne received something altogether different.

Connecticut transformed his writings into 18 felonies, prosecuted him inside the same judicial system he had spent years denouncing, and then stacked consecutive terms until the number reached 20 years. Boyne’s posts reportedly included home addresses, photographs of residences, references to death and crude attacks involving religion and perceived sexual orientation. Those facts should not be minimized. Some of the material was reprehensible and gave prosecutors powerful evidence.

But the prosecution was never merely about frightening language. Boyne’s entire public identity had become entwined with his criticism of Connecticut’s family courts, judicial officers and politically connected insiders. He accused the system of protecting itself, silencing critics and turning family litigation into an industry of punishment. Connecticut then answered that criticism by making an example of him.

Lebuhn attacked judges associated with Trump while invoking the culturally approved language of saving democracy. Boyne attacked judges embedded in an entrenched state courthouse establishment while accusing them of corruption. One defendant’s politics fit comfortably within the dominant institutional narrative. The other defendant declared war on the institution holding the keys to his cell.

Only one was granted meaningful mercy.

Six Months for Bullets: The Sentence Was the Message

No responsible comparison can pretend these cases are identical. Boyne was convicted after trial on 18 counts. Lebuhn pleaded guilty to two federal charges. The statutes, sentencing frameworks, and evidentiary records differed. But equal justice cannot be reduced to a scavenger hunt for technical distinctions. Every criminal case contains different facts. The real question is whether the punishment imposed remains proportionate to the conduct.

Lebuhn deliberately mailed bullet photographs to federal judges. Boyne published inflammatory rhetoric on a political website.

Lebuhn received six months. Boyne received 20 years, followed by another decade of government control.

That disparity should disturb anyone who still believes sentencing is supposed to measure danger, culpability and actual harm rather than political usefulness. Boyne deserved a fair adjudication and, after conviction, a proportionate sentence. He did not deserve institutional annihilation. A 20-year term for a medically fragile 64-year-old blogger is not correction. It is a slow-motion death sentence delivered through paperwork, consecutive terms and the sterile vocabulary of judicial discretion.

The Lebuhn sentence exposes the central fraud in Connecticut’s treatment of Boyne. Threatening judges does not automatically require decades in prison. Even mailing bullet imagery directly to judges can result in six months when the defendant pleads, apologizes, and is presented as a troubled man worthy of rehabilitation.

Boyne was denied that humanity. His refusal to validate Connecticut’s narrative became evidence that he had learned nothing. His insistence that the prosecution was political retaliation became another reason to punish him. His criticism of the judiciary was not merely evidence in the case. It became the unforgivable offense beneath the offense.

No court has found that politics dictated these sentences. No document will openly say that attacking Trump judges earns leniency while attacking establishment judges earns burial.

The numbers say enough. Six months for bullets. Twenty years for a blog.

That is not equal justice. It is a warning.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Canada’s ruling class wants the privileges of American partnership without the discipline of American reciprocity. It wants U.S. consumers, U.S. pipelines, U.S. investment, U.S. military protection and unrestricted entry into the world’s richest market—then throws a tantrum when President Donald Trump puts American workers first. The Gordie Howe Bridge ceremony exposed the fraud. Canada celebrated a bridge to Detroit while excluding Detroit. It invoked Mr. Hockey while insulting the city that made him immortal. Gordie Howe knew how to respond when an opponent crossed the line: score, assist, and drop the gloves. America should do the same. This piece is “Canada Drops the Gloves,” first available on NY News Press.

By Matt “Sully” Sullivan and Dick LaFontaine

Canada’s political class has spent the current trade confrontation whining, posturing and demanding deference from the United States while refusing to confront the basic reality beneath the relationship: America holds the cards.

Ottawa and the provinces speak as though Canada and the United States arrive at the bargaining table as economic equals, each possessing comparable leverage and each equally capable of walking away. They do not.

One is the world’s dominant economic and military power, the center of the North American market and the primary guarantor of continental security. The other built much of its modern prosperity around privileged access to that power’s consumers, infrastructure, capital and financial system.

Canada may be a sovereign nation, but sovereignty does not erase dependency, and patriotic speeches do not repeal arithmetic.

The United States is Canada’s indispensable customer, investment engine, transportation corridor and continental shield. Canada is useful to America in energy, automobiles, minerals, agriculture and defense, but America is essential to Canada on an entirely different scale.

Canadian politicians can call that arrogant. They can call it bullying. They can wrap themselves in maple leaves, summon the cameras and perform wounded nationalism for television audiences. None of that changes the underlying imbalance.

The arithmetic remains undefeated, and no amount of anti-Trump theatrics can disguise the fact that Canada’s economic model depends heavily on access to the American marketplace.

That is why the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge became such a perfect monument to Canadian hypocrisy. The bridge connects Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit, Michigan. It was built to accelerate commerce with America, named for a Canadian who became immortal in an American city and justified economically by the enormous market waiting on the Detroit side.

Yet Canadian officials transformed its opening into another exercise in anti-Trump grievance theater. It was built through cooperation, opened with resentment and named for a man who would have had no patience for crybabies.

Canada Drops the Gloves: Canada’s Provincial Temper Tantrum

Canadian governments have not simply objected to American tariffs. They have embraced retaliatory barriers, stripped American products from government-controlled shelves and promoted procurement schemes designed to punish U.S. businesses.

Provincial liquor authorities pulled American wine, beer and spirits. Politicians promoted “Buy Canadian” mandates. Ottawa imposed retaliatory tariffs on American goods. Canadian officials then portrayed their own restrictions as noble acts of patriotic resistance while condemning comparable American measures as economic aggression.

That is not principled free trade. It is Canadian entitlement dressed up as national courage.

For decades, Canada’s political establishment grew comfortable with an arrangement in which American consumers absorbed Canadian exports, American capital supported Canadian industries and American power maintained the security architecture protecting both countries.

The arrangement worked so long as Washington accepted every imbalance, overlooked every restriction and treated Canadian access to the U.S. market as untouchable. Canadian officials learned that they could protect domestic industries, regulate American products, manipulate provincial purchasing systems and still expect Washington to preserve the broader relationship at almost any cost.

That was not a partnership of equals. It was a habit of American accommodation.

Donald Trump changed the terms. President Trump’s MAGA agenda begins with a proposition so simple that the permanent political class pretends not to understand it: the American government should put American workers, manufacturers, farmers and taxpayers first.

Trade policy is not supposed to be a global charity program administered by Washington on behalf of foreign governments. It is supposed to advance the prosperity, security and bargaining power of the American people.

That means trade must be reciprocal. Foreign governments do not get unlimited access to the American market while restricting American goods at home. Allies do not get to build industries around U.S. demand and then lecture Washington when the president finally demands a fair deal.

Canada cannot obstruct American automobiles, alcohol, agricultural products and other goods, then collapse into hysterics when America answers. Reciprocity is not aggression. It is what happens when the adult in the room finally stops subsidizing the tantrum.

More than 70% of Canada’s merchandise exports go to the United States. Canadian factories, farms, mines, pipelines, railroads and ports are structured around the American market. Ottawa may fantasize about replacing America with Europe or Asia, but dreams do not move cargo, and speeches do not relocate geography. Europe is across the Atlantic. Asia is across the Pacific.

America is across the street, and that fact defines the relationship more powerfully than every press conference held in Ottawa.

Canada Drops the Gloves: Mr. Hockey—and Mr. Detroit

The symbolism of the Gordie Howe International Bridge is almost too perfect. Gordie Howe was born in Saskatchewan, but he became “Mr. Hockey” in Detroit. He spent his first 25 NHL seasons wearing the winged wheel of the Detroit Red Wings. He scored 801 regular-season NHL goals, won four Stanley Cups and became one of the toughest, most respected and most complete athletes in professional sports.

Howe was Canadian by birth and Detroit by destiny, a man whose career embodied what the cross-border relationship could produce when talent, opportunity, grit and loyalty worked together.

His name belongs on a bridge joining Windsor and Detroit because his life represented the relationship at its best: Canadian talent meeting American opportunity and producing something larger than either side could have created alone.

Howe did not diminish Canada by becoming a Detroit legend, and Detroit did not erase his Canadian roots by embracing him as one of its own. He became a symbol of both countries precisely because he understood strength, loyalty and mutual respect.

Canadian officials dishonored that spirit by turning the bridge’s opening into a political snub. A joint celebration had been planned. After the Trump administration announced new tariffs, Canada canceled the arrangement and staged its own ceremony without American or Michigan officials.

Canada celebrated alone on an international bridge, standing across the river from Detroit while opening a trade artery whose entire purpose is to carry Canadian goods, workers and commerce into the United States.

The absurdity is breathtaking. Canada financed the approximately C$6.4 billion project, and Canadian taxpayers may rightly take pride in that investment. But the bridge has value because America is on the other side. Without Detroit, the structure would be a very expensive pier extending toward the world’s largest consumer market.

Canadian officials invoked Gordie Howe while excluding representatives of the city that made him a legend. That was not strength. It was smallness. It was not sovereignty. It was spite.

The ceremony did not embarrass Donald Trump. It embarrassed Canada.

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Canada Drops the Gloves: America Should Control the Terms

The United States should not respond with more symbolism. It should respond with leverage. America should use every lawful economic tool available to enforce reciprocal market access and make clear that Canadian access to the U.S. economy is not an entitlement. It is a privilege governed by agreements, obligations and the continuing consent of the American people.

Washington should challenge discriminatory provincial liquor systems, demand equal treatment for American automobiles and agricultural products, scrutinize Canadian subsidies and impose targeted tariffs wherever Canadian officials refuse to negotiate fairly.

There should be no more automatic exemptions, no more diplomatic babysitting and no more sacrificing American industries to preserve the feelings of Canadian politicians. The purpose of American trade policy is not to keep Ottawa comfortable. It is to defend American prosperity.

If Canadian leaders want to wage a symbolic economic war through liquor shelves, procurement rules and political speeches, they should understand that the United States possesses vastly more economic firepower and is fully entitled to use it.

Canada’s exposure is enormous. Windsor depends on cross-border automotive trade. Canadian oil and gas producers depend on American pipelines, refineries and customers. Canadian lumber, minerals, farm products and manufactured goods enter the United States on a scale no alternative market can quickly replace.

Canada needs the American marketplace, and that reality should shape every negotiation, tariff schedule and diplomatic exchange.

For too long, Washington behaved as though Canadian dependence created an American responsibility to preserve Canada’s preferred economic arrangements. It does not. The United States government owes duties to the American people, not to Canadian premiers, provincial liquor monopolies, Ottawa bureaucrats or multinational corporations that profit from one-sided trade.

America First means exactly that: the American government no longer apologizes for using American power in defense of American interests.

The strongest nation does not need to scream, bluff or sabotage its own infrastructure. It simply sets the terms and enforces them. Canada may complain. Canada may retaliate. Canada may stage another ceremony and invite nobody but itself.

Then Canada can look south and remember where its customers are, where its largest market remains and which country still possesses the decisive leverage.

The Gordie Howe Hat Trick

A Gordie Howe hat trick consists of a goal, an assist and a fight. That is exactly what American trade policy now requires.

The goal is full reciprocity. The assist goes to American workers, manufacturers, farmers, energy producers and exporters who spent decades competing against foreign governments while their own leaders apologized for defending them.

The fight is against every politician, lobbyist, bureaucrat and multinational interest that grew rich from managed American decline.

Donald Trump understands what Canada’s leadership refuses to accept: respect does not come from surrender. It comes from strength. Canada is sovereign. It can remove American products from its shelves, promote protectionist purchasing policies and stage anti-American political spectacles.

But sovereignty works both ways. The United States is equally sovereign, and it can restrict access, revoke exemptions, impose tariffs and force Canada to decide how much its theatrics are worth.

Partnership does not mean America plays the sucker. Friendship does not mean permanent concessions. Good neighbors do not demand access to your house while blocking your products at the door. For too long, the American ruling class confused politeness with policy and restraint with weakness.

MAGA rejects that confusion. It recognizes that alliances survive not because one side endlessly submits, but because both sides understand the cost of disrespect.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge should stand as a monument to continental commerce, shared prosperity and the possibilities created when two neighboring nations work together. Instead, its opening exposed the weakness, insecurity and pettiness of Canada’s political leadership. Canada celebrated the gateway while insulting the destination. That is the bridge of irony.

Gordie Howe understood how respect was earned. He could score. He could create opportunities for his teammates. And when an opponent crossed the line, he could drop the gloves and settle the matter. America should follow his example.

Score the goal. Make the assist. Then give Canada the Gordie Howe hat trick.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Elite Washington loves a costume. It loves the ceremonial prayer, the soothing slogan, and the carefully selected “moderate” who assures the ruling-class machine that radicalism is merely a misunderstanding invented by bigots. Omar Suleiman was useful because he spoke the language the Deep State-media complex wanted to hear: peace, justice, compassion and coexistence. Then Lindsey Graham died, and Suleiman stopped reading from the approved script. Out came the sneer. Out came the curse. Out came the demand for eternal ruin. This is how the fraud works. Public tolerance is performed for cameras. Private hatred is rewarded by the tribe. The mask did not slip accidentally. It finally became too heavy to hold. This piece is “The Imam of Hate,” also available on FL Gulf News.

By Greg Maresca

The death of anyone, especially a public figure,e has long been treated as a moment for restraint, reflection, or at the very least, silence. Even in this polarized political age, most Americans respect the basic decency of not celebrating someone’s passing. That is why the reaction of Texas Islamic Imam Omar Suleiman to the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham was needless and disgraceful.

Imam Omar Suleima, posted on social media, “Bye Lindsey. May you live an eternity in ruins for the ruins you helped create in Gaza.” This was not a political critique; rather, it was the unmasking that revealed far more about Suleiman than it did about Graham.

Suleiman is no ordinary storefront imam but is arguably America’s leading Islamic voice. This American-born Islamic is the president and co-founder of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. On May 9, 2019, Suleiman delivered the opening prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives that spoke of “peace, not war” and “love, not hate.” It was a message that resonated with legislators who love to showcase just how tolerant they are.

FL Gulf News

Dismissed outright is Suleiman’s long-documented pattern of radicalism that runs counter to the peaceful image he has tried so hard to cultivate. He is another paradigm of a public figure who speaks the language of compassion when the cameras are rolling and says something very different when they are not.

If this is the first time you are hearing about it, you can thank the elites who sit in a bubble at these dying news organizations.

Suleiman has praised Aidh al‑Qarni, a Saudi cleric, who preaches how Christians and Jews are “enemies of Islam” and that their “throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered” and called al‑Qarni “one of the greatest scholars and thinkers of the world.”

Suleiman continues to justify concubinage that is essentially sex slavery and argues how it “solved a real problem.” He supports Aafia Siddiqui, a convicted terrorist, who attempted to murder American military personnel while calling for a third intifada. If that is not enough,h Suleiman also meets with Muslim Brotherhood leaders banned from the United States and celebrated being named a top antisemitic influencer by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.

Such views are not compatible with the values of a society that believes and is founded on individual liberty and human dignity.

Speaking ill of the dead is not a political act; it is a moral one. Suleiman’s remarks about Sen. Graham were not merely indecent. They were revealing. They exposed the hollowness of his message of “love, not hate.” Apparently, those virtues are reserved only for people who share his political worldview.

When a proclaimed religious leader celebrates someone’s death, he is not offering analysis or criticism. He is glorifying hatred. That is corrosive in any society, but especially in one already strained by divisions. Our divisions have grown deeper and more dangerous than many Americans are willing to acknowledge.

That is why Suleiman’s diatribe deserves condemnation.

The episode stripped away Suleiman’s fake facade and revealed who he truly is.

As U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas observed on social media: “A U.S. Senator dies — and an Imam in Texas celebrates. We are at war — and only one side understands it.”

Whether one agrees with Roy’s choice of words or not, his broader point is difficult to dismiss: a society cannot long endure when hatred becomes a virtue, and the death of a political opponent becomes a cause for celebration.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: “Bring Back Bernie Goetz” is not a call for bloodshed. It is an indictment of a legal system that has begun treating speech like violence while denying speakers the contextual protections available to defendants who use actual force. Nobody should attack a judge, lawyer, social worker, former spouse, journalist, or government employee as a general matter. But government cannot demand peaceful conduct while imposing life-consuming punishment on citizens who use speech and publications rather than weapons. Shiloh Hendrix was convicted for being “rude.” Paul Boyne received twenty years in prison and ten years of special parole for writing blog posts. Nobody was shot, stabbed, or physically attacked. Reality calls bullshit. The law should place a canyon between words and wounds. Minnesota and Connecticut are filling it with concrete. This piece is “Punished For Not Shooting,” first published on The Family Court Circus.

By Richard Luthmann

The Poisonous Lesson

America’s blue-state speech police have stumbled into a theory so reckless that it deserves a name: Bring Back Bernie Goetz. Not as an endorsement of vigilantism. Not as a call to settle political or family disputes with gunfire. As an indictment of a legal order that increasingly erases the line between ugly words and violent deeds, then punishes the words with sentences approaching those imposed for homicide.

When government announces that speech is “conduct,” treats blog posts as stalking, and converts insults into criminal disorder, it teaches a poisonous lesson. The citizen who complains, curses, publishes, protests, or warns may face the machinery of the state without ever laying a hand on anyone.

Meanwhile, the citizen who uses actual force can at least invoke the ancient defenses of necessity, self-defense, and defense of others.

That is the perverse comparison. In 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot four young men on a New York subway after he said he believed he was about to be robbed. A jury later acquitted him of attempted murder and assault, although it convicted him of unlawful gun possession.

A civil jury later found him liable. Goetz was not “vindicated” in every forum, and his conduct should not be romanticized. But he received something modern speech defendants are increasingly denied: a jury was permitted to evaluate his fear, his perceptions, and his justification before deciding whether his violent act was criminal.

The speech defendant, by contrast, may see context stripped away while prosecutors simply rename expression a “course of conduct.” The frightening thesis writes itself: when words and bullets draw comparable punishment, the state has made words irrationally dangerous.

Punished For Not Shooting: Connecticut’s Twenty-Year Warning

Paul Boyne is the warning flare burning over Connecticut. Boyne, the founder and former publisher associated with The Family Court Circus, became the target of a sprawling prosecution based on writings about Connecticut judges.

The disputed publications were branded the “Hateful Eight,” a label that did half the prosecution’s rhetorical work before jurors ever assessed the constitutional line between political invective and true threats.

On March 10, 2026, a jury convicted Boyne on six cyber stalking-related counts. On May 26, Judge Peter Brown imposed a total effective sentence of twenty years in prison followed by ten years of special parole.

For a man in his sixties, twenty years is not merely punishment. It is a practical death sentence. The U.S. Government’s own actuarial tables show that Boyne is not expected to live out his prison term. And that is before factoring in serious health comorbidities, the medical costs of which will ultimately be covered by Connecticut taxpayers to warehouse him.

The government’s theory was not that Boyne fired eight shots, planted eight bombs, or assaulted eight judges. It was that writings, references, images, and repeated communications collectively became criminal stalking. Connecticut says the stalking case concerned menacing directed speech and a prolonged pattern, not protected criticism.

Reality calls bullshit.

True threats are not protected, and judges do not surrender their right to safety by taking the bench. But constitutional analysis cannot end when prosecutors utter the phrase “course of conduct.” Under Counterman v. Colorado, the state must prove at least recklessness regarding the threatening character of speech.

The First Amendment requires breathing space precisely because juries can confuse rage, satire, hyperbole and political hatred with a serious expression of intended unlawful violence.

When eight publications produce twenty years behind bars, every American journalist, blogger and furious parent should ask whether Connecticut punished a threat—or punished the intolerable fact that a citizen would not shut up.

Punished For Not Shooting: Anti-Deterrence by the State

The moral hazard becomes obvious when the Boyne sentence is compared with punishment for actual violence. The argument is not that Boyne should have used a weapon. He should not have. No parent, advocate, or litigant should attack a judge, lawyer, social worker, former spouse, or government employee, leaving them in a pool of blood in their driveway or the courthouse parking lot. That would be legally and morally wrong.

The argument here is that Connecticut has built a sentencing structure capable of making restraint look irrational. If a person believes officials are destroying his family, and he responds with publications rather than physical force, the legal system should preserve a canyon between those choices.

Speech may be sanctionable when it crosses into a true threat, targeted intimidation, or criminal solicitation. But punishment must still reflect the decisive fact that nobody was shot, stabbed, or physically attacked.

Instead, Boyne received twenty years of incarceration and ten years of special parole. The sentence communicates that a keyboard can be treated like a firearm and denunciation like bloodshed. That is not deterrence. It is anti-deterrence. The state should want aggrieved citizens to speak, petition, expose, appeal, demonstrate, publish, and seek elections. Those are the pressure-release valves of a republic. When officials weld those valves shut, they do not eliminate grievance. They redirect it.

This is where “Bring Back Bernie Goetz” lands with brutal force. Goetz used bullets and obtained a self-defense trial on the major charges. Boyne used words and received a sentence that will likely consume the remainder of his life.

The comparison is intentionally shocking because the incentive is shocking. A legal order that punishes speech as severely as violence risks teaching unstable or desperate people that peaceful escalation offers no sentencing advantage.

Government cannot preach de-escalation while destroying the legal value of restraint. If Paul Boyne will die in prison anyway, wouldn’t it have been more rational to use eight bullets instead of eight blog posts?

And won’t it be for the “next” Paul Boyne?

Punished For Not Shooting: The Shiloh Hendrix Conversion Trick

Shiloh Hendrix presents the smaller but culturally revealing version of the same disease. Hendrix was prosecuted in Rochester, Minnesota, where, in April 2025, she was recorded using a racial slur during a playground confrontation.

An unsupervised Black child tried to rob her, so she defended herself. In so doing, she called the thieving child a “nigger.”

Sharmake Omar, a Somalian in the park, filmed Hendrix with his phone.

The language was vile for some. For the Blue State ruling class, it deserved condemnation, counterspeech, social consequences, and moral disgust. For some Black preachers, it’s part of the lexicon.

Offensive expression does not become constitutionally unprotected merely because millions of Libtards, snowflakes, or Islamo-Marxists despise it.

In July 2026, an Olmsted County jury returned a split verdict. Hendrix was acquitted of the disorderly-conduct count involving the child but convicted of a count involving the man who filmed and confronted her. The conviction rested on the combined words and behavior directed toward the Somalian cameraman, and prosecutors argued that her demeanor suggested possible physical escalation.

The result was probation, 200 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine. That is nowhere near Boyne’s punishment, but it demonstrates the same semantic maneuver: expression becomes “behavior,” behavior becomes “conduct,” and conduct becomes a crime.

Minnesota’s disorderly-conduct statute expressly reaches offensive, obscene or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger or resentment. That text should alarm civil libertarians across the political spectrum.

The First Amendment exists largely to protect speech that creates anger and resentment. “Fighting words” remain a narrow historical exception, not a roving license to prosecute slurs, insults or confrontational tone.

Hendrix may be contemptible to some because of her speech. But contemptibility is not a criminal code.

Once the state can imprison or supervise citizens because their language is offensive and emotionally provocative, constitutional protection depends on whether prosecutors, jurors and judges share the speaker’s politics and social standing.

The better question is whether Hendrix would have been contemptible if she’d said nothing and just reached for pepper spray or a taser. Maybe we wouldn’t even know her name.

But somehow, it’s become illegal for a white woman to defend herself and her child in Minnesota. Ask Sandra Grazzini-Rucki.

The Family Court Circus

Punished For Not Shooting: Calling Speech “Conduct”

The central constitutional danger is the conversion trick: call speech conduct, then insist the First Amendment has left the building. Every act of communication involves conduct in a literal sense.

A writer types. A protester marches. A newspaper prints. A speaker moves air. A citizen clicks “publish.”

If physical implementation alone allows government to evade constitutional scrutiny, the Free Speech Clause protects nothing more consequential than silent thought.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that government may regulate genuinely nonexpressive conduct and may punish narrow categories of expression, including true threats, incitement, criminal solicitation and certain integral components of crime. But labels do not decide cases.

In Counterman, the Court warned that threat prosecutions require a subjective mental-state safeguard because the absence of such protection chills speech beyond the law’s legitimate boundary. The government must show that the speaker at least consciously disregarded a substantial risk that the communication would be understood as threatening violence.

That requirement is not a gift to bad people. It is a buffer protecting everyone who writes angrily, speaks clumsily, uses metaphor, quotes violent language, publishes satire or condemns powerful officials.

The danger grows when courts aggregate protected items into an unprotected “course.” Eight posts that are individually protected do not automatically become criminal because a prosecutor stacks them together. Repetition can matter to context, intent and impact, but arithmetic cannot repeal the First Amendment.

Nor can emotional injury become a universal solvent. Political speech routinely causes fear, fury, humiliation and resentment.

The answer is disciplined line-drawing: identify the specific statement, the recipient, the threatened unlawful violence, the speaker’s mental state and the causal connection. Anything less invites punishment by atmosphere, which was the exact flaw in Judge Peter Brown’s courtroom in the Boyne case.

Punished For Not Shooting: What Goetz Actually Proves

Goetz shows why a working theory that bypasses speech can be stated with precision. The New York Court of Appeals held that justification includes the defendant’s actual beliefs while also requiring an objective assessment of reasonableness.

At trial, Goetz was acquitted of attempted murder and assault but convicted of carrying an unlicensed firearm. Years later, a civil jury awarded substantial damages to Darrell Cabey. The legal record is mixed, morally contested, and inseparable from the racial fear and urban disorder of 1980s New York.

Yet the contrast remains constitutionally useful. Goetz’s use of force triggered doctrines built to distinguish aggression from justified defense. The jury examined imminence, perception, proportionality, and reasonableness. Those questions are demanding.

By comparison, modern speech prosecutions can collapse the inquiry into whether the target felt alarmed, whether the words were repeated, and whether officials characterize the communications as menacing. That is a far more manipulable test, especially when the target is a judge, prosecutor, or institution capable of activating the criminal apparatus.

Self-defense law is not a blank check. Deadly force generally requires an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm and must satisfy jurisdiction-specific rules concerning necessity, proportionality, and retreat. The delivery of a child in family court to psychopaths, abusers, and/or child rapists does not automatically authorize violence against the officials involved. Not under the laws of man. (Matthew 18:6 – “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”)

But government also has a categorical duty not to make speech a sentencing substitute for violence. The law should reward the person who chooses publication over physical confrontation. It should create an enormous penalty gap between words and wounds.

When that gap disappears, the state has not made society safer. It has made the peaceful option less rational.

Punished For Not Shooting: Viewpoint Control With Handcuffs

The political asymmetry makes the danger worse. “Hate speech” is not a freestanding exception to the First Amendment. America rejected the European model in which government commissions supervise acceptable opinion.

Yet blue-state prosecutors increasingly reach for stalking, harassment, disorderly conduct, and bias-inflected theories to accomplish indirectly what the Constitution forbids directly.

The forbidden viewpoint is recoded as harmful conduct. The unpopular speaker is recoded as a public-safety threat. The criminal case then arrives wearing therapeutic language about trauma, dignity, and fear.

None of this means threats should be tolerated, even though many are by Blue State prosecutors. A specific, serious communication of intended unlawful violence may be prosecuted. Repeated unwanted contact directed privately at an individual can present different constitutional questions from public commentary about officials.

Doxxing combined with threats can create real danger. “Digital Hitmen” get paid good money and go relatively unmolested – so long as they are leftists.

The modern problem is the refusal to distinguish these categories with surgical care. When a judge criticized in public reporting becomes both the alleged victim and a member of the institution adjudicating the critic, the need for transparency, neutral judges, exact jury instructions, and meaningful appellate review becomes overwhelming.

Boyne’s sentence is therefore bigger than Boyne. Hendrix’s conviction is bigger than Hendrix. Both speakers used language many Americans find repulsive. That is why their cases matter.

Popular speakers do not need a First Amendment. The socially protected do not need a Bill of Rights. Constitutional law is tested when the defendant is abrasive, obsessive, hateful, reckless, or impossible to defend at a dinner party. If courts may erase speech protections whenever prosecutors prove expression was ugly and persistent, then the First Amendment has become a civility code administered by the permanent political class.

That is not public safety. It is viewpoint control with handcuffs.

Restore the Line Before It Breaks

“Bring Back Bernie Goetz” is not a legal or policy proposal. It is a fire alarm for the ruling class. It describes the monstrous incentive created when government punishes words so heavily that violent conduct appears to offer equal punishment plus an affirmative defense.

No responsible citizen should act on that comparison. No one should attack judges, social workers, lawyers, journalists, protesters, parents or children. The cure for this tyranny is constitutional reform, not bloodshed.

Until and unless reality calls bullshit.

Legislatures should rewrite stalking and disorderly-conduct laws to separate public advocacy from targeted unwanted communication; require proof tied to specific statements; incorporate Counterman’s recklessness floor; and demand clear findings of a serious threat of unlawful violence.

Courts should reject the theory that repetition alone converts protected commentary into criminal conduct. Sentencing judges should preserve a proportionality gap between speech offenses and physical violence. Appellate courts should treat these cases as First Amendment emergencies, not routine disputes over evidentiary sufficiency.

Journalists should stop allowing prosecutors to hide controversial speech behind adjectives such as “hateful,” “menacing,” and “disturbing.” Publish the words. Test them against the constitutional standard.

The state’s message must be unmistakable: use words, courts, elections, cameras, public records, and appeals—and never use violence except where law recognizes immediate and necessary defense against an imminent physical threat. The citizen who chooses speech over force must be treated as having made the safer, more civilized choice, even when his speech is vicious.

Connecticut’s twenty-year sentence for Boyne threatens to reverse that moral hierarchy. Minnesota’s prosecution of Hendrix shows how quickly offensive language can be relabeled conduct.

A republic that criminalizes its pressure valves should not be surprised when pressure builds.

Restore the line between speech and violence before someone takes the state’s perverse lesson literally.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Zohran Mamdani has mastered the politics of imaginary courage. He points across the Atlantic, threatens a foreign leader he cannot arrest, and collects applause from activists who confuse performance with power. Then he turns away from an NYPD system operating inside his own government. A secret I-Card has kept me outside New York for roughly a year without a warrant, charge, court date, or publicly stated legal basis. I have missed reporting assignments, weddings, funerals, reunions, and civic events. Mamdani could demand answers today. He will not. The mayor is not powerless. He is selective—and selective courage is political fraud. These facts are true: Zohran Mamdani is a political cancer and Israeli doctors are some of the best in the world. Maybe my next trip to New York will be to report on a “Mossad Operation.” This piece is “The Mayor of Make-Believe,” first available on NY News Press.

By M. Thomas Nast and Rick LaRivière with Richard Luthmann

The Arrest That Never Could Happen

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK) – Zohran Mamdani has discovered the cheapest trick in municipal politics: threaten a man 6,000 miles away while ignoring the abuses sitting inside his own police department.

For more than a year, Mamdani promised that Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if the Israeli prime minister entered New York City.

Then the lawyers arrived.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, New York City has no independent authority to execute an International Criminal Court warrant, and a mayor cannot transform the NYPD into a freelance foreign-policy tribunal.

Mamdani finally admitted the city lacks that power, but not before recording another theatrical indictment of Netanyahu for the cameras.

Reuters, The Associated Press, USA Today, and The Washington Post all reported the same retreat: The arrest promise was legally impossible, so Mamdani shifted the burden to Washington while preserving the performance.

This was not law enforcement. It was content creation with a police badge in the background. The mayor wanted the imagery of handcuffs without the inconvenience of jurisdiction, due process, or constitutional limits.

That is the first hypocrisy. He rages against power he does not possess while refusing to use power he unquestionably does possess.

The mayor commands the NYPD. He appoints the police commissioner. His administration can order an audit of stale Investigation Cards, require written probable-cause reviews, impose expiration and renewal rules, and direct the department to purge entries that no longer have a lawful basis.

Yet Mamdani’s City Hall has shown no comparable urgency about these invisible, warrant-like restraints imposed on ordinary people.

Netanyahu gets a global video. New Yorkers trapped by secret police paperwork get silence.

The Mayor of Make-Believe: The Secret Warrant That Isn’t A Warrant

An NYPD I-Card is not a judicial warrant. It is an internal computerized notification identifying someone as a perpetrator, suspect, or witness. New York’s highest court has now emphasized the constitutional danger.

In People v. Cuencas, the Court of Appeals explained that I-Cards carry different classifications, including “probable cause to arrest,” “suspect only,” and “witness.”

In April 2026, People v. Palacios reversed a conviction because prosecutors failed to prove that arresting officers actually received and relied upon lawful probable-cause information transmitted through an I-Card.

The message is unmistakable: An electronic flag does not manufacture probable cause, and police bureaucracy cannot substitute for evidence.

Reporter Richard Luthmann, a contributor to this outlet, has lived under one of these shadows for roughly a year. According to his published account and related filings, the Staten Island I-Card has no accompanying warrant, pending charge, court date, or publicly articulated legal basis.

Yet its practical effect is exile. Returning to New York City risks detention by officers encountering a database entry that operates like a warrant while evading the safeguards of one.

During that year, Luthmann has been unable to report New York stories in person and has missed weddings, funerals, reunions and civic events.

On July 31, he will again be absent when the Italian-American Civil Rights League gathers in Little Italy ahead of the centennial Feast of San Gennaro—an event celebrating immigrant sacrifice, family and the right not to have one’s history erased. Luthmann is an IACRL member.

The irony is savage. New York City’s mayor lectures the world about justice while a journalist remains banished by an untested police notation.

NY News Press

The Mayor of Make-Believe: Mamdani’s Selected Courage

That silence becomes uglier when Staten Island politics enters the frame. Luthmann contends that the I-Card serves the interests of District Attorney Michael McMahon, a longtime establishment Democrat and political adversary whose office has repeatedly been the subject of Luthmann’s reporting.

The backdrop is the notorious “Part N” controversy, in which Luthmann alleged that narcotics matters were steered into a prosecution-friendly courtroom connected to McMahon’s wife, Judge Judith McMahon. Public reporting has described those accusations and the claimed effort to route sensitive applications away from less accommodating judges.

“For me, the Part N saga shows that the McMahons and those like them hate Black and brown people,” Luthmann said. “That is who their justice scams overwhelmingly target. It makes sense. The Republicans are the party of Lincoln and liberty. The Establishment Democrats control the New York Courts and the prosecutors’ offices, and the DSA hates white people. They are all racists.”

Luthmann’s point is that the machinery deserves scrutiny precisely because narcotics enforcement, secret warrant practices and prosecutor-friendly judicial routing can fall hardest on Black and Latino defendants.

If Mamdani believes the system is structurally biased, here is a test requiring no foreign-policy cosplay: Order an independent review of Staten Island I-Cards. Publish their racial and geographic impact. Identify who requested each card. Require current probable cause. Delete every stale, unsupported, or retaliatory entry.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring because McMahon was not some distant political beneficiary of the Luthmann I-Card—he was personally the complainant on the NYPD report that set the machinery in motion.

According to the underlying records, McMahon claimed he feared for his safety after receiving a Substack email, described Luthmann as a “stranger,” and supplied the allegations used to justify a criminal-contempt investigation and the warrant-like police flag.

Luthmann says those assertions are materially false: McMahon had known of him for years, the email contained no threat against McMahon, and authorities have produced no proof that Luthmann was ever properly served with the order he supposedly violated. To the extent McMahon repeated those claims in sworn complaints, affidavits, or testimony, the contradictions raise serious questions of possible perjury and filing a false instrument—not merely political exaggeration.

“Mamdani does not need international jurisdiction to investigate the fact that the McMahons are liars and political hacks. He needs only the courage to ask the NYPD brass to examine whether a sitting district attorney used his personal influence and the NYPD database to turn false claims into an extrajudicial arrest trap,” Luthmann said.

Instead, Mamdani appears content to leave the McMahon machine undisturbed while staging confrontations with Netanyahu.

That is establishment pandering disguised as insurgent politics.

The socialist mayor who campaigned against entrenched power suddenly loses his voice when the entrenched power wears a Democratic Party label. He can denounce an Israeli leader before breakfast, but he cannot ask why a journalist and political opponent of the Staten Island district attorney remains effectively barred from the city by secret police paperwork.

Fraud is not always a lie. Sometimes it is selective courage.

The Mayor of Make-Believe: The Executioner in Queens

The hypocrisy does not stop there. There is the case of Ashrafuzzaman Khan, a Queens resident convicted in absentia by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal for crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 liberation war.

Khan is a longtime New York resident and former Queens imam who was sentenced to death for participating in the murders of 18 intellectuals. Other reporting documented his leadership ties to the Islamic Circle of North America and ICNA’s removal of references to him after the conviction became public.

The Bangladeshi judgment, the fairness of proceedings conducted in absentia, and any American immigration consequences are matters for federal authorities and courts—not the mayor.

That is exactly the point.

Mamdani’s standard should be consistent. If he wants to use his office as a moral megaphone against alleged or adjudicated war criminals, he must answer some hard questions:

• Why does his outrage appear almost exclusively calibrated toward Israel?

• Why no mayoral video demanding a renewed federal review of Khan’s citizenship, immigration history and alleged conduct?

• Why no insistence that due process be pursued wherever the accused comes from, whatever organization sheltered him and whichever constituency might become uncomfortable?

Mamdani cannot arrest Khan either. But he can request federal action, condemn the crimes and stand with the victims.

Instead, Netanyahu receives obsession while Khan receives obscurity.

New Yorkers notice selective prosecution—even rhetorical prosecution. A mayor who spends political capital pretending to command international criminal law while declining to clean up constitutionally dangerous police practices at home is not governing.

He is auditioning.

If Mamdani continues choosing ideological theater over municipal justice, “one-term mayor” will stop sounding like partisan wish-casting and start looking like the city’s verdict.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: The families of murdered Americans should never be forced to crawl through congressional hallways begging the government to enforce judgments already entered by its own courts. Iran and its proxies financed bombings, hijackings, battlefield attacks and civilian slaughter. The victims proved their cases. The judgments are real. Yet Washington keeps discovering new urgency when diplomats want Iranian assets unfrozen and endless patience when widows and wounded veterans want justice. That inversion is not only morally diseased; it is sick to its core. Pay the victims before rewarding Tehran. Preserve every available asset. Fund every lawful judgment. The scumbags of humanity have received enough accommodation. It is time their victims receive justice, or else it is time to burn Tehran to the ground. If they won’t pay in dollars, they should pay with their civilization before they destroy ours. This piece is “Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt,” first available on NY News Press.

By Richard Luthmann

A Quarter-Century Waiting Room

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — There is something obscenely rotten in a system that can identify the architects of mass murder, prove their responsibility in American courts, enter final judgments for the dead and wounded—and then tell their families to keep waiting.

Waiting is what Janlyn Scauso has done for nearly twenty-five years. Her husband, FDNY firefighter Dennis Scauso of Hazardous Materials Company No. 1, ran toward the World Trade Center when civilized people were running away. He was killed when the South Tower collapsed on September 11, 2001.

Janlyn was left to carry the grief, raise the memory, and repeatedly explain to Washington why a court judgment should mean something when the defendant is a terrorism-sponsoring government.

On Monday, victims and families from attacks spanning four decades gathered at Upper Senate Park before heading into congressional meetings. Their message was brutally simple: “Don’t Leave Us Behind.” They represented the 1983 Beirut embassy and Marine barracks bombings, TWA Flight 847, Khobar Towers, the East Africa embassy bombings, 9/11, Iranian-backed attacks in Iraq, the 2016 Bastille Day massacre and Hamas’ October 7 atrocities.

They are not professional mourners. They are survivors, widows, veterans, children and Gold Star families forced into becoming lobbyists because the machinery of government moves faster to negotiate with Tehran than to honor Americans already holding lawful judgments.

The obscenity is not merely delay. It is inversion. The victims must beg. The bureaucrats deliberate. The diplomats bargain. The killers’ sponsors count their assets. The scumbags of humanity get strategy sessions; American families get another anniversary.

Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt: Janlyn Carries Dennis Forward

Scauso’s presence gives the Washington effort its moral center. She is not presenting an abstract policy paper. She is carrying Dennis into every meeting, every hallway, and every conversation where officials might otherwise reduce terrorism judgments to a line item.

Since 9/11, Janlyn Scauso has spoken publicly about loss, resilience and remembrance, preserving the story of a firefighter who answered the call and never came home. Joined in advocacy by her daughters, Gabrielle and Juliette Scauso, their testimony also exposes what government language conceals: “unpaid judgment” means a family lived through murder, survived years of litigation, proved its case and still has not received the justice the court ordered.

Around her stood others with their own permanent dates. Angela Mistrulli lost her father, Joseph, on the 107th floor of the North Tower when she was seventeen.

Jane Sharp Synnestvedt survived seventeen days as a hostage after Hezbollah-linked terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847.

Preston Kaplan endured an Iranian-made explosively formed projectile in Baghdad, more than sixty surgeries and a below-the-knee amputation, while his wife, Nicole, became caregiver and advocate.

David King escaped the burning Pentagon with catastrophic burns.

Thomas Lawrence survived Khobar Towers.

Anne Dammarell was shattered by the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut. Itamar Shapira survived the October 7 “death shelter.”

Mindy Kleinberg lost her husband and helped force creation of the 9/11 Commission.

Different attacks. Different decades. The same criminal pipeline: governments and proxies using money, explosives, hijackers and fanatic foot soldiers to slaughter innocents, then hiding behind borders, diplomacy and time. These witnesses make bureaucratic evasion impossible.

NY News Press

Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt: Gillen and Malliotakis Step Up

The immediate legislative fight is over the U.S. Victims of State-Sponsored Terrorism Fund, created to compensate people holding final American judgments arising from international terrorism committed by designated state sponsors.

The Fund’s governing law has been amended repeatedly since 2015, including through the USVSST Fund Clarification Act, the Sudan Claims Resolution Act and the Fairness for 9/11 Families Act. Yet the basic scandal remains: many families with judgments are still waiting for full payment, even after the Justice Department announced a record distribution exceeding $2.8 billion in January.

That is why Representatives Laura Gillen, a New York Democrat, and Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican, deserve a clear nod for doing what Washington rarely does well: crossing the aisle on behalf of people who have already paid the highest price.

Their stand-alone version of Amendment 1120 would strengthen the Fund, protect victims holding unpaid terrorism judgments and preserve repayment through future terrorism-related recoveries. The families came to Capitol Hill to demand that Congress enact the protection rather than bury it under parliamentary maneuvering, partisan warfare or some eleventh-hour deal made for convenience.

This should not be difficult. When an American court enters judgment against a state sponsor of terrorism, the United States must treat that judgment as more than ceremonial parchment. A nation that cannot enforce its own judgments against the financiers of murdered Americans teaches every hostile government the same lesson: wait long enough, hire enough intermediaries, survive enough news cycles, and Washington may eventually value diplomatic flexibility more than the blood on the floor.

Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt: No Payday for Terrorists

The families’ open letter to President Donald Trump puts the question where it belongs: no Iranian assets should be released, transferred, unfrozen, or returned—and no sanctions should be lifted or relieved—before outstanding terrorism judgments owed to American victims are resolved.

The group says more than $156 billion in damages awarded by United States courts remains unpaid. It warns that any financial relief to Tehran frees other money for Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran’s wider proxy system of exported murder.

That demand is neither radical nor partisan. Congress previously addressed terrorism claims before normalization involving Libya and Sudan. The principle is elemental: do not reward the sponsor before paying the victims. Do not return leverage to the government found liable while widows, wounded veterans and orphaned children are still holding judgments. Do not ask Janlyn Scauso to accept another speech while the people who financed terror receive assets, concessions or renewed international legitimacy.

Justice delayed is not always justice denied. Sometimes it is justice degraded—whittled down by bureaucracy until accountability becomes a commemorative phrase spoken once a year. That is what these families are fighting. They are not asking Washington to resurrect the dead or erase the scars. They are asking their country to stand behind its courts, protect the Fund and place American victims ahead of Iran’s treasury and its terrorist proxies.

Dennis Scauso answered America’s call in minutes. His family has waited decades for America to answer theirs. Congress and the administration should stop making the victims chase justice through the halls of power.

Pay the judgments. Preserve the assets. Punish the sponsors. And never leave these families behind.

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