LUTHMANN NOTE: Greg Maresca details a controlled demolition followed by a speed-run reconstruction. Matt Campbell didn’t inherit Penn State; he replaced it. Half the roster gone, dozens imported, and an NFL-style command structure dropped into college football’s most tradition-heavy ecosystem. That’s bold—but it’s also risky. Chemistry doesn’t come from spreadsheets or portal rankings. It comes from reps, trust, and adversity. April 25 won’t answer everything—but it will expose something. Either this is the foundation of a contender, or it’s a high-profile experiment that could collapse under its own ambition. This piece is “A Blue-White Rebuild,” also available on NYNewsPress.com.

By Greg Maresca

(STATE COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA) – The 2026 Blue White football “practice” will be more of a public unveiling than the traditional scrimmage that preceded it for a generation, as Penn State football and Beaver Stadium continue their massive reconstruction. The April 25 event marks the initial time the Nittany Lion faithful will meet their new head coach, Matt Campbell, and his staff, who have spent the winter rebuilding the roster, the culture, and the very architecture of Penn State football.

Campbell’s arrival from Iowa State triggered a wholesale reorganization of the program. The staff directory reads like a cross-section of his Iowa State years, who have all transplanted themselves into the Big Ten’s eastern frontier. Saturday’s glorified practice is the first chance to see how these pieces fit together, not in the abstract of the Athletic Communication office’s press releases and video clips but in the detailed choreography of a football program trying to prove itself worthy of championship contention.

The most consequential hire other than Campbell is 35-year-old Offensive Coordinator Taylor Mouser, who served as Campbell’s longtime assistant and has been credited with Iowa State’s 2024 offensive resurgence. Mouser and Campbell have been together for over a decade. Mouser’s offense went 11–3 and capped that season with a bowl win over the Miami Hurricanes. Mouser’s resume is compelling, with his offensive schemes rooted in timing, layered reads, and discipline that requires the steadiness the Penn State offense has struggled to consistently achieve.

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Defensively, Deon Broomfield may be the most intriguing coaching addition. His work at Iowa State turned the Cyclones’ secondary into one of the nation’s best, finishing first nationally in passing defense and producing NFL-caliber defensive backs like T.J. Tampa. Broomfield brings a technician’s eye and a developer’s patience, two qualities Penn State could use after years of lopsided secondary play.

Ryan Clanton’s arrival as offensive line coach suggests Campbell is intent on fixing Penn State’s soft underbelly that has been exposed in every heavyweight Big Ten matchup. In Clayton. The offensive line has a new coach known for physicality and fundamentals.

Behind the scenes, Campbell added General Manager Derek Hoodjer, Chief of Staff Skip Brabenec, and a restructured performance and recruiting apparatus. These hires reflect a modern, NFL-style organizational model that separates coaching, personnel, and operations into specialized verticals. It is a structure Campbell used effectively at Iowa State, and one that Penn State hopes will stabilize the program.

Penn State entered December with only two signed recruits due to their head coaching transition that brought on an aggressive portal strategy and a re-recruitment of existing players. April 25 will be the first time this patchwork roster will operate in front of fans, and Campbell has been clear that the format must reflect the team’s developmental stage.

The staff’s overhaul mirrors the roster reset: deliberate, expansive, and unmistakably intentional. Of the 103 players expected to participate in the final spring practice, only 52 return from the 2025 team. Two dozen players departed Iowa State to follow Campbell to Happy Valley, and more than 40 transfers arrived from across the country. The Blue-White practice is therefore less a celebration of continuity and more a diagnostic session for a team that has been stitched together in record time.

Penn State’s 2026 schedule blends a forgiving nonconference slate with a very manageable Big Ten one that will allow the program to build on anticipated early successes and contend.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: This is where the crooked New York judicial-political system shows its hand. When a sitting judge admits he filed without permission, the question is not technical—it’s structural. Who follows the rules, and who bends them? Castorina’s move wasn’t just aggressive. It exposed the playbook: delay, deflect, and avoid discovery. But once “fabrication” gets thrown around, there’s only one way forward—produce everything. Metadata. Devices. Depositions. Under oath. That’s the line they don’t want to cross. Because once testimony starts, narratives collapse. This case isn’t about paperwork anymore. It’s about who’s willing to tell the truth when the record stops being optional. This piece is “Judge Castorina Breaks Court Rules.”

By Rick LaRivière with Richard Luthmann

Judge Castorina Breaks Court Rules: He Filed First and Asked Permission Never

Staten Island Judge Ronald Castorina Jr. just gave Richard Luthmann a new headline and a new court paper. In the latest turn of Luthmann v. Hanks, Castorina, a defendant in a Manhattan civil case, filed a sur-reply on April 14 that openly admitted it was submitted without prior court authorization.

The first page says it in black and white: “I understand that I have not received prior authorization from the Court to file a sur-reply brief.”

Luthmann immediately answered with a Notice of Rejection, filed the same day, arguing the paper violates 22 NYCRR 202.8-c and should not be read at all. The rejection notice says sur-replies are barred absent advance leave, and materials filed in violation “will not be read or considered.”

“In New York Supreme Court, you don’t get to make it up as you go. Unauthorized papers don’t get read. That’s not my opinion—that’s the rule book,” Luthmann said. “Judge Ron apparently thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”

Luthmann also cites BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP v. Uvino, 155 A.D.3d 1155 (3d Dep’t 2017), and U.S. Bank Trust, N.A. v. Rudick, 156 A.D.3d 841 (2d Dep’t 2017), for the point that unauthorized surreplies are improper and generally disregarded.

That is the procedural bomb. But the real story is the substance. Castorina’s sur-reply did not engage the main recusal issue. Luthmann’s pending motion asks whether Justice Emily Morales-Minerva should step aside because her household is tied to the Manhattan Democratic machine through her husband, Party Chair Nico Minerva.

Luthmann’s April 13 Reply Affidavit framed the question as judge-centric. He argued that one prior judge, Justice Brendan Lantry, already recused on appearance grounds in the same case and that the current assignment carries even worse optics. He said the case has pinballed across judges and been kept above discovery for years.

Castorina went another way. He attacked one exhibit and the plaintiff’s credibility. He claimed it was “impossible” for messages from August 2016 to identify him as “Judge Ronald Castorina, Jr.” because he did not become a judge until 2021. He asked the court to take judicial notice of his 2020 election and later swearing-in, then argued the exhibit was “clearly altered,” “demonstrably fabricated,” and sanctionable.

Luthmann answered that point by saying the label proves nothing except how e-discovery works.

“This isn’t a mystery. It’s e-discovery. Files get compiled by e-discovery vendors. Labels get updated as of the time of the compilation—when Ron was already a judge and after I got out of the hoosegow,” Luthmann said. “The raw data tells the truth—and that’s exactly what they don’t want produced. But ouuh baby, I like it raw.”

The Notice of Rejection says the “Judge” honorific was entered during later compilation by an e-discovery vendor after Castorina had taken the bench and after Luthmann left federal prison on April 5, 2021, and federal custody on August 5, 2021. Luthmann says the software prompted for participant identifiers, and they were entered truthfully as of the compilation date. That, he argues, does not make the underlying 2016 messages fake. It makes them compiled.

“To think that a sitting New York State Justice doesn’t know the distinction is scary,” Luthmann said. “I guess that’s DEI at work.”

Judge Castorina Breaks Court Rules: The Sur-Reply That Proved the Need for Discovery

Luthmann’s answer to Castorina is blunt. Thank you for proving the case belongs in discovery.

“You don’t litigate authenticity in a rogue sur-reply. You litigate it in discovery—with documents, metadata, and sworn testimony,” Luthmann said. “This case has been trapped above discovery for years. That’s not a coincidence, it’s by design.”

His Notice of Rejection says that if Castorina wants to litigate authenticity, then the remedy is not an unauthorized side-brief. It is raw exports, metadata, vendor logs, source files, and sworn depositions. The filing cites CPLR 3101(a) for broad disclosure and points to Forman v. Henkin, 30 N.Y.3d 656 (2018), for the principle that ordinary material-and-necessary rules govern electronic discovery.

Luthmann asks for an immediate discovery conference and a prompt ESI order because no discovery has been exchanged yet.

That is where Castorina may have overplayed his hand. By crying fabrication, he turned a motion fight into an authenticity fight. By doing it without leave, he handed Luthmann a procedural opening. And by centering the dispute on a compiled label instead of the recusal standard, he strengthened Luthmann’s argument that Castorina is trying to keep the case away from depositions.

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Luthmann’s April 13 affidavit said exactly that. He called Castorina’s earlier opposition a “self-serving smoke screen” designed to keep the case trapped above discovery, where nobody has to sit under oath, and no one has to make admissions on videotape.

“Seven judges. Three years. No discovery. At some point, it stops looking like a delay and starts looking like a protection racket, and a clumsy one at that.” Luthmann said.

The record makes the next part worse for Castorina. The exhibit he now calls impossible is not some stray internet scrap. The Albany filing attached to the latest papers contains exported Facebook Messenger messages labeled “Messages exported from: Richard Luthmann” and “With: Judge Ron Castorina Jr.” stretching back years. Those exports include political chatter, campaign strategy talk, and exchanges about Janine Materna.

On pages 56 and 57 of the export, August 30, 2016 messages show Luthmann sending vulgar material about Materna and Castorina responding with crude comments, including “She’s a rotten [expletive] at that,” “Her and weiner,” and “there’s her pearl necklace [she] always wears…” before later saying he would “win on the merits” because “she’s a terrible person and a horrible candidate.”

Luthmann’s April 13 Reply Affidavit reproduced those same exchanges as Exhibit A. On pages 13 and 14 of that filing, screenshots show the same Messenger thread and the same crude references to a woman.

Judge Castorina previously authenticated these Messenger messages when he sat for a grand jury deposition in 2018, so to deny them now would create a perjury problem.

“Thank you, Judge Castorina. You just proved exactly why this case needs discovery—immediately,” Luthmann said. “Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go straight to depositions.”

We asked Judge Castorina, his lawyer Robert Brown, about the Sur Reply, copying NYS Courts press offices and supervising judges, City Hall, Council Speaker Julie Menin, Majority Whip and co-defendant Kamillah Hanks, DSA addresses, and others. Here is what we asked:

From: Rick LaRivière <RickLaRiviere@proton.me>
Date: On Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 at 2:48 PM
Subject: PRESS INQUIRY: Unauthorized Sur-Reply, Alleged Fabrication Claims, and Discovery Avoidance in Luthmann v. Hanks
To: rcastori@nycourts.gov <rcastori@nycourts.gov>, rbrown@robertbrownlaw.com <rbrown@robertbrownlaw.com>, michelle@robertbrownlaw.com <michelle@robertbrownlaw.com>, admin@robertbrownlaw.com <admin@robertbrownlaw.com>, aohandley@robertbrownlaw.com <aohandley@robertbrownlaw.com>, AHackel@nycourts.gov <AHackel@nycourts.gov>, press@nycourts.gov <press@nycourts.gov>, publicinformation@nycourts.gov <publicinformation@nycourts.gov>, wilsonchambers@nycourts.gov <wilsonchambers@nycourts.gov>, SFC-Part42-Clerk@nycourts.gov <SFC-Part42-Clerk@nycourts.gov>, drenwick@nycourts.gov <drenwick@nycourts.gov>, Jmenin@council.nyc.gov <Jmenin@council.nyc.gov>, SpeakerMenin@council.nyc.gov <SpeakerMenin@council.nyc.gov>, district49@council.nyc.gov <district49@council.nyc.gov>, DCarr@council.nyc.gov <DCarr@council.nyc.gov>, Ahart@council.nyc.gov <Ahart@council.nyc.gov>, Pverma@council.nyc.gov <Pverma@council.nyc.gov>, District20@council.nyc.gov <District20@council.nyc.gov>, District27@council.nyc.gov <District27@council.nyc.gov>, District51@council.nyc.gov <District51@council.nyc.gov>, District7@council.nyc.gov <District7@council.nyc.gov>, SpeakerScheduling@council.nyc.gov <SpeakerScheduling@council.nyc.gov>, info@council.nyc.gov <info@council.nyc.gov>, EEOOfficer@council.nyc.gov <EEOOfficer@council.nyc.gov>, Morano@council.nyc.gov <Morano@council.nyc.gov>, hearings@council.nyc.gov <hearings@council.nyc.gov>
CC: Michael Volpe <mvolpe998@gmail.com>, Frankie Pressman <frankiepressman@protonmail.com>, Frank Parlato <frankparlato@gmail.com>, Modern Thomas Nast <mthomasnast@protonmail.com>, RickLaRiviere@proton.me <RickLaRiviere@proton.me>, Richard Luthmann <richard.luthmann@protonmail.com>, RALafontaine@protonmail.com <ralafontaine@protonmail.com>, socialist.feminism@socialists.nyc <socialist.feminism@socialists.nyc>, labor@socialists.nyc <labor@socialists.nyc>, ella@nycdsa.org <ella@nycdsa.org>, press@revenuecampaign.org <press@revenuecampaign.org>, fclark@pscmail.org <fclark@pscmail.org>, lower.manhattan@socialists.nyc <lower.manhattan@socialists.nyc>, steering@socialists.nyc <steering@socialists.nyc>, info@socialists.nyc <info@socialists.nyc>, mediation@socialists.nyc <mediation@socialists.nyc>, grievance@socialists.nyc <grievance@socialists.nyc>, steering@socialists.nyc <steering@socialists.nyc>, endorsements@socialists.nyc <endorsements@socialists.nyc>, ella@nycdsa.org <ella@nycdsa.org>, political.education@socialists.nyc <political.education@socialists.nyc>, sumaya@adalahjusticeproject.org <sumaya@adalahjusticeproject.org>, press@socialists.nyc <press@socialists.nyc>, press@socialists.nyc <press@socialists.nyc>, AYaskova@cityhall.nyc.gov <AYaskova@cityhall.nyc.gov>, judiciary@cityhall.nyc.gov <judiciary@cityhall.nyc.gov>, mayor@cityhall.nyc.gov <mayor@cityhall.nyc.gov>, PressOffice@cityhall.nyc.gov <PressOffice@cityhall.nyc.gov>

Judge Castorina and Mr. Brown,

We are preparing a follow-up publication regarding your recently filed “Sur-Reply” (NYSCEF Doc. 134) and the subsequent Notice of Rejection (Doc. 135) in Luthmann v. Hanks, which is presently pending in New York County Supreme Court. We are requesting your response to the following issues, which go directly to credibility, judicial ethics, and whether this case will ever reach discovery.

Your filing explicitly admits it was submitted without prior court authorization. Under 22 NYCRR 202.8-c, such submissions “will not be read or considered.”

The recusal motion now sits squarely in the middle of a full-blown civil war inside New York’s Democratic Party, where insurgent Democratic Socialists of America forces are pushing to dismantle the old Manhattan machine long controlled by Party Chair Nico Minerva—the husband of Justice Emily Morales-Minerva—and the loyal network surrounding longtime power broker Keith Wright. This is not theoretical politics. It is trench warfare over control of judicial nominations, party infrastructure, and institutional power. Every major player in this case exists within that ecosystem. Minerva operates at the center of the county apparatus. Wright remains the architect of the old guard’s influence. And the emerging DSA-aligned faction is openly targeting that structure for replacement.

Julie Menin, as Speaker of the New York City Council, and Kamillah Hanks, as Majority Whip, hold two of the most powerful leadership posts in city government—and both operate within the Manhattan Democratic Party apparatus that drives endorsements, committee assignments, and legislative priorities. That apparatus, long controlled by Minerva and Wright, functions as the gatekeeper for political advancement in New York City, effectively shaping who rises, who falls, and how City Hall operates. In practice, the Manhattan Democratic organization’s influence extends far beyond county politics, reaching directly into the Council’s leadership structure and the broader machinery of city governance, where factional party loyalty and alignment often determine access, authority, and outcomes.

Against that backdrop, the optics of a recusal motion involving a judge whose household is tied to the very machine under political siege are combustible. Whether intentional or not, the case now reads less like routine litigation and more like a proxy battle between competing Democratic factions, where the outcome—especially whether discovery ever happens—could expose not just one dispute, but the inner workings of an entire political system.

Additionally, Judge Castorina’s filings pointedly sidestep the only question that matters—whether Justice Morales-Minerva’s continued role creates an appearance of impropriety—and instead veer into a scattershot attack on exhibits and the plaintiff’s credibility. That omission is telling. Rather than engage the judge-centric recusal standard, his sur-reply reads like a defense brief for himself, raising allegations of “fabrication” while ignoring the ethical optics that triggered the motion in the first place. Compounding the problem, the record now includes language attributed to Castorina in the Messenger exchanges—crude, demeaning remarks about a woman—already authenticated by his earlier 2018 grand jury testimony—raising serious concerns about bias and temperament of a sitting NYS Supreme Court Justice.

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=0zKVsbghJ1SmbPIMtvX/Ng==

In that light, the filing looks less like a good-faith response on recusal and more like an attempt to change the subject away from political entanglements and toward collateral disputes. For most, it reinforces a broader worry: that a defendant who is also a sitting judge is using motion practice to deflect scrutiny, avoid discovery, and keep the focus off questions about judicial integrity, bias, and the kind of rhetoric that has no place in a courtroom.

With that being said:

1. Why did you file a sur-reply without leave of court in violation of the Uniform Rules?
2. Do you believe judges—and litigants—should be allowed to bypass procedural rules when they claim “urgency”?
3. Are you asking the Court to consider your filing despite acknowledging it was unauthorized?

Your sur-reply claims that Facebook Messenger Messages between Judge Castorina and Richard Luthmann are “demonstrably fabricated” because you were not a judge in 2016

4. Are you aware that the Notice of Rejection explains the labeling resulted from e-discovery compilation after your elevation to the bench?
5. Do you dispute that e-discovery vendors commonly assign participant identifiers based on current status at the time of compilation?
6. Do you have any evidence that the underlying messages themselves are not authentic?
7. Will you agree to produce your own devices, accounts, and records in discovery to test authenticity?

The Notice of Rejection argues your filing actually confirms this case must proceed to discovery, including metadata, raw exports, and depositions.

8. Do you concede that disputes over authenticity are properly resolved through discovery, not motion practice?
9. Will you agree—on the record—that this case should proceed immediately to depositions and full ESI production?
10. If not, what are you trying to avoid?

Your filing seeks to strike Exhibit A entirely as “impossible” and suggests sanctionable conduct.

11. Are you accusing a litigant of fraud while simultaneously resisting discovery that could confirm or refute your claim?
12. Why not welcome discovery if you are confident the evidence is fabricated?

The Notice of Rejection also raises a broader issue: whether your arguments are a “Luthmann-centric” distraction from a judge-centric recusal issue.

13. Do you concede that recusal is judged based on the presiding judge’s circumstances—not the plaintiff’s past?
14. If so, why does your filing focus almost entirely on attacking Luthmann instead of addressing the Morales-Minerva conflict?

Additionally, the filing highlights language attributed to you in the Messenger exchanges, including statements referencing women in derogatory terms (see Exhibit A images, pp. 13–14 of Reply Affidavit).

15. Do you deny making those statements?
16. Do you believe those statements reflect appropriate conduct for a sitting judge?
17. Do you believe they demonstrate bias—particularly toward women?
18. Are you aware that the Notice characterizes this as evidence of “disdain” for certain groups, including e-discovery vendors and women?

Finally, the broader question:

19. Are you biased in this case as a named defendant opposing discovery into your own conduct?
20. Do you believe it is appropriate for a sitting judge to litigate in a case where discovery could involve his own sworn testimony?
21. Should the public trust a system where a defendant judge files unauthorized papers, alleges fabrication, and resists discovery?

This story will address whether the courts are functioning as neutral tribunals—or as protective barriers for insiders avoiding sworn testimony.

Please provide any response ASAP – as we are about to go to press. If you respond after press time, we will incorporate your responses into a follow-up.

Thanks,

Rick LaRivière

Independent Journalist
(239) 766-5800
Follow Me On Substack

Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

New York County Supreme Court
Notification of Filing
04/14/2026

The NYSCEF System has received the documents listed below from filing user Richard Luthmann . Please keep this notice as a confirmation of this filing.

Case Information

Index #: 100012/2024
Caption: RICHARD A. LUTHMANN v. KAMILLAH M. HANKS et al
eFiling Status: Partial Participation Recorded
Assigned Case Judge: Emily Morales-Minerva

Documents Received

Doc #DocumentReceived Date135NOTICE OF REJECTION
Motion #: 00604/14/2026

E-mail Service Notifications Sent

Name Email Address
ALEXANDER P MCBRIDE apm@dhclegal.com
ROBERT EDWARD BROWN rbrown@robertbrownlaw.com
CHARLES CAPETANAKIS cc@dhclegal.com
MATTHEW CHARLES HARNISCH mch@dhclegal.com
KAROL SKRZYPA kskrzypa@law.nyc.gov
Richard Luthmann richard.luthmann@protonmail.com

In a nutshell, the inquiry asked why Castorina filed without leave, whether he expected the court to read unauthorized papers, whether he would agree to full ESI discovery, whether the statements attributed to him reflected bias toward women, and whether the public should trust a system where a defendant judge files unauthorized papers while resisting discovery.

As of press time, we receive no response from the sitting NYS Supreme Court Justice or any of his representatives.

Judge Castorina Breaks Court Rules: The Political War Behind the Rule Violation

This is not a dry motion-practice spat. It sits inside a larger political brawl. Luthmann’s recusal papers say the Manhattan Democratic Party is in trench warfare between the old Keith Wright machine and the insurgent Democratic Socialists. He names Nico Minerva, husband of Justice Morales-Minerva, as the county chair tied to that old apparatus.

He places Speaker Julie Menin and Council Majority Whip Kamillah Hanks inside the same leadership structure that reaches from county endorsements into City Hall. Luthmann argues that the case now reads like a proxy war inside a party machine because discovery could expose how political power, judicial screening, and institutional protection work in real life.

That backdrop matters because Castorina’s sur-reply never really touched it, never answering whether a judge whose spouse runs Manhattan Democratic operations should preside over a case involving party insiders. It never answered why this matter has bounced through judges and still has not reached discovery. And it never answered why a prior judge recused but the current one has not.

Instead, it ran straight at one label on one exhibit and used that as a springboard to accuse Luthmann of “fraud.”

Luthmann seized on that omission in the Notice of Rejection. He wrote that the filing is a detour into “Luthmann-centric” rhetoric, not the “judge-centric” appearance-of-impropriety question that is actually before the court.

Castorina’s filing “pointedly sidesteps the only question that matters” and instead veers into attacks on exhibits and the plaintiff’s credibility. It says the omission is telling. It says the filing looks less like a good-faith response on recusal and more like an attempt to change the subject away from political entanglements and toward collateral disputes.

That is now the headline. A sitting judge who is also a named defendant filed a sur-reply he admits was unauthorized. He then used that paper to cry fabrication over a label dispute that the opposing side says is explained by routine e-discovery assembly and can be tested through metadata.

Luthmann’s answer is pure hardball. Reject the paper. Read the rules. And move this case to discovery right now.

“A sitting judge who is also a defendant doesn’t get to rewrite the rules to protect himself,” Luthmann said. “He ignored recusal. He ignored the optics. He ignored the law. And now he wants the Court to ignore his own admissions? Give me a break. I’ve seen it rain bullshit, but never in chunks this big.”

If Castorina is confident, let him produce the records, sit for deposition, and prove it. He already did it before a 2018 grand jury.

If not, the public can draw its own conclusion about why a defendant judge would violate court rules just to avoid the regular machinery of civil justice.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: This filing hits a nerve because it exposes how power actually works in New York. When insiders get sued, the system slows down. Judges rotate. Motions pile up. Discovery never starts. Now you have silence from every key player except one defendant judge. That is not normal. Add allegations of developer shakedowns and federal investigation, and the silence gets louder. The Manhattan Dems’ political machine and the DSA factions both have reasons to keep this buried. But lawsuits do not disappear. At some point, someone testifies under oath. That is the moment everyone here is trying to avoid—except me. This piece is “Hanks Developer Shakedown Bombshell,” first available on NYNewsPress.com.

By Frankie Pressman and M. Thomas Nast with Richard Luthmann

The Filing That Calls the Bluff

Richard Luthmann came back swinging with a new Reply Affidavit in Luthmann v. Hanks, the long-running Manhattan fee case that he says stopped being a collections matter years ago. The filing, entered as NYSCEF Doc. 133 on April 13, says the core issue is no longer just unpaid legal bills. It is whether a politically wired case can ever reach discovery in New York County when the judges, the defendants, and the party machinery all sit inside the same orbit.

Luthmann says his motion to recuse Justice Emily Morales-Minerva is returnable April 15 and seeks immediate disqualification, vacatur of any orders entered during her “conflicted tenure,” and reassignment to a judge free of similar ties.

The new filing hammers one fact over and over: he was served with no opposition from Kamillah Hanks, no opposition from Kevin Barry Love, no opposition from the Hanks campaign committee, and no substantive response from City Law Department lawyers who appeared on the docket.

The only opposition came from Richmond County Justice Ronald Castorina Jr., himself a named defendant, which Luthmann calls a “self-serving smoke screen” designed to keep the case trapped above discovery, where nobody has to sit for depositions or make sworn admissions.

Castorina’s March 13 opposition was only three pages long. It leaned on People v. Moreno and argued that Morales-Minerva’s recusal is discretionary because no statutory disqualification exists.

It did not answer the political optics that drive the motion.

Luthmann says that is the pressure point.

Castorina did not and could not erase the public record. Justice Brendan Lantry already recused himself in this same case under Judiciary Law § 9 after acknowledging that his impartiality “may be questioned” because of his ties to parties and campaign activity related to Castorina. Justice Lantry did what Morales-Minerva has not: he put the conflict on paper and stepped aside.

In Luthmann’s telling, that contrast tells the whole story. One judge saw the danger and exited. Another has stayed put while the case keeps bouncing.

Hanks Developer Shakedown Bombshell: The Manhattan Machine Problem

Luthmann’s filing pins the recusal argument on one explosive fact: Justice Emily Morales-Minerva is married to Domenico “Nico” Minerva, a figure publicly identified as Manhattan Democratic Party chair and a close ally of Keith Wright, the longtime county power broker. The filing says Minerva is also a partner at Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP, which gives him both political and private-sector clout.

Luthmann argues that this is not some random household coincidence. He says it places the presiding justice inside the same political ecosystem that shapes judicial screening, endorsements, party patronage, and the fortunes of Democratic insiders.

The New York courts’ own rules require disqualification when a judge’s impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.” Luthmann quotes that standard directly. He pairs it with the broader rule that judges must avoid both impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.

He then brings the politics home. Kamillah Hanks is not a minor local officeholder. Council records show she was designated Majority Whip effective January 15, 2026, a formal leadership post in Speaker Julie Menin’s new Council. Luthmann says that makes Hanks an “inner-circle” player, not an outsider. He has already framed Menin’s decision to elevate Hanks as a judgment call that could blow back on the Manhattan establishment.

Luthmann described the case as “judicial pinball,” noting that Luthmann’s $86,000 fee suit ricocheted across seven judges with years of delay and no discovery. That article said the case looks less like a billing dispute than a political pressure chamber.

The filing also widens the frame beyond Hanks. Luthmann says Manhattan Democrats are split in an open war between the old Keith Wright machine and the insurgent Democratic Socialists. He alleges the current mayoral administration under Zohran Mamdani has incentives to keep City attorneys out of a politically radioactive case that touches judicial screening, patronage, and machine politics.

While Luthmann acknowledges public claims that Corporation Counsel acts independently, he says real politics still shapes real litigation in New York City.

The point is blunt. If neither faction wants discovery, silence becomes a strategy. That is why, Luthmann says, the Law Department stood down.

Hanks Developer Shakedown Bombshell: The Allegations and the Silence

Then comes the part that turns a recusal motion into a political grenade. In paragraphs 30 through 33, Luthmann says the lack of opposition from Hanks, Love, and their campaign is not just litigation tactics. He says, upon information and belief, they are “navigating exposure elsewhere.”

He ties that silence to public allegations that Kevin Barry Love used Kamillah Hanks’s City Council office as leverage in a developer shakedown scheme. The filing says multiple Staten Island developers reported calls and texts from Love invoking Hanks’s government position, influence over city contracts, access to benefits, and power over approvals.

Luthmann calls it “the monetization of public office for private leverage” and “a classic municipal shakedown dressed up in official letterhead and backchannel text threads.”

That is not a passing line in the filing. It is the beating heart of his explanation for why the Hanks side has chosen silence.

Luthmann goes further. He says several developers brought the messages to Assemblyman Charles Fall, the Staten Island Democrat and Deputy Majority Leader in Albany. According to the Reply Affidavit, Fall reviewed the texts, found them credible, and told the developers to contact federal and state prosecutors.

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The filing then makes its most provocative factual claim.

Luthmann says, again on information and belief, that U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton personally called Fall after getting the same messages and asked whether Fall believed they were authentic. Fall allegedly said yes.

Luthmann’s line is pure tabloid thunder: “You don’t file affidavits when you’re staring at subpoenas.”

None of this has been adjudicated. Luthmann says so himself. He presents the allegations as an explanation for the defendants’ behavior, not as proven facts. But in a case already clogged by delay, the allegation lands like a brick through a window.

The broader record shows why Luthmann thinks discovery is the battlefield. His original recusal papers said this case involves political operators, party insiders, judges, and campaign veterans stretching back to 2017. Hanks already admitted in court filings that she used Luthmann’s legal work for campaign warfare, including knocking a rival off the ballot, then never paid the full bill. It also said Love’s answer to collection pressure was menace, not settlement.

That is why Luthmann keeps using one phrase.

He wants “sex, lies, and videotape.”

He wants depositions and sworn testimony. And he says Castorina, Hanks, Love, and the machine all know exactly why.

Hanks Developer Shakedown Bombshell: Why This Filing Matters Now

Luthmann’s latest filing is not a polite lawyer’s note—he’s neither a lawyer nor polite.

It is a public dare, saying the court system now faces a choice. Either it treats the recusal issue seriously and moves the case to a judge outside the political blast zone, or it confirms every suspicion that the courthouse is being used to shield insiders from daylight.

Luthmann cites 22 NYCRR 100.3(E)(1), 22 NYCRR 100.2, Judiciary Law §§ 9 and 14, and New York appellate cases that say appearance matters because public trust matters. Discovery is “the normal machinery of civil justice.” What is abnormal, he says, is seven judges, years of drift, a prior recusal, and a current judge whose spouse sits inside the same party machinery that benefits from delay.

For Luthmann, the filing is also a political document, telling readers that the silence is the story. Hanks did not answer. Love did not answer. The campaign did not answer. The City did not answer.

Castorina answered, but only to argue that judges are usually the “sole arbiter” of recusal.

Luthmann’s response is simple—“sole arbiter” does not mean above scrutiny. It does not erase optics or make the Manhattan machine disappear. And it does not stop discovery forever. If the motion is denied, the political stench gets worse. If it is granted, the case finally may move toward the one thing Luthmann says the system fears most: sworn testimony under oath.

That is why this filing matters. Luthmann is not just asking for another judge. He is accusing the New York political class of running out the clock. He says the courthouse has become a bunker for party insiders, deadbeats, and frightened defendants who know discovery will hurt.

His latest affidavit turns that accusation into a record document. On April 15, the court will begin to decide whether it wants to look like a tribunal or a clubhouse.

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LUTHMANN COMMENT: This is how it starts. Not in Manhattan studios. Not in Albany press rooms. On a lawn, on Hylan Boulevard, in a neighborhood where people still vote like it matters. Staten Island’s South Shore has always been New York’s political truth serum. The Italian-American vote is shifting right. The Catholic vote is already there. And the Democrats are now carrying the baggage of Mamdani-style policies, whether they admit it or not. Hochul still leads—but the ground is moving. And when the ground moves on Staten Island, the rest of New York eventually feels it. This race just got real. This piece is “Sign of the Times,” first available on NYNews.Press.

By Rick LaRivière and Richard Luthmann

(STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK) – On Hylan Boulevard, near Page Avenue, where traffic crawls and drivers scan front lawns, a single yard sign just turned into a warning shot. The first “Blakeman for Governor” marker has landed on Staten Island’s South Shore—the reddest turf in New York City and a proven launchpad for Republican momentum. In this neighborhood, signs don’t follow waves. They start them.

This is not a random placement. It is a calculated opening move in a race that will hinge on turnout, tax fatigue, and public safety. The South Shore runs on homeowners, many Italian-Americans, who backed Donald Trump three times and have little patience for Albany’s drift. Their politics are simple and relentless: taxes are too high, crime is too close, and government pushes too far.

Into that pressure zone steps Bruce Blakeman, selling law-and-order, fiscal discipline, and a break from one-party rule. Looming over it all is the “Mamdani effect,” the spread of policies tied to Zohran Mamdani that Republicans say now define the Democratic brand under scandal-plagued Kathy Hochul. On the South Shore, the choice is already framed: suburban stability or urban experimentation. And if history holds, that first sign isn’t the story—it’s the spark.

The Hylan Boulevard Flag

The first marker of a campaign often looks small. On Staten Island’s South Shore, it is anything but. A fresh “Blakeman for Governor” sign now faces traffic along Hylan Boulevard near Page Avenue, planted in a stretch where commuters crawl, and eyes drift to front lawns. The design is built for that moment. “BRUCE BLAKEMAN for GOVERNOR” runs bold, with a stylized, flag-shaped “A” meant to catch attention at speed. It does not whisper. It announces.

The sign does not stand alone. Inches away sits a second message, a John Tabacco State Assembly sign promising “No More Speed Cameras” and pointing voters to the June 23 primary. Tabacco, son of the former New York City comptroller candidate and current cable news host, taps into the same vein of suburban frustration that animates the Blakeman push. The pairing of the two signs is not random. It is a layered message about taxes, enforcement, and the reach of government into daily life.

At the top of the ticket, Bruce Blakeman is running on a blunt platform forged in Nassau County. He pitches public safety first, no new taxes, and open resistance to Albany mandates, and leans into cultural fights over schools and athletics, framing them as questions of fairness and parental control. His campaign is already pushing supporters to request yard signs and volunteer, signaling a ground game built on visibility and repetition rather than airwaves alone.

The location tells you everything. Hylan Boulevard is the South Shore’s spine. Traffic bunches, lights linger, and drivers look. A name seen once is forgotten. A name seen at every red light becomes real.

That is the math, and veterans of Staten Island politics recognize the pattern. Local GOP clubs treat early signs as marching orders, turning private lawns into public declarations. These signs are not aimed at persuading undecided voters. They are aimed at validators—donors, club leaders, and neighborhood captains who measure momentum by what they can see on their own blocks.

When the first sign appears here, it rarely stays alone. On the South Shore, a single flag can become a field in a matter of days.

Sign of the Times: The South Shore’s Trump Math

Staten Island’s South Shore does not vote like New York City. It votes like a Republican stronghold planted inside it. The numbers out of Richmond County make that clear, cycle after cycle, with margins that would look at home in red counties across the country.

In 2016, Donald Trump pulled 101,437 votes on the Republican and Conservative lines, while Hillary Clinton managed 73,720 on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines. Staten Island stood alone that year—the only borough to break for Trump—signaling a political identity that has only hardened since.

That pattern held and then expanded. In 2020, Trump increased his total to 123,320 votes, comfortably outpacing Joe Biden, who drew 90,997.

By 2024, the gap widened further. Trump posted 128,151 votes in Richmond County, while Kamala Harris trailed with 69,345. The borough did not just lean Republican—it deepened its commitment. Trump carried three of the four Assembly Districts, turning what was once an outlier into a consistent base of strength.

The engine behind those margins sits on the South Shore. In 2024, Assembly District 62 delivered Trump close to 80 percent of the vote. District 64 cleared 70 percent. District 63 followed suit. Only District 61 showed a Democratic tilt. This is not a mixed map. It is a geographic concentration of Republican power, driven by homeowners, commuters, and families who vote with consistency and turnout discipline. It is why campaigns watch Staten Island not for persuasion, but for proof of momentum.

For Bruce Blakeman, this terrain offers something rare in New York City: friendly ground. For Kathy Hochul, it represents erosion—every vote lost here widens the path Republicans must build statewide. Trump’s December 2025 endorsement of Blakeman only sharpened that dynamic. He called Blakeman “MAGA all the way,” praised his cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and framed him as a “LAW AND ORDER” candidate deserving a “Complete and Total Endorsement.”

Still, the climb remains steep. A recent Siena Research Institute poll shows Hochul leading Blakeman 47% to 34% statewide. Yet the direction matters. The gap has narrowed, independents are trending toward Blakeman, and a large share of voters say they still do not know him. That combination—room to grow, a defined base, and a national endorsement—makes Staten Island’s South Shore more than a local story. It is the foundation of any Republican path forward in New York.

NYNews.Press

Sign of the Times: The Italian-American Map Behind the Vote

If Bruce Blakeman is building a winning coalition, Staten Island’s Italian-American map is not a side note. It is central. Census-driven analysis continues to mark Richmond County as one of the most concentrated Italian-American populations in the United States. Data compiled by Social Explorer shows the depth of that footprint. Seven of the ten Census tracts nationwide with the highest percentage of Italian ancestry sit inside Richmond County.

The scale becomes clearer with city data. The New York City Department of City Planning counted 151,734 Staten Island residents claiming Italian ancestry between 2009 and 2013, out of roughly 586,598 across all five boroughs. That is not just a community. It is a political bloc.

Nowhere is that identity more visible than on the South Shore. It shapes daily life and, by extension, local politics. The culture leans toward ownership, stability, and order. Residents talk about taxes as a constant burden. They talk about schools as a personal stake. They talk about City Hall as something distant and often out of touch. Reporting has long described the South Shore as “more markedly Italian-American,” and has linked that cultural concentration to consistent conservative voting patterns. This is not abstract sociology. It is a lived experience translated into ballots.

The political implications are measurable. Research from the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute cautions that ethnicity alone does not determine voting behavior. Still, its comparisons of Italian-heavy neighborhoods to recent election results show a clear trend: a noticeable shift toward Republicans since 2020.

Italian-American voters are not a swing bloc—they are a quiet backbone of Trump’s coalition. In 2020, he won them outright, taking 51% of the vote according to national survey data. By 2024, that support appears to have grown, tracking with his stronger performance among Catholics—a group that overlaps heavily with Italian-American communities—where he pulled roughly 55% of the vote. The trend line is clear: a steady shift right among working- and middle-class ethnic voters. Among Italian-American men, support runs even deeper, especially in enclaves like Staten Island’s South Shore, where Trump-style politics regularly pushes 70%.

Political icon Roger Stone (who had a Sicilian mother) says it best: “Italian-American men are Donald Trump’s strongest voting bloc.”

That overlap—ethnicity, religion, and policy preference—creates political fuel on the South Shore. It turns a yard sign into more than decoration. It becomes a signal within families, within parishes, within neighborhoods where politics is discussed across dinner tables and weekend gatherings. Campaigns understand this. When a candidate gains traction here, it spreads through networks that do not rely on ads or algorithms. On Staten Island’s South Shore, the Italian-American map is not just background. It is the mechanism that moves votes.

Sign of the Times: The Ballot Shadow of Mamdani

Bruce Blakeman is running a simple argument with statewide ambition. He points to his record in Nassau County and asks voters to scale it up. His campaign says he kept streets safe, hired more than 600 law enforcement officers, and held the line on taxes. It says he refused to raise property or sales taxes and worked with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to push back against sanctuary-style policies. The pitch is clear: what worked in Nassau can work in New York.

Blakeman then turns that record into an indictment of Kathy Hochul. He argues the state has become too expensive and too unsafe under her watch. In a late-March appearance at New York City Hall, he sharpened the message. New York, he said, is “no longer affordable to live” in—and soon may not be “affordable to die” in. It was classic blunt-force campaigning, aimed squarely at voters feeling squeezed by costs and uneasy about public safety.

But the sharper edge comes from what Republicans now frame as the “Mamdani effect.” Blakeman has tied Hochul directly to the policy orbit of Zohran Mamdani, arguing the governor is aligned with a democratic socialist agenda reshaping the Democratic brand. He has called them “in league together” and labeled Hochul “Comrade Kathy,” while warning that Mamdani’s proposals—particularly on taxes—pose a direct threat to homeowners and the middle class.

Mamdani has not stayed quiet. He has accused Blakeman of importing federal-style immigration enforcement into New York and suggested his approach would lead to aggressive “roundups.” Mamdani openly identifies as a democratic socialist and has pledged to govern that way, drawing a stark ideological contrast that now bleeds into the governor’s race even though he is not on that ballot.

National Republicans see opportunity in that contrast. Reuters has reported that GOP strategists are using Mamdani as a political foil, a symbol of where they argue Democratic governance is headed. The National Republican Congressional Committee has gone further, saying Mamdani effectively “tattoos” Democratic vulnerabilities onto candidates across the 2026 ticket. At the top of that ticket sits Hochul, whether she wants the association or not.

The calendar is set. New York votes on November 3, 2026, with early voting beginning October 24. Between now and then, the arguments will sharpen, the contrasts will harden, and the battle lines will spread outward from places like Staten Island’s South Shore. That is why the sign on Hylan Boulevard matters. It may be small, but it signals a much larger fight—one that will define the direction of New York long after the yard signs come down.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: This isn’t complicated. The law says 45 days. That’s the rule. If the system can’t follow it, it’s not a system—it’s a liability. What’s worse is the silence. I asked basic questions—policy questions—and copied the very people responsible for oversight. Nothing. That tells you everything. When an agency refuses to explain itself at the exact moment it’s under political attack, it’s not defending its independence—it’s surrendering it. If Poloncarz wants to tear this down and replace it with something he controls, ACP just handed him the blueprint. This isn’t about one case anymore. It’s about whether the system works at all. This piece is “Who’s His Lawyer?”

By Rick LaRivière with Richard Luthmann

A Jailhouse Call Blows the Lid Off a Missing File and a Revolving Door Defense

The call came in from the Erie County Holding Center, and what followed sounded less like routine court administration and more like a system coming apart at the seams. Reporter Richard Luthmann picked up the line on April 1 and heard the same story Ryan Flynn has been telling for months—only now it was sharper, angrier, and more detailed.

The roots of this case run straight through a deeply personal and explosive family feud involving Ryan Flynn and his cousin, former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn. Ryan has publicly accused the former DA of serious misconduct, including allegations of sexual abuse. Those claims remain contested and unproven in court, but they have set the stage for a high-stakes legal and political clash.

Ryan Flynn, once the accuser, now sits in custody facing criminal charges tied to alleged social media activity, a reversal that his supporters argue reeks of retaliation. The case now sits at the intersection of family conflict, prosecutorial power, and public accountability—raising unavoidable questions about influence, motive, and whether the machinery of justice is being used to resolve something far more personal than legal.

This day was supposed to be his vindication; he was to be released from court. Flynn said deputies dragged him down to intake for transport, only to pull the plug at the last second.

“Your court’s been canceled,” they told him, after he was already processed and waiting.

Flynn was headed to Kenmore to force the issue that has haunted this case from the start. He planned to stand up and say one thing: “My release is mandatory under CPL 190.80 because there is no indictment.”

He believes that moment is exactly what the Erie County machine is avoiding. And the optics are damning. The case appears to be drifting without an anchor. Judge J. Mark Gruber, a longtime associate of the former DA, recused, but the file never followed. Weeks passed with no transfer. The last real appearance, he said, was February 19.

By April 1, the case was still floating in procedural limbo, with no file, no continuity, and no resolution. In a digital age, “misplaced paperwork” is stealing months of this young man’s life.

Meanwhile, the defense side looks like a revolving door spinning off its hinges. Flynn rattled off names like a man reading a roster that changes by the week—Daniel Brady, Mark Fiorello, Cindy Cooper, Nick Texido, and now a new mystery lawyer he calls “Bob Colletta.”

He said he has never met the latest attorney. He said the excuse was simple: the lawyer “could not make court.” That explanation conveniently lined up with the second excuse—the missing file.

Then came the detail that cuts straight to the heart of the story. Flynn said he tried to call the Assigned Counsel Program from jail five times.

The result?

Five refusals. No answers, no callbacks. Nothing. He handed over the email—clients@assigned.org—and told Luthmann to try his luck.

We are well past the point where this stops looking like mere bureaucratic sloppiness and starts looking like a system that cannot, or will not, answer for itself.

Who’s His Lawyer? The Law Says 45 Days—Not “Whenever Erie County Gets Around to It”

New York’s CPL 190.80 is not some obscure legal footnote buried in a dusty codebook. It is a hard deadline with teeth. Forty-five days. That is the clock. If a defendant sits in jail waiting for a grand jury and the clock runs out, the law does not suggest release. It commands it. The court “must” release the defendant on recognizance unless prosecutors show real cause or the defense caused the delay.

That is the entire point of the statute: to stop exactly what appears to be happening here—a county warehousing a defendant while the paperwork drifts and the process stalls.

This is not about whether someone is popular or guilty. The law does not bend based on sentiment. It applies evenly, or equal justice under law means nothing.

And here is where Erie County’s problem gets uncomfortable. The Assigned Counsel Program does not treat CPL 190.80 as rare or exotic. It treats it as routine. The ACP website openly hosts motion templates for it. Not one. Multiple. “Held After Hearing.” “Held After Waiver.” That is an office that knows this statute cold and expects its lawyers to use it.

The internal handbook drives the point home even harder. Mentors are told to guide attorneys through grand jury practice—not casually or optionally. It specifically calls out monitoring CPL 190.50 and 190.80 motions as a core quality expectation.

That is the standard ACP set for itself.

Which makes the current situation impossible to ignore—because if this rule is basic, and the templates exist, and the training exists, then the failure is not confusion. It is execution.

Other reporting has already thrown gasoline on the fire. Frank Parlato reported that Flynn sat in custody for 151 days without an indictment—more than triple the statutory limit. Frank Report bluntly argued the law required his release long ago.

Maybe that claim holds up. Maybe it doesn’t. Court records will ultimately decide that. But before anyone gets there, a simpler question demands an answer.

If the law is clear, and the tools are in place, and the clock has been ticking for months—who, exactly, was supposed to file the motion?

Who’s His Lawyer? Simple Questions, Stone Wall

Richard Luthmann did not ambush anyone. He did not demand privileged strategy or confidential communications. He asked some basic, public, courtroom-level questions—the kind any clerk, docket, or courtroom observer should be able to answer in seconds after Ryan Flynn said he was not transported to court for the scheduled March 31 date.

The simplest: Who is Ryan Flynn’s lawyer?

On April 1, Luthmann put it in writing. A formal “PRESS INQUIRY”—clean, direct, and professional—asking for the attorney of record. He also asked about basic office procedures, framing everything at the policy level, not case strategy. This was not a trap, but a test of whether the system could answer for itself.

Luthmann even did their homework for them. Tracking down the name “Colletta,” Luthmann identified Michael Colletta of Rupp Pfalzgraf LLC, complete with firm address and public email. If that was the lawyer, say so. If not, correct it. Simple.

That is where the story stops being bureaucratic and starts becoming something else entirely.

ACP chief Kevin Stadelmaier did not answer the simple question: Who’s His Lawyer? He swatted it away.

“Mr. Colletta is not Mr. Flynn’s attorney,” he wrote. Then came the line that turned heads: “I have provided you the information I will provide. Please do not contact me on this matter again.”

Read that again—not a clarification, a referral, or even a refusal grounded in law. Just a shutdown of the free press.

And here is why that matters. The identity of counsel is not privileged, protected, or sensitive. It is a basic, public fact that appears in open court every single day. Yet the head of Erie County’s Assigned Counsel Program refused to provide it—and told a reporter to stop asking.

At the same time, Stadelmaier advanced a second position that collapses under its own weight. He said ACP cannot comment on “open and active files.” He said inquiries would be forwarded to Flynn’s attorney. He said that the attorney would respond only if it served the client’s interest.

That is not transparency. That is a closed loop straight out of Franz Kafka.

ACP will not name the lawyer. ACP will not speak because the case is open. The unnamed lawyer may or may not speak, depending on internal judgment. The result is exactly what it looks like—a system sealed off from scrutiny, where the public cannot even identify the person responsible for protecting a defendant’s rights.

It is a black box. And right now, Erie County is holding the lid shut.

Who’s His Lawyer? The Questions That Could Save ACP—And the Silence That May Kill It

Luthmann did not ask Kevin Stadelmaier to spill privileged communications, trial tactics, or sealed-file material. He asked the questions any serious indigent-defense program should be ready to answer on demand if it wants the public to keep trusting it.

He asked about reassignment rules in felony cases, whether repeated turnover triggers management review, whether ACP treats that churn as a quality warning sign, and what internal systems exist to track CPL 190.80 deadlines for jailed defendants.

He asked whether ACP uses deadline “ticklers,” who gets alerted as day 45 approaches, and what happens if no motion has been filed.

He asked whether ACP audits compliance with grand jury-phase obligations, whether it has policies against political pressure on panel attorneys, whether outside contacts get logged, and whether conflict protocols exist for relationships involving Mark Poloncarz, John Flynn, John Crangle, or Kathy Hochul.

He even asked whether ACP tracks bail outcomes by charge category to identify outliers and whether it trains attorneys for vigorous bail advocacy in Criminal Contempt 1st cases.

NYNewsPress.com

Those are not case-specific privilege calls. Those are governance and quality-control questions. They are existential. Yet the email record shows Stadelmaier gave no response to those policy inquiries at all.

Luthmann got no answers, so he went upstairs. He gave Stadelmaier an opportunity to reconsider his responses and copied the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services board and officials at the top of the state’s indigent-defense oversight structure. They include New York State Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson, former New York Court of Appeals Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, and Presiding Justice Dianne T. Renwick from the Appellate Division, First Department, along with other oversight figures. The public deserves an answer to the simple question: Who’s His Lawyer? Here is what Luthmann said:

From: Richard Luthmann <richard.luthmann@protonmail.com>
Date: On Wednesday, April 1st, 2026 at 4:15 PM
Subject: RE: PRESS INQUIRY – ARE YOU PROTECTING KATHY HOCHUL AND JOHN FLYNN? – Erie County Assigned Counsel Program (ACP) says it delivers “quality representation”—so who tracks CPL 190.80’s 45‑day clock, and who is Ryan Flynn’s lawyer today?
To: Kevin Stadelmaier <kstadelmaier@assigned.org>, Michelle.Weinhold@ils.ny.gov <Michelle.Weinhold@ils.ny.gov>, Kingston.Farady@ils.ny.gov <Kingston.Farady@ils.ny.gov>, proposals@ils.ny.gov <proposals@ils.ny.gov>, kira.schettino@ils.ny.gov <kira.schettino@ils.ny.gov>, ClaimsForPayment@ils.ny.gov <ClaimsForPayment@ils.ny.gov>, Marian.Bush@ils.ny.gov <Marian.Bush@ils.ny.gov>, fcdata@ils.ny.gov <fcdata@ils.ny.gov>, data@ils.ny.gov <data@ils.ny.gov>, foil@ils.ny.gov <foil@ils.ny.gov>, info@ils.ny.gov <info@ils.ny.gov>, burton.phillips@ils.ny.gov <burton.phillips@ils.ny.gov>, SASC@ils.ny.gov <SASC@ils.ny.gov>, elizabeth.isaacs@ils.ny.gov <elizabeth.isaacs@ils.ny.gov>, SJBatcheller@nysda.org <SJBatcheller@nysda.org>, wilsonchambers@nycourts.gov <wilsonchambers@nycourts.gov>, daa1@westchestercountyny.gov <daa1@westchestercountyny.gov>, communications@westchestercountyny.gov <communications@westchestercountyny.gov>, ce@westchestercountyny.gov <ce@westchestercountyny.gov>, carmen.ciparick@gtlaw.com <carmen.ciparick@gtlaw.com>, postmaster@gtlaw.com <postmaster@gtlaw.com>, DAinfo@ontariocountyny.gov <DAinfo@ontariocountyny.gov>, Stephen.DeChick@ontariocountyny.gov <Stephen.DeChick@ontariocountyny.gov>, HRCompliance@ontariocountyny.gov <HRCompliance@ontariocountyny.gov>, JailVisits@ontariocountyny.gov <JailVisits@ontariocountyny.gov>, cdecastro@cdecastrolaw.com <cdecastro@cdecastrolaw.com>, ved@connorsllp.com <ved@connorsllp.com>, jpaperno@empirejustice.org <jpaperno@empirejustice.org>, AD1ADAliaison@nycourts.gov <AD1ADAliaison@nycourts.gov>, AD1-AGC@nycourts.gov <AD1-AGC@nycourts.gov>, AD1copy-family@nycourts.gov <AD1copy-family@nycourts.gov>, AD1-AGC-newcomplaints@nycourts.gov <AD1-AGC-newcomplaints@nycourts.gov>, ad4-in-house-counsel@nycourts.gov <ad4-in-house-counsel@nycourts.gov>, ad1-in-house-counsel@nycourts.gov <ad1-in-house-counsel@nycourts.gov>
CC: colletta@rupppfalzgraf.com <colletta@rupppfalzgraf.com>, Frank Parlato <frankparlato@gmail.com>, Frankie Pressman <frankiepressman@protonmail.com>, Dick LaFontaine <RALafontaine@protonmail.com>, Rick LaRivière <RickLaRiviere@proton.me>, Michael Volpe <mvolpe998@gmail.com>, Troy@slingshot.news <Troy@slingshot.news>, bblakeman@nassaucountyny.gov <bblakeman@nassaucountyny.gov>, csolages@nassaucountyny.gov <csolages@nassaucountyny.gov>, dderiggiwhitton@nassaucountyny.gov <dderiggiwhitton@nassaucountyny.gov>, dmule@nassaucountyny.gov <dmule@nassaucountyny.gov>, hkopel@nassaucountyny.gov <hkopel@nassaucountyny.gov>, jgiuffre@nassaucountyny.gov <jgiuffre@nassaucountyny.gov>, mgiangregorio@nassaucountyny.gov <mgiangregorio@nassaucountyny.gov>, pmullaney@nassaucountyny.gov <pmullaney@nassaucountyny.gov>, mpilip@nassaucountyny.gov <mpilip@nassaucountyny.gov>, sdavis@nassaucountyny.gov <sdavis@nassaucountyny.gov>, nassauleaks <nassauleaks@protonmail.com>, sandscomments@nassaucountyny.gov <sandscomments@nassaucountyny.gov>, skoslow@nassaucountyny.gov <skoslow@nassaucountyny.gov>, sstrauss@nassaucountyny.gov <sstrauss@nassaucountyny.gov>

Mr. Stadelmaier:

For clarity, I have copied the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services and its board members:

Current nine-member ILS Board (as listed on the ILS website):

-Hon. Rowan D. Wilson, Chair — Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals

-Diane Atkins — Special Assistant to the County Executive, Westchester County

-Hon. Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick — Greenberg Traurig LLP; former Senior Associate Judge, NY Court of Appeals

-Christopher P. DeBolt — Ontario County Administrator

-César de Castro — The Law Firm of César de Castro, P.C.

-Vincent E. Doyle III — Partner, Connors LLP

-Jill Paperno — Chief Strategy Officer, Empire Justice Center; former Acting/First Assistant Public Defender, Monroe County

-Hon. Dianne T. Renwick — Presiding Justice, Appellate Division, First Department

https://www.ils.ny.gov/about_ils/ils_board/index.php

I asked you TEN questions, and only ONE was specifically about public information in the Ryan Flynn / John Flynn / John Crangle / Kathy Hochul matter.

https://nynewspress.com/kathy-hochuls-secret-affair/

1. Without discussing strategy or confidential communications: who is the current attorney of record assigned to Ryan Flynn today? If you contend even the lawyer’s name is “case comment,” please explain the policy basis—because counsel-of-record is ordinarily a public courtroom fact.

You responded:

Mr. Colletta is not Mr. Flynn’s attorney. I have provided you the information I will provide. Please do not contact me on this matter again.

I then asked you NINE questions of General Application about the Erie County ACP:

2. What are ACP’s written rules for reassignment in felony cases (e.g., workload, conflicts, client relationship, performance issues)? How many reassignments in a single custody case does ACP consider “normal” before management review is triggered? NO RESPONSE

3. Does ACP treat repeated turnover itself as a quality warning sign—especially when statutory time limits like CPL 190.80 are potentially implicated? NO RESPONSE

4. What systems and procedures does ACP have to track CPL 190.80 deadlines for incarcerated clients held for grand jury action? Does ACP use automatic “ticklers” in its case-management system for day 30/day 40/day 45? Who gets alerted—assigned counsel only, or supervisors/QA/leadership as well? What happens if day 45 approaches and no CPL 190.80 application has been filed? NO RESPONSE

5. Does ACP audit compliance with “grand jury phase” steps—such as whether CPL 190.50 notices are timely evaluated when applicable—given that the panel handbook explicitly frames 190.50/190.80 monitoring as a quality expectation? NO RESPONSE

6. Does ACP have a written policy that prohibits staff from pressuring panel attorneys to avoid appearing, avoid filing motions, or avoid certain clients for political or reputational reasons? NO RESPONSE

7. What is ACP’s rule if an outside public official, political party operative, or affiliated lawyer contacts ACP about a pending criminal case? Must the contact be logged? Must it be disclosed to defense counsel or supervisors? Is there a firewall protocol? (Answering this at a policy level does not require commenting on any “open file.”) NO RESPONSE

8. Are there any relationships—professional, financial, or operational—between ACP leadership and the following individuals or offices that ACP considers a potential conflict requiring disclosure or recusal protocols:
Mark Poloncarz, John Flynn, John Crangle, or Kathy Hochul? I am not asserting conflicts exist—I am asking whether ACP has policies designed to prevent a reasonable appearance of conflict in high-profile matters. NO RESPONSE

9. Does ACP train or guide panel attorneys on bail advocacy for Criminal Contempt‑1st cases generally? What quality controls exist to ensure similarly situated defendants receive similarly vigorous bail arguments—recognizing every case differs? NO RESPONSE

10. Does ACP track outcomes (e.g., bail set, remand, release) by charge category to identify outliers and ensure quality representation aligns with your public mission statement? NO RESPONSE

Again, all were questions of General Application. I will afford you one final opportunity to respond before we go to press. You can see some of the prior coverage here:

https://artvoice.com/2026/03/26/erie-countys-poor-may-lose-their-lawyers/

https://frankreport.com/2026/03/26/erie-countys-poor-may-lose-their-lawyers/

https://nynewspress.com/erie-county-40m-lie/

https://frankreport.com/?s=flynn

https://nynewspress.com/?s=Flynn

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=flynn+Site%3Aluthmann.substack.com&t=chromentp&ia=web

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Regards,

Richard Luthmann
Writer, Journalist, and Commentator
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Stadelmaier has not responded as of press time.

This was not a private spat between a reporter and a defensive administrator. It was a documented accountability demand sent up the food chain, with some of the highest judicial and indigent-defense authorities in New York effectively put on notice.

Even under that glare, Stadelmaier answered only the narrow Colletta point, then told Luthmann, “I have provided you the information I will provide. Please do not contact me on this matter again.” The broader policy questions remained untouched.

That refusal lands at the worst possible moment for ACP. Frank Report’s March 26 article says Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz wants to replace or drastically reduce the Assigned Counsel Program and move toward a government-run defender model or expanded Legal Aid, while using billing irregularities involving a small number of attorneys to justify blowing up a 60-year system.

Parlato’s reporting shows that Poloncarz has published no studies proving savings, that his Monroe County comparisons were misleading, and that his own task force acknowledged Erie County would still need ACP even while praising its lawyers. The reporting also warns that replacing independent assigned counsel with a county-controlled bureaucracy could create a less adversarial, more politically manageable defense culture.

Whether one agrees with every word of that critique or not, the political stakes are obvious: ACP is under attack, and its public defense of its own value should begin with transparency, competence, and proof that it has real safeguards.

Instead, Stadelmaier’s non-response gives Poloncarz and every ACP critic fresh ammunition. Because if ACP cannot answer basic, non-privileged questions about how it tracks statutory release deadlines, how it supervises reassignments, how it polices outside influence, and how it measures quality, then what exactly is the public being asked to defend?

Luthmann’s questions were not a gotcha. They were an opportunity. They were the blueprint for justifying ACP’s continued independence at the very moment Poloncarz is pushing to cut it down and replace it with something he can more directly shape, staff, and control. If ACP wants to avoid being swallowed by a county-run patronage machine, this was the time to show the spine and structure that make independent assigned counsel worth saving.

Silence did the opposite, making the program look either hollow, compromised, or too scared to defend itself on the merits.

That is why these unanswered questions matter so much. A defendant’s statutory rights are not protected by slogans. They are protected by systems, deadlines, audits, supervision, and lawyers who know someone is watching the clock. ACP publicly advertises “quality legal representation,” but when pressed to explain the mechanics behind that promise, its top criminal official would not engage.

Luthmann asked whether the office can count to 45, whether it can identify dangerous turnover, whether it can resist political contamination, and whether it can prove consistent advocacy. Those are the very questions that justify an institution’s existence— in addition to: Who’s His Lawyer?

If ACP cannot or will not answer them when its future is on the chopping block, then it is helping make the case against itself.

Who’s His Lawyer? The “Quality” Promise That Falls Apart

The Erie County Assigned Counsel Program makes a clean, confident pitch to the public. It promises “quality legal representation” in criminal and family courts. That is the brand, the mission, and the selling point. But promises are cheap, and systems are tested under pressure. Right now, that promise is cracking on contact.

A “quality” defense system does not lose track of who represents a jailed man. It doesn’t fumble a statutory clock that every felony lawyer learns on day one. A “quality” system can explain how it protects defendants without hiding behind vague claims about “open files.” Yet when asked the most basic question—who is the lawyer—ACP leadership refused to answer.

That is not a gray area. That is a red flag.

Flynn’s jailhouse call explains why this matters. The system around him looks like chaos: court dates canceled, files missing, and weeks passing without transfer. A man sitting in custody while paperwork drifts from desk to desk.

“Assigned counsel refused to submit the 190.80 motion,” Flynn said after he tried to call the ACP office from jail and got shut out completely.

That is not a glitch. That is a breakdown.

Then comes the comparison that hits like a hammer. Flynn pointed to a Niagara County case involving Michael Anthony Walker. Same charge category—criminal contempt in the first degree. The record shows bail set at $500 for a physical-contact violation—real-world comparator, sitting right there in black and white.

Flynn, by contrast, is held on a $250,000 bond tied to a social media allegation he claims is not even forensically linked to him. The same special prosecutor’s office is involved. No bureaucratic answer can dodge the question: How does one man walk on $500 while another sits for months without clarity on who even represents him?

Around this case, the politics churn like a storm system. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is looking to dismantle or overhaul the Assigned Counsel model, citing costs and performance concerns. Meanwhile, Flynn’s situation is tied to alleged political pressure connected to John Flynn and Governor Kathy Hochul. Those claims are serious. They are also contested and unproven.

But here is the part that does not require speculation, conspiracy, or political theory. This story stands on a single, stubborn fact: A man is in custody, and the agency responsible for his defense will not say who his lawyer is.

That is not a scandal built on rumor. That is a failure you can measure in one line. And if ACP cannot answer that line, its promise of “quality representation” is not just weakened. It is meaningless.

Who’s His Lawyer? Failure at the Worst Possible Time

Luthmann didn’t lob softballs, and he didn’t play games. He went straight to the foundation of the Erie County Assigned Counsel Program and asked the questions that determine whether it deserves to exist as an independent institution at all: Policy. Structure. Oversight.

He asked how ACP tracks the CPL 190.80 clock for jailed defendants. He asked what happens when lawyers keep getting swapped in and out of a single felony case. He asked whether the office audits compliance with grand jury deadlines, whether it logs political contacts, whether it has firewalls against outside pressure, and whether it can even identify who is responsible for filing a motion that could mean the difference between freedom and continued detention.

These are not technical questions. They are the bones of the system. And he didn’t ask them quietly. He put it all in writing and copied the people who sit above ACP in the food chain—the oversight class, the institutional referees, the names that carry weight in New York’s legal hierarchy.

The email wasn’t just a request; it was a notice. The people responsible for making sure this system works were looking on.

And still—nothing. Not a partial answer or policy explanation. Not even a generic defense of the system. Just silence on the questions that matter most—silence is not harmless. Silence that lands at the exact moment Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is pushing to dismantle or absorb the Assigned Counsel Program into a structure he can more directly control.

Critics already warn that such a move risks turning indigent defense into a managed, top-down operation—less independent, more political, and easier to steer. In that fight, ACP should be showing strength—systems, safeguards, accountability.

Instead, it is giving its critics a gift. Because when an agency claims “quality representation” but cannot explain how it tracks statutory deadlines, cannot account for repeated attorney turnover, and cannot demonstrate independence from political pressure, the argument against it writes itself. Luthmann handed ACP a blueprint to defend its existence. All it had to do was answer. Instead, it blinked.

And in this kind of fight, hesitation is not neutral. It is fatal.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Dr. Vincent A. Carbonell, Esq. (“Vin” to me) was an entrepreneur, mentor, philanthropist, and legal mind who changed lives without fanfare. He was one of the few people who stood by me when I got out of prison. While others ducked and ran, he helped me pursue justice, even supported my pardon—a process I am finalizing now. But Vin did that for everyone—lifting people with no expectation of praise. He believed in second chances and in me. If you knew him, you know that quiet strength. And if you didn’t, you’re probably standing on a bridge he quietly helped build. His name is now on a classroom at NYLS. But more importantly, it’s etched in every life he changed. Thank you, Vin. This piece is “Remembering Vincent A. Carbonell Esq.”

By Richard Luthmann

Dr. Vincent “Vin” A. Carbonell, Esq. was more than just a successful attorney and businessman – he was a mentor, a philanthropist, and above all, a loyal friend. I am Richard Luthmann, and it’s with a heavy heart that I write this personal tribute to my dear friend Vin, who passed away suddenly after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer.

Vin’s loss leaves a void in countless lives, but his extraordinary life story and the impact he had on others deserve to be celebrated.

Education and Entrepreneurial Achievements

Vin never forgot where he came from—and it made his success all the more meaningful. He believed deeply in the power of education and self-improvement. Even while running his own company, he pursued higher education at night. He earned an M.B.A. from Baruch College (CUNY) in 1996 and went on to obtain his J.D. from New York Law School in 2000.

Not one to stop there, he later completed a Ph.D. at Touro University in 2007 – a testament to his relentless curiosity and work ethic.

Professionally, Vin was the founder and President of United Reprographic Services, a New York-based firm providing reprographic (photocopying and duplicating) services for architects, engineers, construction firms, and government agencies. Under his leadership, the company thrived. He became known as a savvy businessman who could build relationships across industries, across the political aisle, and across all spectrums.

In fact, Vin had friends in all spheres – Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and non-political people alike – and was equally comfortable discussing business strategies with CEOs as he was sharing a laugh with the employees in the print room. His ability to connect with anyone was one of the secrets to his success.

One of the many friends mourning Vin’s loss is our mutual friend, Dave Weigel, a Wall Street fiduciary asset manager. Dave often admired Vin’s ability to bridge worlds and bring people together.

“Vin had a unique gift,” Dave told me recently. “He could walk into any room – whether it was a boardroom full of executives or a class of first-year law students – and instantly connect. People trusted him. They knew he genuinely cared. Vin’s wisdom in business was matched only by his big heart.”

Vin’s professional accomplishments garnered recognition in the legal and academic communities. He served on the Board of Trustees of New York Law School, our shared alma mater, and was revered there not just as a distinguished alumnus but as a forward-thinking leader. In 2022, when NYLS launched its innovative evening division program “NYLS Pro” for working professionals, Vin lent his voice and support.

“NYLS Pro is the future of legal education for the working professional,” he remarked at the time, speaking as both a trustee and an evening-program graduate.

He knew firsthand the challenges of balancing work and school, and he championed any effort to make that journey easier for others.

Remembering Vincent A. Carbonell Esq.: Mentorship, Scholarships, and Philanthropy

If Vin’s own education and career were remarkable, his dedication to lifting others was truly inspirational. He had a special place in his heart for students who, like himself, juggled jobs and night classes in pursuit of a law degree. As an evening division graduate, he mentored and supported many working law students over the years.

In quiet ways known to few, he even helped fund law school for those who needed a hand. I happen to know that he personally put at least 20 people through law school on scholarships – and knowing how modest Vin was, the real number was probably double that.

“I know of at least two dozen myself—but I’m sure there were many more,” said longtime friend Dave Weigel. “Vincent loved education more than anyone I’ve met. He believed in lifting people up through learning, and he backed that belief by quietly sending dozens of students through law school.”

He never sought credit for this. In his mind, investing in someone’s education was just the right thing to do.

“For those professionals with families, or those who have been parenting full-time while desiring a pathway back into a long-term career, NYLS Pro offers the flexibility and opportunity to make their hopes and ambitions come true,” Vin said, reflecting his belief in second chances and education for all.

Vin’s generosity extended beyond the field of law. He was active in multiple charitable and community endeavors, often blending his business acumen with a drive to do good. For years, he volunteered with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Race Against MS events, serving on the committee that raised funds to fight MS.

He also engaged with Columbia University’s Founders Pledge initiative, joining other entrepreneurs in pledging support for future generations of students.

Whether it was through formal organizations or personal acts of kindness, Vin was always looking for ways to give back.

Remembering Vincent A. Carbonell Esq.: Personal Reflections and Unwavering Friendship

On a personal level, I owe Vin a debt I can never repay. After I came home from prison, many people I thought were friends kept their distance. But not Vin, my fellow New York Law School alumnus and friend. He was good to me when I was at my lowest, and he never judged me. He listened when I (sometimes fanatically) detailed how I had been railroaded by a flawed justice system, and he stood by my side when few others would.

Vin even used his considerable legal savvy and connections to help me in my quest for a presidential pardon – a process I am finalizing now – because he truly believed in my innocence and wanted to see my name cleared.

That kind of steadfast loyalty is rare.

I’ll never forget when he told me, “Don’t worry, Rich – we’re going to set this right.” Those weren’t just words; he followed through with action, making calls on my behalf and connecting me with people who could help. In a world that can be quick to turn its back, Vin’s friendship was a beacon of hope for me.

It wasn’t only with me that he showed such loyalty and compassion. Dave Weigel, another close friend, echoed the same feeling of personal gratitude.

“He wasn’t just my friend—he was a mentor. He guided me through personal and professional storms without ever asking for anything in return,” Weigel said.

Time and again, I watched Vin quietly help friends, colleagues, and even strangers who were struggling. He had a way of seeing potential in people that they sometimes didn’t see in themselves. If you were lucky enough to be taken under Vin Carbonell’s wing, you knew you had someone who would move heaven and earth to help you succeed.

His mentorship wasn’t always gentle – he could be frank when delivering advice – but you knew it came from a place of love and high expectations. He wanted others to excel and was thrilled to celebrate their victories.

Remembering Vincent A. Carbonell Esq.: Tributes from Friends and Colleagues

In the days since his sudden passing earlier this year, friends, colleagues, and former classmates have shared an overwhelming chorus of memories that speak to the depth of Vincent’s impact and the quiet power of his presence.

“Losing Vincent is like losing the compass you didn’t realize was always quietly helping steer you straight,” added one colleague and friend who did not wish to be named. “He gave so much to so many, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to live up to the example he set.”

I couldn’t agree more with those words. Vin’s reputation for integrity and warmth made him a beloved figure to so many. His passing has prompted an outpouring of tributes.

Former classmates have recalled how he tutored them through tough courses; young lawyers he mentored have shared stories of how he helped launch their careers. Even those who only met Vin in passing remember his kindness and approachable nature. He never put on airs despite his many accomplishments.

As one law school friend wrote online, “It’s hard to imagine NYLS without Vin’s presence – he was always there with a smile and encouragement for everyone.”

Remembering Vincent A. Carbonell Esq.: A Lasting Legacy

As I write this, I find some comfort in knowing that Vin Carbonell’s legacy will live on in the countless lives he touched. His legacy lives in the attorneys who earned their degrees because of his scholarships and guidance, in the organizations that benefitted from his leadership, and in friends like me who will carry his memory and lessons for a lifetime. Vin once said that the true measure of success is how much you help others succeed, and by that measure, he was enormously successful.

In the final months of his life, Vin faced his illness with the same courage and grace that defined him. He was feeling fine as recently as Thanksgiving (or at least he didn’t want to burden others with his pain), which makes his sudden departure even harder to accept.

Yet even in those final weeks, his concern was for others – he made calls to make sure certain projects and people would be taken care of in his absence.

Vincent A. Carbonell, Esq., was far too young when he left us. A man in his 50s at the prime of his life and profession, but a timeline of years cannot capture the full measure of this man. Husband, brother, friend, mentor, philanthropist – Vin wore many hats, and he wore them all with humility.

To me, he’ll forever be the friend who gave me hope when I needed it most. To the many he helped educate, he’ll always be the generous mentor who believed in them. To everyone who knew him, he’ll be remembered for his brilliant mind and even bigger heart.

Vin, thank you for everything. Rest in peace, my friend. We will miss you dearly, but we will carry your spirit forward in the lives you’ve changed and the good you’ve done.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: This is what happens when politicians chase headlines instead of truth. Mark Poloncarz took a manageable problem and turned it into a justification for tearing down a system that actually works. The numbers don’t support him. His own task force doesn’t support him. But the machine rolls on anyway. And who gets crushed? Not bureaucrats. Not politicians. The poor. The accused. The people who need real lawyers, not assembly-line justice. Strip away the spin, and you see it clearly: this isn’t reform — it’s reckless, it’s political, and if it goes through, it will do lasting damage. This piece is “Erie County $40M Lie,” first available on FrankReport.com.

By Frank Parlato

(ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK) – Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz wants to replace or drastically reduce the Assigned Counsel Program with either a government-run public defender’s office or an expansion of the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo.

He thinks it will save money. Or if he doesn’t really think it, he says it anyway. Perhaps he really doesn’t know, because after all, he has published no studies.

The comparison he makes – that of the model of nearby Monroe County – he makes without factual accuracy, along the lines of omitting half the truth or comparing the eating apples to onions and imagining no one will notice that what he says stinks.

The county comptroller’s audit identified billing irregularities among a small number of attorneys in the Assigned Counsel Program, an overwhelmingly part-time cadre of 250 attorneys. It focused on about eight, with one in particular who seems to have inflated his billings, and, along with the other seven, worked full-time defending the indigent or those who say they’re indigent.

The investigation remains incomplete.

Based on all eight of the identified attorneys, named and under a cloud, and in fact, at least temporarily suspended, suspected of overcharging, across the ACP, as much as $1 million, over a couple of years.

It is not a shocking number. It is also fixable.

Solution: Blow Up the System

Poloncarz wants to change the system of the last 60 years, which has outsourced independent lawyers who, for the most part, have their own successful practices with paying clients who generally work part-time for the ACP, defending the poor at the state-mandated rate of $158 an hour.

But about eight work full-time at it, and one gentleman seems to work a good deal more than full-time. When you add it all up, it might come to maybe one-tenth of one percent in overbillings.

Poloncarz has seized on this to try to toss out the independent contractor lawyers and create a new unionized bureaucracy of inexperienced lawyers, if he can find and hire them, who will, he says, save Erie County money.

Naturally, he makes this assertion without evidence. To solve what may be a $1 million (fixable) problem, he is proposing a solution costing far more than $1 million per year.

Erie County $40M Lie: Three Things His Plan Will Actually Do

Poloncarz’s plan to convert the constitutionally-mandated defense of the indigent in Erie County from the Assigned Counsel Program to a new public defender’s office or an expanded Legal Aid will do three things.

1. It will cost more money.

2. He likely won’t even be able to find lawyers to do it.

3. The quality of representation will take a nosedive, thereby increasing taxpayers’ costs of incarceration.

To show this with evidence is going to take a series of stories that explore the various issues of why this looks like a poor plan.

One disclosure I need to make is that I have a relative on the ACP panel, one of the 242 who accept panel work part-time alongside his decidedly robust private legal practice and who is definitely not one of the eight targeted by Poloncarz by his hasty cloud of suspicion.

My findings are my own. They are subject to analysis and debate, and opposing and supporting voices are welcome.

Curiously, Poloncarz’s own task force — in a statement — confirmed that Erie County will always need the ACP, praised its attorneys for exemplary service, and described any expansion of Legal Aid as exploratory and incremental. His own task force does not support the wholesale replacement he has been promising.

But let’s begin with Poloncarz’s argument that a newly created public defender’s office or an expanded Legal Aid will save taxpayers’ money.

Erie County $40M Lie: The Monroe Comparison

Erie County’s nearest similarly populated county, where Rochester sits, is Monroe County. There, a public defender’s office has undertaken the majority of indigent criminal defense cases.

At his April 2024 State of the County address, Poloncarz told Erie County residents.

First: Monroe County’s public defender’s office costs $9 million.

Second: Erie County will spend $40 million on the ACP per year.

Both were false.

The $40 million appears recklessly untrue. The actual 2024 cost: $20.3 million. He told the public that Erie was spending $40 million. It was spending half that.

The $9 million for Monroe County left out something. Less generous people might call it a lie by omission.

Monroe does not run its entire indigent defense for $9 million. The $9 million is just the cost of its public defender’s office. Monroe also funds a Conflict Defender’s office and its own Assigned Counsel Program.

Total Monroe cost: $20.7 million, for a county 27 percent smaller than Erie.

So the real comparison is:

The red is what Polancarz said. The blue is the truth. Monroe County’s total spending on indigent defense is $20.7 million for 748,000 people ($27.67 per person), while Erie spends $25.8 million (county Legal Aid of Buffalo) for 950,000 people ($27.16 per person).

Poloncarz took a number he inflated and compared it to a number he truncated.

The gap he manufactured — $40 million versus $9 million — does not exist.

When total spending is objectively compared, both counties spend nearly the same per capita. Monroe even pays slightly more.

FrankReport.com

Coming Soon

In this series, I intend to show why Poloncarz’s plan will cost taxpayers more money in the long run, while likely decreasing the quality of representation of the poor.

I also intend to show that less effective counsel, geared almost exclusively toward the plea bargain and sentencing advocacy rather than adversarial representation, is to no one’s advantage.

Except perhaps the district attorney, who can look forward to uncontested charging decisions without fear of pushback, and a random County Executive who will stick long enough to do some patronage hiring.

He can leave the bill to the future, when the real cost increase gap becomes apparent, after it’s too late to disband the new unionized bureaucracy. And everyone forgot how we got there in the first place.

In Part 2, we will show the numbers Poloncarz has not published.

A legally compliant public defender’s office or expanded Legal Aid — staffed to meet New York State’s mandatory caseload standards, with unionized attorneys, step increases, health insurance, and pension obligations — would cost more than $22 million in year one.

That is over $900 per case versus the ACP’s $847. And unlike the ACP, those costs rise every year regardless of how many cases come through the door.

We will also show that Erie County is currently collecting state reimbursements tied to the assigned counsel model — millions of dollars that shrink the moment cases move away from it.

Poloncarz has published no cost estimate to support his claim of savings. We will provide one.

ARTVOICE ART:

Polancarz has a task force, too…

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Despite court rejections, Gambino associate Battista “Benny the Blade” Geritano’s case contains multiple anomalies worth investigating. Missing interior surveillance, conflicting witness statements, grand jury omissions, and an anomaly on the verdict/commitment sheet highlight gaps in the prosecution narrative. Sworn affidavits and the white-shirt suspect theory, while discounted by courts, suggest evidence remains unexplored. Structured public record requests to the Kings County DA, Supreme Court, and federal archives could reveal whether these discrepancies stem from oversight or intentional misrepresentation. A document-driven deep dive is critical to verify the full story. This investigation aims to reconcile official records with Geritano’s claims in his Evidence Book. This piece is “Benny the Blade Battles Everybody.”

By Frankie Pressman and Richard Luthmann

Violent Past and a Barroom Brawl

(BROOKLYN, NEW YORK) - Battista “Benny” Geritano has long been known to law enforcement as a Gambino crime family associate with a violent reputation. In the 1990s, prosecutors branded him “a violent predator” after he beat an attempted murder charge. By 2010, he was on federal supervised release from a racketeering conviction, and his name surfaced in a high-profile 2011 knife fight with famed pizzeria owner Mark Iacono (though charges in that case were dropped when neither man cooperated).

It was against this backdrop that Geritano walked into Club Nouveau in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on December 23, 2012 – a night that led to his longest prison term yet.

Inside the packed nightclub, a brief encounter quickly turned bloody. According to police and prosecutors, Geritano bumped into another patron, Nunzio Fusco, at the bar and immediately escalated the situation. Witnesses said Geritano shoved Fusco’s girlfriend, prompting Fusco to throw a punch at Geritano. A melee erupted involving multiple men, during which Fusco was stabbed twice in the abdomen.

Fusco later testified that he didn’t even realize he’d been stabbed until bouncers broke up the fight and led him outside. He underwent emergency surgery for serious wounds, including a punctured lung and a deep forearm gash.

Fusco identified Geritano as one of the men he fought with – the one he had punched, but critically, he could not identify who stabbed him. In fact, at Geritano’s trial, Fusco admitted he “did not know which one stabbed him” among the brawlers.

That uncertainty about the attacker’s identity would later become a cornerstone of Geritano’s challenge to the official narrative.

Benny the Blade Battles the Prosecution’s Case: Video and a Prior Recognition

From the outset, authorities built their case on circumstantial evidence and Geritano’s alleged gangland modus operandi. No eyewitness squarely identified Geritano as the stabber, but a key piece of evidence swayed investigators and jurors: a surveillance video from Club Nouveau’s lobby. The grainy footage did not capture the stabbing itself (which occurred inside the bar area), but it showed the chaotic fight spilling out toward the club’s entrance.

As security staff escorted the bleeding Fusco through the vestibule, Geritano appears on camera chasing after him, holding an object “consistent with a knife” in his right hand. In the video, Geritano takes an aggressive stance, brandishing what looks like a blade, as Fusco retreats.

Moments later, Fusco, upon reaching the police outside, shouted that he’d been stabbed inside. Crucially, a fellow NYPD officer watching the tape recognized Geritano – a familiar face from prior arrests. That recognition led detectives straight to Geritano.

He was arrested on January 7, 2013, and while in custody, he allegedly volunteered a partial explanation: Geritano told officers he had “picked a knife up off the floor and gave it to somebody” during the fracas. He also claimed he slipped out a back door while police entered the front. Notably, no knife was ever recovered from the scene.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office nevertheless pressed charges, initially including attempted murder, though Geritano ultimately stood trial for attempted first-degree assault and weapon possession.

At trial in late 2013, prosecutors painted Geritano as the instigator who sought vengeance after being punched – a mob-tied tough guy who grabbed a blade and stabbed Fusco in a burst of violence. They emphasized the video showing Geritano armed and pursuing the wounded victim, arguing it was no coincidence that the man seen with a knife on camera just seconds after the stabbing was indeed the stabber.

In December 2013, the jury agreed, convicting Geritano of attempted assault in the first degree and third-degree criminal weapon possession.

A judge imposed a 12-year prison sentence, a heavy term reflecting Geritano’s record.

Benny the Blade Battles the Narrative: Missing Tapes and Mistaken ID

From behind bars, Geritano has fought the conviction with an Evidence Book of exhibits and an alternate version of events. Central to his claims is that the government’s case was built on incomplete – even misleading – evidence. He argues that crucial surveillance footage went missing and that investigators ignored or covered up facts pointing to another culprit.

Specifically, Geritano says Club Nouveau’s interior security cameras captured the initial fight at the bar (where the stabbing occurred), but that footage was never preserved or shown to the jury. The club’s owner, Heather Kornhaber, later provided a statement confirming that there were cameras in the bar area and that she had seen video of Fusco punching Geritano – notably, she made “no mention of the stabbing” on that tape.

A former head of security at the club, Thomas Turner, likewise wrote in an email that he saw Geritano pick up a knife from the floor during the brawl, and that Fusco’s girlfriend identified a different man – one wearing a white shirt – as the person who stabbed Fusco.

In fact, one club patron, Harry Shasho, came forward to say he was the man in the white shirt and that police briefly detained him at the scene as a suspect after a woman (presumably Fusco’s girlfriend) pointed him out, only to release him moments later.

None of this information was aired at trial.

Geritano maintains that he never stabbed anyone and was at most guilty of picking up the knife after someone else dropped it. To bolster this, he gathered sworn statements from witnesses who were present. One bystander swore he did not see Geritano stab anyone.

Even the victim, Nunzio Fusco, signed a notarized statement in 2019 reaffirming that he does not know who stabbed him.

The most dramatic twist came when an inmate named Jason Polanco — a convicted felon housed in a neighboring cell — signed an affidavit in January 2019 claiming he was the one who stabbed Fusco in the club that night[25]. Polanco’s confession, if true, would exonerate Geritano.

Geritano’s filings also highlight alleged procedural lapses: he says the grand jury was misled with an incomplete picture of the evidence, and that the accusatory paperwork was defective (for example, he contends the initial criminal complaint was invalid).

In one letter to the court, Geritano accused prosecutors of knowingly presenting false or incomplete information — such as showing only the lobby video and not disclosing the existence of interior-camera footage — in order to secure his indictment and conviction.

These contentions directly challenge the integrity of the official case and suggest a wrongful conviction scenario. But have they held up?

Benny the Blade Battles the Courts: Claims of Misconduct and Error

To date, Geritano’s counter-narrative has gained no traction in court. The New York appellate court that upheld his conviction in 2018 directly addressed several of his arguments and found them meritless.

On the issue of the missing surveillance video, the Appellate Division noted that Geritano’s trial attorney was aware of the gap and actually requested a jury instruction about the lost evidence. The trial judge delivered a “missing evidence” charge, permitting jurors to infer that the unproduced bar-area footage would have been unfavorable to the prosecution. Having accepted that remedy at trial, Geritano was barred from claiming a Brady violation on appeal – and regardless, the appeals court ruled “the contention is without merit” (implicitly agreeing with prosecutors that there was no deliberate evidence suppression).

Geritano’s attack on the grand jury proceedings fared no better. He accused the District Attorney of withholding surveillance video from grand jurors and misrepresenting what certain defense witnesses would say. The appellate judges found no indication of any withheld video and deemed the prosecutor’s summaries proper, noting it is not misconduct to exclude hearsay portions of a witness’s proffered testimony.

In short, the panel concluded the grand jury’s integrity was intact and “not impaired” by the alleged errors.

Other complaints were dismissed without detailed comment. Claims of investigative “paperwork defects” or other irregularities were deemed outside the trial record and thus not reviewable on direct appeal. The court suggested such issues, if true, should be raised in a post-conviction motion to vacate.

Geritano did pursue post-conviction relief – filing motions and federal habeas petitions – and there he presented his new batch of affidavits. However, judges remained highly skeptical.

In a 2023 federal ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Rachel P. Kovner scrutinized the Polanco confession and essentially dismantled it as not credible. The court noted that Polanco happened to be Geritano’s jail neighbor in late 2018, serving a 76-year sentence for shooting two police officers. By the time he confessed to the 2012 stabbing, the statute of limitations had lapsed, and Polanco had nothing to lose.

The Court also found his statement glaringly inconsistent with known evidence, describing a prelude that didn’t match any witness account and lacked any independent corroboration. Given the circumstances, Judge Kovner found Polanco’s claim “neither credible nor compelling” as proof of Geritano’s innocence.

The other affidavits – regarding the white-shirt suspect, the missing camera, etc. – did not move the needle enough either. No court has ordered a new trial or an evidentiary hearing on Geritano’s case. In fact, one of Geritano’s attempts to appeal further was dismissed as untimely in 2022, closing the door on his direct appeals.

Public Reaction and Ongoing Saga

Geritano’s bid to rewrite the narrative of the Club Nouveau stabbing has so far found little external support. No investigative journalists or innocence projects have taken up his cause publicly. On the contrary, coverage of Geritano in the press has been unsympathetic.

A column by veteran crime reporter Jerry Capeci ridiculed Geritano for even going to trial “even though he knew he had been caught on videotape with a knife in his hand.”

Capeci revealed that in 2017, while Geritano was incarcerated, federal prosecutors charged him with sending a vicious threat letter related to his case. According to court filings, Geritano mailed an extortion demand vowing violence – including beheadings – against two people, one of whom was his own trial lawyer, Albert Brackley.

In 2019, Geritano pleaded guilty and received a 78-month federal sentence (roughly six and a half years) for that letter, on top of his state prison time. This self-sabotaging move reinforced the narrative of Geritano as his own worst enemy; as one observer quipped online, it earned him a “regular Albert Einstein” award for criminal foolishness.

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Meanwhile, those who know Geritano personally have largely stayed quiet or spoken only in glowing generalities. On a mafia web forum, one former prison mate praised “Benny” as “a beautiful dude” but conceded he is “very impulsive.”

There has been no independent confirmation of the alleged alternate suspect in the stabbing. The man in the white shirt identified by Fusco’s girlfriend was never publicly named by authorities, and it appears no charges were ever brought against anyone else.

The NYPD and Brooklyn prosecutors have stood by Geritano’s conviction. After multiple reviews, the official position remains that they arrested the right man.

In the courts of law and public opinion, Geritano’s challenges to the government’s story – missing videos, misidentifications, grand jury misconduct, paperwork errors – have been rejected or simply fallen on deaf ears.

As of today, Battista “Benny” Geritano continues to serve his sentence, with his claims of wrongful conviction unresolved and little indication that the narrative will shift in his favor.

Still, this outlet has begun digging. There is enough in Geritano’s Evidence Book to raise real weaknesses in the charging narrative, video preservation, witness development, and clerk paperwork:

1) The complaint-room language appears to oversell what Fusco could actually say.

The Evidence Book’s most reportable inconsistency is between the early accusatory paperwork and the later sworn record. On pp. 29-30 and p. 36, the screening sheet and felony complaint read as if the case could be charged directly as Geritano stabbing Fusco. But the latter record — both inside the Evidence Book and in the federal order — says Fusco identified Geritano as the man from the fight, not as the person he saw stab him. That is the cleanest paper-trail tension in the whole file.

2) Lost video / investigative cherry-picking is a serious, documentable defect.

On p. 10, Meyers says he saved only the vestibule portion because it was “the only part” he needed and did not save the bar-area material; on p. 41, a later prosecutor’s affirmation acknowledges he allowed some surveillance to be deleted and notes Lieutenant Caviness complained about that failure. The Appellate Division still rejected the defense claim on appeal, but as a reporting matter, this is strong because it is not speculative — it is an admitted process failure.

3) The white-shirt / Harry Shasho lead is real, but courts treated it as weakly corroborated.

The Evidence Book gives multiple pages for this: p. 5 (Shasho), p. 9 (Cerbone), p. 42 (man in white shirt in police/prosecutor recounting), and the later handwritten packets. The federal order confirms that Geritano later submitted Shasho, Cerbone, Kornhaber, Nackab, and Polanco/Fusco materials, but Judge Kovner held that those submissions still did not outweigh the evidence used against him. So this is a strong “ignored lead / weak corroboration / why wasn’t it run down harder?” angle.

4) The probation office arrest and warrant trail deserves a full paper chase.

The Evidence Book pages 24, 27, 28, and 37 are unusually valuable together. They show: NYPD describing the arrest at probation; a federal warrant form tied to the earlier supervised-release case; an EDNY clerk saying the requested “warrant affidavit” does not exist on that federal docket number; and a state clerk’s letter saying no supporting affidavits accompany the complaint. That does not prove a fake warrant, but it absolutely justifies document requests aimed at the actual warrant application, return, and execution chain.

5) There is a genuine verdict/commitment-count anomaly.

The reproduced verdict sheet on pp. 51-52 appears to show guilt checked on count 5, while the oral verdict return on pp. 59-60 reflects guilt on count 1 and count 4 only. The sentence-and-commitment form on p. 61 then appears to use count 5 for the weapon offense. The official public record, meanwhile, describes the conviction as attempted first-degree assault plus third-degree weapon possession. This is exactly the kind of clerk-record problem worth pulling raw minute entries and certified corrections for.

6) The CRU material is only an intake step, not a merits finding.

The packet includes a July 8, 2025, Kings DA CRU letter telling Geritano to submit the form first and not send other materials yet. That is important because it means the file contains evidence of contact with the CRU, but not evidence that the CRU has validated or invalidated any claim.

Benny the Blade Battles Everybody: What’s Next?

Despite repeated rejections of his post-conviction claims, the Geritano case contains enough substantive anomalies to justify a deeper investigation. The official record confirms his conviction, yet multiple elements documented in his Evidence Book expose discrepancies the courts never fully resolved: missing interior surveillance footage from Club Nouveau, conflicting witness statements about the stabbing, questions about the grand jury’s access to all relevant evidence, and a verdict/commitment sheet that appears to miscode counts.

Coupled with sworn statements from bystanders and security staff indicating alternative suspects, these issues create gaps in the prosecution narrative. A structured series of public record requests to the Kings County DA, the New York State Supreme Court, and the federal records custodians could illuminate whether these anomalies reflect procedural oversight, deliberate missteps, or misrepresented facts.

This outlet has begun a document-driven inquiry as the only reliable path to verify or challenge the official narrative. We will further report our findings.

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From: Richard Luthmann <richard.luthmann@protonmail.com>
Date: On Monday, March 23rd, 2026 at 10:53 AM
Subject: FOIL Request – People v. Battista Geritano, Ind. No. 260/2013 / Arrest No. K13801910
To: KCDAFOIL@brooklynda.org <KCDAFOIL@brooklynda.org>
CC: Dick LaFontaine <RALafontaine@protonmail.com>, Rick LaRivière <RickLaRiviere@proton.me>, Frank Parlato <frankparlato@gmail.com>, Frankie Pressman <frankiepressman@protonmail.com>, Michael Volpe <mvolpe998@gmail.com>, Modern Thomas Nast <mthomasnast@protonmail.com>

By Email and U.S. Mail

FOIL Department
Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office
350 Jay Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Re: FOIL Request – People v. Battista Geritano, Ind. No. 260/2013 / Arrest No. K13801910

Dear Sir or Madam:

We are independent journalists seeking information related to the above-referenced matter pursuant to the New York Freedom of Information Law. We request records reasonably described below concerning the prosecution of Battista Geritano arising from the December 23, 2012, incident at Club Nouveau, 8214 Third Avenue, Brooklyn.

This request seeks non-grand-jury records. I am not requesting sealed grand-jury minutes unless they have already been unsealed and are otherwise releasable.

Please search the Complaint Room, Criminal Court Bureau, trial bureau files, Appeals Bureau, post-conviction files, and any retired or archived storage.

Requested records:

1. The complete complaint-room file for Arrest No. K13801910, including screening sheets, draft screening sheets, intake notes, source notes, handwritten notes, routing slips, emails, call slips, and any database or case-management entries and audit trails reflecting creation or revision of the complaint narrative.

2. All materials used to prepare the felony complaint and complaint-room screening sheet, including notes of communications with NYPD personnel, witness summaries, and any source documents relied upon by the complaint-room screener.

3. All non-grand-jury records concerning CPL 710.30 notices and supporting materials, including identification paperwork transmitted to or maintained by the DA’s Office.

4. Communications with NYPD concerning the photo array, lineup, surveillance footage, preservation or non-preservation of video, I-card issuance, or the probation-office apprehension on January 7, 2013.

5. Non-grand-jury records concerning defense witness proffers or related communications involving Vincent J. Romano, Gregory Basso, Joel Brettschneider, Josephine Augello, Thomas Turner, and Harry Shasho.

6. Any non-grand-jury record concerning complaints, concerns, or internal communications about missing or deleted surveillance footage, including communications referencing Lt. Caviness.

7. Any record sufficient to identify the complaint-room screener(s), supervisor(s), and approving attorney(s) who drafted, reviewed, edited, or approved the complaint narrative used in the criminal court filing.

Please construe this request as seeking records, not answers to questions. If a full file is not maintained, please produce any record sufficient to show the requested fact. Please produce records electronically where possible, including metadata-bearing formats for emails and database exports. I request rolling production.

If any records are withheld, please identify the specific exemption relied upon for each withholding and release all reasonably segregable portions. Please advise in advance if fees will exceed $50.00.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Regards,

Richard Luthmann

Writer, Journalist, and Commentator

From: Richard Luthmann <richard.luthmann@protonmail.com>
Date: On Monday, March 23rd, 2026 at 10:56 AM
Subject: Certified Copy Request – People v. Battista Geritano, Ind. No. 260/2013
To: KCCOInfo@nycourts.gov <KCCOInfo@nycourts.gov>
CC: Dick LaFontaine <RALafontaine@protonmail.com>, Rick LaRivière <RickLaRiviere@proton.me>, Frank Parlato <frankparlato@gmail.com>, Frankie Pressman <frankiepressman@protonmail.com>, Modern Thomas Nast <mthomasnast@protonmail.com>, Michael Volpe <mvolpe998@gmail.com>

Via Email and U.S. Mail

Kings County Clerk’s Office
Attention: Record Room / Certified Copies
360 Adams Street, Room 189
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Email: KCCOInfo@nycourts.gov

Re: Certified Copy Request – People v. Battista Geritano, Ind. No. 260/2013

Dear County Clerk:

I request certified copies of the specific records in People v. Battista Geritano, Kings County Indictment No. 260/2013, and access to any archived criminal file maintained by your office for inspection.

Requested records:

1. The complete original verdict sheet, including all pages and any clerk certifications.

2. The sentence and commitment / uniform sentence and commitment filed in this matter.

3. Any amended or corrected sentence and commitment, correction slip, nunc pro tunc order, or other record modifying or clarifying the count number, statute, or disposition reflected on the sentence-and-commitment form.

4. The certificate of conviction and/or certificate of disposition, judgment roll, and minute entries for verdict and sentencing.

5. Any clerk notation, file-jacket notation, or archive notation reflecting transfer, correction, replacement, or recertification of the verdict sheet or commitment papers.

6. If maintained, the archived Supreme Court criminal file for Ind. No. 260/2013 for inspection or duplication.

Please advise the total cost for certified and non-certified copies before processing. If inspection is easier, I am willing to send an agent to inspect the file in person at the Record Room and then request only the pages I need copied and certified.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Regards,

Richard Luthmann

Writer, Journalist, and Commentator

From: Richard Luthmann <richard.luthmann@protonmail.com>
Date: On Monday, March 23rd, 2026 at 10:59 AM
Subject: Request for Archived Federal Court File – United States v. Battista Geritano, EDNY 03-CR-970 / Accession No. 02101423 / Box No. 59
To: inquire@nara.gov <inquire@nara.gov>
CC: Dick LaFontaine <RALafontaine@protonmail.com>, Rick LaRivière <RickLaRiviere@proton.me>, Frankie Pressman <frankiepressman@protonmail.com>, Frank Parlato <frankparlato@gmail.com>, Michael Volpe <mvolpe998@gmail.com>, Modern Thomas Nast <mthomasnast@protonmail.com>

Via email: inquire@nara.gov

Re: Request for Archived Federal Court File – United States v. Battista Geritano, EDNY 03-CR-970 / Accession No. 02101423 / Box No. 59

Dear National Archives Reference Staff:

I request assistance locating and ordering copies from the archived federal court file for United States v. Battista Geritano, Eastern District of New York, criminal case 03-CR-970 (including supervised-release proceedings tied to January 2013 events).

The identifying information I have is:

– Court: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York
– Defendant: Battista Geritano
– Case: 03-CR-970 (supervised-release matter)
– Archive reference provided by EDNY clerk correspondence: Accession No. 02101423; Box No. 59Please advise:1. Whether Accession No. 02101423 and Box No. 59 are sufficient to retrieve the file;
2. Which NARA/FRC location currently holds the file;
3. Whether additional transfer, accession, or location data are needed; and
4. The procedure and cost to obtain copies of the following items, if present:
a. warrant papers;
b. revocation petition / violation report;
c. docket sheet;
d. minute entries;
e. orders and judgments;
f. any return or execution record for the January 2013 warrant.

If possible, please treat this email as a reference request and respond with the exact ordering steps or a quote.

If a specific request form is required, please send the correct form or direct me to it.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Regards,

Richard Luthmann
Writer, Journalist, and Commentator

LUTHMANN NOTE: Kathy Hochul and New York Democrats thought they had Staten Island sliced, diced, and ready to flip. Then the Supreme Court stepped in and blew the whole scheme to pieces. The failed NY-11 redistricting plot didn’t just preserve the city’s only Republican seat—it torched the political futures of two ambitious insiders. Kamillah Hanks and Diane Savino were already eyeing Congress, betting on a court-engineered map to carry them to Washington. Now, that map is dead. Their plans are dead. And the fallout is brutal. What looked like a surgical political strike turned into a public execution of Democratic lawfare—and a humiliating reality check. This piece is “Kamillah and Diane’s Hopes Dashed.”

By Rick LaRivière and Richard Luthmann

SCOTUS Slams “Frankenseat” Racial Redistricting Scheme

Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court delivered a stinging rebuke to New York Democrats’ attempt to chop up Staten Island’s congressional district. In a 6–3 emergency stay, the high court halted Manhattan Judge Jeffrey Pearlman’s order that would have carved the city’s only Republican-held seat into pieces.

Justice Samuel Alito didn’t mince words, blasting the proposed redraw as “blatantly” race-based and an inherently “odious” form of discrimination.

In plain English, the Court told Albany power brokers their gambit went too far: “Government cannot sort citizens by race to win elections.” Six justices enforced that basic constitutional rule, slapping down what critics dubbed a “racial gerrymander” aimed squarely at ousting Rep. Nicole Malliotakis.

Local Republicans rejoiced at the reprieve, calling it a last-minute salvation for Staten Island’s voice on Capitol Hill.

“This decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to keep New York’s 11th Congressional District intact helps restore the rule of law and common sense in our elections,” Malliotakis said in a statement, applauding the injunction.

The ruling all but guarantees Malliotakis will run for re-election on her existing turf – Staten Island and southern Brooklyn – rather than on a Democrat-rigged map designed to sink her. It’s a major victory for the GOP in the nationwide redistricting wars. Every seat counts when Republicans hold only a razor-thin 218–214 majority in the House, and losing this one would imperil the party’s hold on Congress.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s intervention, New York’s lone Republican stronghold stays red for 2026 – a reality check to Democrats that even in deep-blue NYC, there are limits to hardball lawfare.

Democrats Tried to Carve Up NY-11 – and Got Cut Down

This case began when a cadre of Democratic lawyers led by Marc Elias – Hillary Clinton’s notorious election attorney – quietly launched a legal blitz to dismember Staten Island under the guise of “voting rights.” Their lawsuit argued that NY-11’s current lines dilute minority votes, citing New York’s new John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

In truth, it was naked power politics dressed up as civil rights. The jaw-dropping Elias plan would split the borough in half: one “Frankenstein” district stitching Staten Island’s liberal North Shore to left-leaning Lower Manhattan, and another lumping the conservative South Shore with Coney Island housing projects in Brooklyn. In blunt terms, the city’s lone GOP enclave was to be sliced up and submerged in a sea of Democratic voters.

“This is a naked attempt to disenfranchise [Staten Island] voters,” warned state GOP Chairman Ed Cox when the scheme emerged.

Initially, Judge Pearlman bought the Democrats’ argument, ruling that “Black, Latino, and Asian Staten Islanders” were being denied fair representation. But even House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries had previously admitted that the New York Voting Rights Act doesn’t apply to federal elections – a glaring fact that didn’t stop Elias and company. They pressed ahead, backed by former Attorney General Eric Holder’s redistricting outfit (bankrolled by Barack Obama), effectively throwing their own party’s House leader to the wolves.

The gambit backfired spectacularly. Alito shredded their theory in five brusque paragraphs, noting the irony that Malliotakis – the incumbent they targeted – is herself the daughter of a Cuban immigrant.

“I’m the first Hispanic to represent this district, which makes their claim ridiculous,” Malliotakis said.

The Supreme Court’s intervention froze Pearlman’s ruling and torpedoed the Democrats’ “Frankenseat” plot for now. In the war of map manipulation, Staten Island dodged a bullet – and Albany’s gerrymander generals are left licking their wounds.

Kamillah and Diane’s Hopes Dashed: Two Ambitious Pols Left High and Dry

No one is more shell-shocked by the high court’s pump fake than Kamillah Hanks and Diane Savino, two Democratic insiders who had been eyeing shiny new congressional seats in Staten Island. Hanks, a New York City Council member from the North Shore (and the Council’s Majority Whip), and Savino, a former state senator-turned-City Hall aide, were quietly measuring the drapes for D.C. offices under the Elias redistricting plan.

Now, thanks to SCOTUS, that opportunity has vanished into thin air – and with it, their fast-track tickets to Congress.

According to a source who overheard Hanks’ hubby Kevin Barry Love bragging at a Bay Street eatery in February, the plan was already in motion. As Staten Island was expected to get split, Hanks planned to run in the newly configured Staten Island-Manhattan district, while Savino had her sights on the South Shore-Brooklyn seat.

“Kevin gets loud and can’t hold his liquor. He was bragging about looking for townhouses in Georgetown and having Ritchie Torres show him around,” the source said. “I didn’t see whether Kevin was feeding Diane booze, but I hope he wasn’t.”

In Democratic circles, it was an open secret: Kamillah and Diane were gearing up to claim those congressional seats in 2026, and many were unhappy. Hanks’ hubby and brute enforcer, Love, has attacked SI Dems and New York State Assembly Deputy Majority Leader Charles Fall, claiming that he was “coming” for his leadership role.

“I’ve already gotten phone calls about Kevin’s very public threats against my senior citizen mother,” Richard Luthmann said. “I tell everyone who asks that we will let these issues be handled in the proper channels. As Trump says, it’s all about being treated fairly.”

Now, instead of campaigning for Congress, Hanks and Savino are left lamenting what might have been, and their collective political hands are looking like dead draws.

“The conclusion is that they’re in a political quandary. They got nowhere to go,‎” said one Staten Island political insider of the pair’s dashed hopes.

Hanks, 50, holds a leadership title at City Hall that even fellow Democrats privately call a token role – the party’s supermajority is so huge (more than 45 of 51 seats) that being “Majority Whip” is mostly ceremonial. She only got the gig so Staten Island would have a Democrat in the Council leadership, insiders snicker.

“How hard is it to count votes when you can count the number of Republicans on one hand?” the insider said.

NYNews.Press

Now Hanks’s future in elected office is murky. Term-limited out of the Council after 2025, her only remaining options are long-shot primary challenges against fellow Democrats: Assemblyman and Party Leader Charles Fall or State Senator Jessica Scarcella-Spanton in 2028.

“She’s not moving up citywide – no Staten Islander is winning Mayor or Comptroller,” the insider noted. “Congress was her way out.”

With that door slammed shut, Hanks faces the prospect of a dead-end political career by decade’s end.

And then there’s Savino. The 60-year-old veteran pol spent 18 years in the state senate and was a power broker in Albany’s bygone Independent Democratic Conference. After retiring from the Senate, she landed as a senior advisor to Mayor Eric Adams in 2022 – only to find herself pushed to the sidelines in the turmoil of Adams’ one-term administration.

City Hall sources say Savino was quietly shown the door in the shuffle of a new mayor taking over in 2026. Eyeing a comeback, Savino had banked on Staten Island’s carve-up to give her a winnable House seat. She represented parts of Staten Island and Coney Island for years, and insiders say she was ready to leverage those ties in a congressional run.

Now that the plan has evaporated. Savino is out of office, out of favor, and – for the moment – out of luck.

“Diane’s scrambling for a next act,” a Democratic insider said. “She thought Congress might be it. Not anymore.”

Kamillah and Diane’s Hopes Dashed: Malliotakis Emerges Unbeatable as GOP Cheers

If Hanks and Savino are licking their wounds, Nicole Malliotakis is doing victory laps. The second-term Republican congresswoman – the only GOP member of New York City’s delegation – now looks politically untouchable in her district. Even before the Supreme Court’s save, Malliotakis had defied the odds, twice winning in a city where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans.

With the “Frankenseat” slain, her seat remains anchored in its current boundaries (Staten Island plus a slice of Brooklyn) and leans solidly conservative.

“She’s unbeatable in that seat, guaranteed between 60 and 70% of the vote,” one longtime Staten Island politico said.

Indeed, Malliotakis is half Cuban and speaks fluent Spanish, giving her cross-over appeal in a borough that’s more diverse than outsiders realize. Far from disenfranchising minority voters, as Democrats alleged, her presence in Congress proves voters on Staten Island will elect a Republican Latina and be darn proud of it.

Malliotakis wasted no time capitalizing on the moment.

“The Supreme Court did the right thing by stopping this blatant racial gerrymandering,” she declared, vowing to continue fighting for her constituents “without the distraction of a partisan map grab.”

Republican leaders hailed her as a hero for standing up to Albany’s scheme. In Washington, Malliotakis’s stock has only risen: she’s now New York City’s most powerful Republican voice, holding sway over federal funds flowing to the city.

“Every federal dollar’s gotta go across her desk,” quipped the Staten Island insider, noting that with President Trump back in the White House, Malliotakis’s position is pivotal.

By preserving her seat, the high court also preserved Trump’s narrow House majority – averting what could have been a Democratic pickup that tipped the balance of power. GOP strategists are breathing easier, while Democrats are left fuming at what they call a partisan judiciary.

The “spilled milk” has found its way into a Democratic primary fight. Allison Ziogas, a Pleasant Plains resident and longtime union electrician, is the Party’s pick, endorsed by Party Leader Charles Fall earlier in the week. She will face former NYPD member and educator Michael DeCillis. Troy McGhie recently suspended his campaign to throw his support to Ziogas.

Staten Island’s political map remains intact, and Malliotakis is poised to cruise to re-election in 2026 on familiar turf. Insiders say that the Dems’ congressional challenge is an exercise in futility.

“Ziogas made her announcement in Great Kills last week,” the longtime Staten Island politico said. “The last Democrat to announce on the South Shore and win was Jack Murphy, and that was before they built the [Verrazano] Bridge.”

The thwarted “Frankenseat” fiasco stands as a cautionary tale: a bold power play that collided with constitutional limits.

“They tried to pull a fast one and got smacked down,” said a veteran New York Republican operative. “Malliotakis will lay their political motives bare when she wins by 25 points.”

And as Malliotakis takes a victory lap, two would-be challengers – Hanks and Savino- are left on the sidelines, pondering the cruel whims of fate – and wondering if their big political dreams just died on the steps of the Manhattan Supreme Court.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: The Ryan Flynn story is explosive because it connects several things that rarely collide in public view: money, political patronage, and the machinery of criminal justice. Erie County’s Assigned Counsel program was supposed to guarantee legal defense for the poor. Instead, a new audit shows massive cost increases, questionable billing practices, and oversight failures. Flynn says that the system is just the tip of the iceberg. From his jail cell, he claims the same network of insiders reaches into Tonawanda and Erie County politics and ultimately to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office. He talks about the X account @PubCorruption5, a treasure trove of scandal. Whether his allegations prove true or not, the audit alone demands serious investigation. New Yorkers deserve transparency — not silence. This piece is “Jailed Erie County Whistleblower Exposes Corruption,” first available on NYNewsPress.com.

By Richard Luthmann

Bombshell Affair Allegation in Tonawanda’s Political Machine

New York Governor Kathy Hochul faces a ticking time bomb. A jailed whistleblower claims he can tie her rise to a seedy local corruption network. Ryan Flynn – currently behind bars – alleges Hochul had a secret sexual affair with Tonawanda Democratic boss John Crangle during their tenure at the Erie County Clerk’s Office.

The explosive claim comes straight from a Buffalo federal court filing Flynn lodged. In it, he cites a recorded conversation with Crangle’s own brother, Dennis, who spilled the long-rumored secret.

“Johnny and the governor are like this… they more or less slept together at the Erie County Clerk’s Office ’cause they both worked there at the same time,” Dennis Crangle said on tape.

Married to her current husband, William Hochul, at the time, Hochul was the Erie County Clerk in the late 2000s, and Crangle served as her deputy. If true, New York’s first female governor launched her career through Tonawanda’s patronage pipeline – and is now ensnared by it. Insiders used to call them the Kennedys of Tonawanda for their local power.

Flynn portrays the affair as more than gossip. He says it “pulls back the curtain” on what he calls an incestuous cabal of Erie County power brokers who trade favors and cover each other’s sins.

In other words, Hochul’s early rise was greased by a tight clique that rewards loyalty and punishes dissent. The allegation now sits on the record in federal court – and Albany has been dead silent.

Hochul’s office did not respond to requests for comment. But this whistleblower’s bombshell is splattering mud all over the Governor’s mansion at a crucial moment in her career.

“Held to Silence Me”: Jailed Erie County Whistleblower Exposes Corruption

Ryan Flynn, 32, calls himself a political prisoner – and he’s not exaggerating. He’s been locked in the Erie County Holding Center for over four months on what he insists is a trumped-up charge.

Flynn’s ordeal began shortly after he accused his older cousin, former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, of sexually molesting him when he was a child.

Just months after Ryan went to the police with those allegations, the legal system flipped the script and turned on him. He was arrested and denied bail on a flimsy claim that he violated an order of protection with an anonymous social media post. The entire case against him rests on a single screenshot – an image of a threatening post that isn’t even linked to his name.

“They can’t even establish the post came from me, yet they’re holding me in pretrial detention,” Flynn has noted in disbelief.

No IP address, no device records, no metadata connect him to the post. Nevertheless, a local judge — one with past ties to DA John Flynn’s office — remanded him on the spot. Four court-appointed attorneys have cycled through Ryan’s case, and he still hasn’t had a trial.

Flynn believes that’s no coincidence. He alleges word went out in legal circles that any lawyer who zealously defended him “will be kicked off assigned counsel” panels and blackballed. The result, he says, is a revolving door of lawyers who do nothing while he stews in pretrial detention.

“I’m being held here unlawfully… It’s public corruption, and they’re framing me,” Flynn said bluntly from jail.

He claims officials are even “concocting new charges” in other jurisdictions to keep him locked up. Meanwhile, truly violent offenders walk free under New York’s lax bail laws, he notes, yet he languishes in a cell over an unproven social media post. To Flynn, the message from his powerful enemies is crystal clear: stay quiet about their corruption, or pay the price.

And the price, he says, has been steep – retaliation in the form of handcuffs and solitary confinement.

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Audit Uncovers $20M Legal Scam – Jailed Erie County Whistleblower Exposes Corruption

Flynn’s crusade is peeling back another layer of rot: a taxpayer-funded legal defense program he says was turned into a cash cow for cronies. Erie County’s Assigned Counsel Program pays private lawyers to represent defendants who can’t afford an attorney.

According to a brand-new audit by County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick, the program’s costs exploded – more than doubling from $9.17 million in 2022 to $20.3 million in 2024. The audit uncovers excessive caseloads, dubious billing practices, and failures of oversight.

Multiple court-appointed attorneys racked up astonishing hours and paychecks. In one example, a single lawyer billed nine hours to one case in a day while also logging work on 17 other cases that same day. No human could legitimately bill that many hours at once, raising red flags that the system was being gamed.

Hardwick didn’t publicly name the worst offenders, but he made it clear he has their names “certainly available” for investigators. County officials are openly talking about potential fraud in the program’s administration.

The audit also found that oversight was so lax that some attorneys blew past state-imposed caseload limits year after year without triggering an alarm. Flynn argues this is no coincidence – he believes the Assigned Counsel Program became a slush fund for politically connected lawyers.

One glaring issue he points to: the Erie County DA’s Office, under his cousin John Flynn, failed to collect $611,000 owed back to taxpayers in state reimbursements tied to the program. (Ryan Flynn bluntly claims his cousin “stole $611,000” via the assigned counsel scam.)

The whistleblower is demanding a “full financial audit of all government funds, including the money awarded by Kathy Hochul,” of entities in Tonawanda. He suspects that even his own court-appointed lawyer might be ensnared in the billing scandal – perhaps explaining why his defense has been, in his view, deliberately feeble.

The dots connect in damning fashion: a $20 million legal fund ballooning with little accountability, possible kickbacks to insider attorneys, and a whistleblower defendant seemingly left twisting in the wind. Hardwick’s audit has set off alarm bells across the county, and calls for a deeper investigation into the Assigned Counsel Program are growing louder by the day.

Flynn’s revelations pour gasoline on that fire, painting the program as a rigged system that enriched cronies while perverting the course of justice.

Scandal Reaches Albany – Jailed Erie County Whistleblower Exposes Corruption

What started as a small-town Tonawanda tale now threatens to engulf New York’s highest offices. Flynn insists that Erie County’s corruption festered because Albany’s Democratic leaders let it happen – or even helped. He accuses Governor Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James of turning a blind eye to the malfeasance. In effect, he says they’ve sanctioned what he bitterly calls the “Hochul gulag,” holding him in jail.

So far, both Hochul and James have stayed mum about Flynn’s case and the assigned counsel scandal. Flynn’s supporters say that silence makes them complicit. The whistleblower is so desperate to be heard that he’s literally putting his life on the line.

“I’d rather just be dead than keep playing these games with the government,” he said, vowing to resume a hunger strike if he isn’t freed.

Earlier this year, Flynn already went on hunger strike to protest his detention, and he’s prepared to starve himself again to force action. He believes the powers-that-be are trying to break him physically and mentally to bury his allegations – but he’s determined not to let that happen quietly.

Meanwhile, Governor Hochul is heading into a re-election fight under this dark cloud. The lurid Hochul-Crangle affair story has already hit the press in bombastic detail. The idea that her political career was “midwifed by an illicit affair” with a party boss lays bare, in Flynn’s view, “the rot of machine politics” in New York that rewards connections over integrity.

What might have remained local gossip is now a full-fledged statehouse scandal. Good-government advocates are joining Flynn’s camp in demanding sunlight at the highest levels. They argue only an independent probe – free from the influence of Hochul’s Albany allies – can disinfect what Flynn describes as a cesspool of cronyism and vendetta-driven justice.

The public deserves transparency, not cover-ups, and outside investigations are long overdue. But so far, no outside agency has stepped in. Letitia James’s office, which positions itself as a champion of the vulnerable, has not announced any inquiry into Flynn’s claims or his treatment.

But pressure is mounting. Each new revelation in the “Hochul affair” and the legal defense fraud saga further erodes public trust. And each day Ryan Flynn remains behind bars, his supporters say, is an indictment of a system that seems more interested in silencing a whistleblower than in rooting out wrongdoing.

Grand Jury Gambit – Flynn Vows to Expose Everything

Flynn isn’t done fighting. In fact, he’s about to take his battle directly into the legal record – where, he hopes, it can’t be ignored. The jailed activist has formally invoked his right under New York law to testify before the grand jury considering charges against him (under CPL § 190.50).

He served a cross grand jury notice that he intends to speak to the grand jurors in his case, meaning he’ll have a rare chance to tell his side of the story under oath. And he plans to use that opportunity to drop every bombshell he’s got.

Flynn says he will expose the entire scheme on the record – from the local billing fraud to the “dirty secrets” linking it to Governor Hochul’s circle. It’s essentially a high-stakes gambit: daring prosecutors to let him talk.

If they proceed with a grand jury, Flynn gets his day to name names and detail the corruption he’s been shouting about. If they retreat, it raises the question of what they fear he might reveal. Either outcome, Flynn figures, proves his point.

His determination to blow the whistle is unshakeable. Allies compare his stance to a man lighting himself on fire to illuminate injustice. All the dots are connected, and the proof is right there, Flynn insists. He’s already filed official complaints – including a judicial misconduct complaint against Judge Mark Gruber, who, notably, has refused to recuse himself from Ryan’s case despite long ties to John Flynn. They brought in a special prosecutor due to the DA’s conflict of interest, yet Judge Gruber, a former colleague of John Flynn, still presides.

To Flynn, that’s emblematic of the entire ordeal – rules bent to protect the powerful. Now, by leveraging the grand jury process, Flynn aims to put all of it on a transcribed record.

“This is the only way I can get justice now,” he said, explaining that forcing the truth into the open might finally trigger authorities to act.

He’s effectively telling the establishment that he won’t go quietly – he’ll go on the record. As he awaits that chance, Ryan Flynn remains a man in limbo: incarcerated in the Erie County Holding Center, defiant and unbroken. He has tied a sitting governor to a local legal scandal, and he’s daring New York’s power structure to either prove him wrong or finally hold the insiders to account.

The whistleblower who could take down Hochul is betting his life, quite literally, that when all is finally revealed, truth will trump retaliation.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Justice Samuel Alito didn’t hedge. He didn’t duck. He called it what it was — “blatant” and “odious” racial discrimination. That matters. The Equal Protection Clause does not come with a partisan exception. The Constitution is colorblind. It does not allow Albany politicians to redraw congressional maps based on skin color because the polling data looks bad. Kathy Hochul and Marc Elias tried to carve up Staten Island and baptize it as “voting rights.” It was power politics dressed up as civil rights. They gambled that race would shield them from scrutiny. Alito shredded that theory in five paragraphs. Now the National Democratic Redistricting Committee cries federalism while quietly stepping over Hakeem Jeffries’ own statement that the New York Voting Rights Act does not apply to congressional races. So which is it? Either Jeffries was wrong, or the lawsuit was. Democrats can’t have both. Staten Island survived because six justices enforced a simple rule: government cannot sort citizens by race to win elections. That is not radical. That is constitutional. And for once, Albany’s power brokers hit a wall they could not spin away. This piece is “SCOTUS Saves NY-11 Seat,” first available on NYNewsPress.com.

By Richard Luthmann

Supreme Court Blocks NY-11 Redraw, Keeps NYC’s Lone GOP Seat

(Staten Island, N.Y., and Washington, D.C.) – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a bombshell decision saving Staten Island’s congressional seat from a Democratic-led carve-up. In an unsigned order, the justices sided with Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and halted a lower court’s plan to redraw New York’s 11th Congressional District. The high court effectively preserved New York City’s only Republican-held district for the 2026 midterm elections, blocking what critics dubbed a “racial gerrymander” aimed at ousting Malliotakis.

The court’s conservative majority (6–3) stepped in despite liberal justices’ furious dissent, arguing the case should have been left to the New York State courts.

Justice Samuel Alito defended the intervention, blasting the attempted redraw as “blatantly” race-based and “an inherently ‘odious’” form of discrimination.

This ruling is a major victory for the GOP in the nationwide redistricting wars. By keeping Staten Island’s district intact, the Supreme Court handed Republicans a crucial boost in their fight to retain control of the closely divided U.S. House.

Every seat counts – the GOP currently holds a razor-thin 218–214 majority in the House. Losing the Staten Island seat would imperil Republicans’ hold on Congress and, with Donald Trump back in the White House, threaten his legislative agenda.

Now, thanks to the Supreme Court’s intervention, Staten Island’s “red” stronghold remains safe for 2026.

Local Republicans rejoiced at the reprieve, calling it a last-minute save for New York City’s lone GOP voice on Capitol Hill. Malliotakis herself is widely seen as the big winner, avoiding a Democratic “map massacre” that could have erased her district.

She will run for re-election on her existing turf – Staten Island and a slice of Brooklyn – rather than a radically altered map. GOP leaders hailed the outcome as proof that even in deep-blue New York City, hardball lawfare has its limits.

SCOTUS Saves NY-11 Seat: Dems’ “Frankenseat” Scheme Exposed and Thwarted

The Supreme Court’s order torpedoes what Republicans had dubbed the Democrats’ “Frankenseat” scheme – a brazen attempt to stitch Staten Island into two grotesquely gerrymandered districts. Last year, a cadre of Democrat lawyers led by Marc Elias – Hillary Clinton’s notorious election lawyer – quietly filed a lawsuit seeking to dismember Staten Island on the pretext of racial equity.

The Elias plan was jaw-dropping: split the borough in half and fuse the pieces onto two Democrat-heavy areas. The North Shore of Staten Island would be grafted onto left-leaning Lower Manhattan, while the South Shore would be lumped into a Brooklyn district dominated by Coney Island housing projects.

In plain terms, the city’s lone Republican enclave was to be sliced up and drowned in a sea of Democrat voters.

“Democrats attempt another gerrymander of NY-11 by linking Staten Island to Manhattan… this is a naked attempt to disenfranchise voters,” state GOP Chairman Ed Cox warned when the lawsuit emerged.

The legal assault hinged on New York’s new voting-rights law and a political hack Manhattan judge to do the dirty work. Justice Jeffrey Pearlman – an appointee and ally of Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul – embraced Elias’s arguments and ordered the extreme redraw in January.

Pearlman ruled that the current Staten Island/Brooklyn district (drawn by a neutral special master in 2022 after Democrats’ last map was struck down) “unconstitutionally dilutes” Black and Hispanic voting power. In his view, only by injecting thousands of new minority voters from other boroughs could NY-11 provide proper “minority influence.”

Republicans blasted that rationale as a flimsy fig leaf for a partisan power grab. Malliotakis’s team argued the proposed fix was really a racially engineered gerrymander designed to flip the seat blue.

Notably, Malliotakis herself is the daughter of a Cuban immigrant and the first Latina ever to represent Staten Island – a fact that laid bare the absurdity of claiming minority “disenfranchisement” under the current lines.

“The fact that they’re claiming Hispanics and minorities are disenfranchised when I’m the first Hispanic elected to represent the district makes it even more ridiculous,” Malliotakis said, ridiculing the lawsuit’s logic.

Her sentiments were echoed borough-wide: the “Frankenseat” map was seen as a naked racial gerrymander dressed up as civil rights. Critics slammed Judge Pearlman as “Hochul’s political hack in a robe,” accusing him of doing Albany’s bidding at Staten Island’s expense.

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Republicans Rejoice as Malliotakis Dodges “Map Massacre”

Staten Island Republicans are celebrating a hard-fought win that saved their community from being carved apart. But it never should have gotten this far. Many still wonder why Malliotakis’s Chicago-based lawyers didn’t remove the case to federal court in the very beginning.

Still, Malliotakis lauded the Supreme Court for restoring sanity and stopping an egregious case of judicial overreach. By intervening, the justices “threw out” the racial gerrymander that would have silenced Staten Island’s voice in Congress.

In a forceful concurrence, Justice Samuel Alito warned that New York’s trial court had ordered “blatant” and “odious” racial discrimination, calling it an obvious Equal Protection violation that the Supreme Court could not allow to taint a federal election. Here is some of the language Justice Alito used:

• “These cases concern a state-court order that blatantly discriminates on the basis of race.”

• “That is unadorned racial discrimination, an inherently ‘odious’ activity that violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause except in the ‘most extraordinary case.’”

• “Our precedents have identified only two compelling interests that can justify race-based government action… Neither of those interests is present here.”

• “Under the Supremacy Clause, a state law cannot authorize the violation of federal rights.”

• “It is therefore an understatement to say that applicants are likely to succeed on the merits of their equal protection claim.”

• “That would provide a way of achieving what a full review would not permit: the use of an unconstitutional district in the November election… That is a prospect this Court should not countenance.”

Malliotakis had previously warned that the Manhattan court’s decision “threw New York’s elections into chaos” and would have produced an illegal, race-driven district[15]. Now, with the high court on her side, she is breathing easier.

We reached out to Malliotakis’s team for fresh comment on the ruling. No response was received as of press time.

“This lawsuit was never about voting rights – it was about redrawing lines to exclude Republicans. Kathy Hochul admitted as much,” said one jubilant Staten Island GOP strategist.

National Republican leaders also praised the ruling, noting that keeping Malliotakis’s seat improves their odds of holding the House in 2026. With New York’s 11th remaining a compact Staten Island-centered district, the electoral math strongly favors the GOP – a relief for a party clinging to a slim majority.

“Make no mistake, if the Democrats’ map had gone through, they would have stolen this seat outright. Democrats sure know how to steal elections,” a Trump insider said off-the-record, crediting Malliotakis for fighting back.

Democrats, for their part, reacted with dismay – and a hint of rage. The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices issued a blistering dissent, accusing the conservative majority of meddling in state affairs. Here are some highlights:

• “The Court’s 101-word unexplained order can be summarized in just 7: ‘Rules for thee, but not for me.’”

• “Ignoring every limit on federal courts’ authority, the Court takes the unprecedented step of staying a state trial court’s decision… without giving the State’s highest court a chance to act.”

• “Here, there is no final decision from any state court, let alone New York’s highest court, on any federal question.”

• “Four months before an election may be too late for a lower federal court to act, but it is not too late for this Court to upend a State’s administration of its own election laws.”

• “If this Court’s grasping reach extends even to a nonfinal decision of a state trial court, then every decision from any court is now fair game.”

• “If you build it, they will come.”

Voting-rights advocates who backed the suit decried the ruling as a setback for minority representation, arguing that Staten Island’s current map still isn’t “fair” to Black and Latino voters. But their outrage rang hollow to locals. Prominent Staten Island community leaders insist race was just a smokescreen.

“Marc Elias, a Lowlife America hater, tried to use race as a cover story. At the end of the day, it was never about black, brown, or white — it was all about green, the color of money and raw political power,” said John Tabacco, a Staten Island civic activist, blasting the plaintiffs’ racial justification as a cynical ploy.

Such sentiments now prevail across Staten Island. After months of anxiety, residents are exhaling: their island remains whole, their vote undiluted. Malliotakis is favored to win again in 2026, keeping this ruby-red district firmly in GOP hands.

SCOTUS Saves NY-11 Seat: National Dems Ignore Reality While Local Editor Finds Ways to Blame Trump

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) responded to the decision with outrage. Founded and chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder at the end of the Obama Administration, the NDRC framed the ruling not as a constitutional check on race-based redistricting, but as partisan interference designed to protect Republicans in a closely divided U.S. House.

Marina Jenkins, the group’s executive director, argued that New York courts should have been allowed to finish their review without what she labeled “meddling by activist justices.” Here is the NDRC statement:

“The Supreme Court’s decision to intervene in an active state court proceeding is an extraordinary and unprecedented breach of the principles that have long governed our federal system. By short-circuiting New York’s judicial process before it has even run its course, the Court has placed a thumb on the scale in favor of the partisan interest of the Republican Party. The people of New York deserve to have the ability to seek justice in their state court free from meddling by activist justices on the Supreme Court.”

We asked the NDRC’s communications director, Madia Coleman, some basic questions about certain inconsistencies with the Obama/Holder position in light of the SCOTUS ruling. As of press time, we have not heard back. Here is what we asked:

From: Richard Luthmann <richard.luthmann@protonmail.com>
Date: On Monday, March 2nd, 2026 at 9:47 PM
Subject: Press Inquiry – Jeffries’ NY VRA Position & “Colorblind Constitution” – Stay in NY-11 Redistricting Case
To: Madia Coleman <comms@democraticredistricting.com>
CC: Dick LaFontaine <RALafontaine@protonmail.com>, Rick LaRivière <RickLaRiviere@proton.me>, Modern Thomas Nast <mthomasnast@protonmail.com>, Frank Parlato <frankparlato@gmail.com>, Michael Volpe <mvolpe998@gmail.com>, Frankie Pressman <frankiepressman@protonmail.com>, richard@nynewspress.com <richard@nynewspress.com>, jt@liquidlunchtv.com <jt@liquidlunchtv.com>, Cara Castronuova <caracastronuova@yahoo.com>, Jim Hoft <jimhoft@gmail.com>

Dear Madia,

Richard Luthmann here, NYNewsPress.com.

Thank you for the NDRC statement on Malliotakis v. Williams. I’m preparing follow-up coverage and need clarification on two specific points.

1. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ Prior Position on the NYS Voting Rights Act

On August 20, 2025, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries publicly stated that the New York State Voting Rights Act did not apply to congressional races. His remarks were widely interpreted as rejecting the use of the NYS VRA to redraw federal congressional districts.

https://jeffries.house.gov/2025/08/20/leader-jeffries-ny-house-dems-the-republican-effort-to-disenfranchise-millions-of-new-yorkers-cannot-go-unanswered/

Given that the current litigation relied heavily on the NYS VRA as the basis for altering NY-11, does the NDRC believe Leader Jeffries was wrong?

If not, how does the NDRC reconcile its support for this lawsuit with Jeffries’ prior position that the NYS VRA does not govern congressional maps?

2. Does the NDRC Support a “Colorblind Constitution”?

Justice Alito’s order emphasized that racial classifications in redistricting are “odious” and subject to strict scrutiny.

Does the NDRC believe the U.S. Constitution is colorblind — meaning government may not draw districts primarily based on race — or does it believe race-conscious redistricting is constitutionally permissible in this context?

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Regards,

Richard Luthmann

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If we hear anything further from the NDRC, particularly why the Obama/Holder group threw Hakeem Jeffries under the bus, we will put out a follow-up.

Now, all that’s left is for Staten Island’s paper of record to put a surreal spin on this saga.

Even as courts and politicians warred over NY-11, Staten Island Advance editor Brian Laline trained his sights on an unsurprising target: Donald J. Trump. Last month, Laline penned a head-scratching column that essentially exonerated Democratic map-makers and pinned the blame on Trump for the redistricting chaos.

In his telling, Democrats were forced to gerrymander Staten Island’s district only because Trump had “started this mess” by encouraging Republicans in states like Texas to shore up their own maps. It’s a classic case of political DARVO – Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender – and local observers aren’t buying it. Laline flipped the script, casting Staten Islanders as villains for electing Republicans and casting Democrats as saviors “forced” into racial gerrymandering.

In reality, of course, it was Kathy Hochul, Albany Democrats and their D.C. legal hitman Marc Elias, who concocted the “Frankenseat” plot from the start. All Trump did was cheer his party on – it was Governor Hochul & Co. who decided to “fight fire with fire” and rip up the rulebook in New York.

Laline’s Trump-derangement spin has drawn open ridicule, including from this outlet.

Sorry, Brian, that spin won’t fly. Trump isn’t the one slicing up Staten Island’s district – your pals in the Democratic machine are. Blaming Trump is just a lazy dodge from the ugly truth that the Democrat Party is rigging the game at voters’ expense.”

Indeed, the facts are hard to deny: New York Democrats already tried an illegal gerrymander in 2022 and got smacked down by the courts. This year they tried again under a phony civil-rights pretext – and nearly succeeded in stealing NY-11 by any means necessary.

The reality is that Staten Islanders aren’t about to let a partisan media narrative obscure what really happened. The United States Supreme Court pulled NY-11 back from the brink of a political heist, and no amount of finger-pointing at Mar-a-Lago will change that.

As the dust settles, Malliotakis’s district stays Republican red, the Staten Island community stays intact, and the only thing left in tatters is the local liberal spin.

The next time Democrats attempt a power grab on Staten Island, they might find that blaming Trump won’t save them – and neither will their “Frankenseat” monstrosity.

Laline’s column is out Wednesday. We’ll see what he has to say — or whether he whistles past the graveyard on this one.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: Ryan Flynn’s latest declaration and jailhouse testimony illustrate an alarming pattern of selective prosecution, political retaliation, and abuse of power in Erie County and Albany. His decision to resume a hunger strike underscores the desperation of a whistleblower who has been silenced for exposing corruption at the highest levels. Allegations regarding Governor Kathy Hochul’s affair with John Crangle, coupled with the manipulation of taxpayer funds, court appointments, and enforcement actions, paint a portrait of a tightly interwoven political machine prioritizing self-interest over justice.

Last week, Tonawanda Town Judge Mark Gruber set Ryan Flynn’s bail at an astronomical $250,000, effectively keeping the whistleblower jailed for an alleged minor social media offense. Despite this extraordinary pretrial figure, Flynn’s court-appointed attorney, Nicholas Texido, has failed to file any bail appeal to the New York State Supreme Court in Erie County, leaving Flynn trapped in custody. According to Flynn, Texido has neither submitted motions nor advocated on his behalf, even as evidence shows the charges are baseless and his constitutional rights may be violated. The result is a prolonged pretrial detention, with no relief in sight. Fylnn is prepared to become a veritable Bobby Sands, the Irish activist martyred by the British government.

Flynn says his family is attempting to arrange the employment of private defense counsel. Flynn’s ordeal – pretrial detention for minor charges, sabotaged defense, and denial of basic rights – demonstrates systemic failures that demand immediate independent investigation. These events are not isolated; they reflect a culture where political loyalty shields officials from accountability while suppressing truth-tellers like Ryan Flynn and Pubcorruption5. This piece is “Kathy Hochul Hunger Strike.” Visit FrankReport.com for additional coverage.

By Frank Parlato with Richard Luthmann

(ERIE COUNTY, N.Y.) — Ryan Flynn, a jailed Erie County man, is vowing to go on a hunger strike. He says he will die if necessary to expose Kathy Hochul’s corruption. Earlier this month, Flynn filed papers in federal court alleging that Gov. Kathy Hochul had a sexual relationship with Tonawanda Democratic Chairman John Crangle. The alleged affair occurred when both worked in the Erie County Clerk’s Office. The whistleblower alleged that local political figures later retaliated against him after he accused them of corruption, as evidenced by the published materials at @Pubcorruption5 on X.

Hochul is married to former US Attorney for the Western District of NY, William Hochul.

An extramarital affair is not a crime.

But the allegation, if substantiated, would place Hochul’s early political career inside the same Tonawanda patronage network that Flynn alleges has protected insiders and punished critics for years.

Flynn made these allegations in court pleadings that no judge has yet tested.

Ryan Flynn, who is a cousin of former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, filed the allegations in U.S. District Court. He has been held without bail for more than four months on charges that he violated an order of protection by posting what prosecutors describe as a threatening message on social media directed at the former district attorney’s wife.

According to court filings, the evidence supporting the charge consists of a screenshot of an anonymous social media post from an account not registered to Flynn. Prosecutors have not publicly presented IP address data, device records, or metadata linking the account to him.

The case rests, for now, on a screenshot.

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The Hochul Allegation

Flynn’s filing cites a recorded conversation with Dennis Crangle, brother of John Crangle, in which Dennis states that his brother and Hochul were intimate while both worked in the Erie County Clerk’s Office. Hochul served as Erie County Clerk in the late 2000s. John Crangle was her deputy.

The allegation now sits in a federal docket.

The Governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

The allegation, if true, would connect Hochul’s political rise to the same Tonawanda Democratic network that Flynn alleges has been trading favors, controlling prosecutorial decisions, and retaliating against whistleblowers for years.

Those claims have not been independently verified.

How Flynn Ended Up in Jail

In April 2025, Ryan Flynn filed a police report accusing his cousin, former DA John Flynn, of sexually molesting him when Ryan was ten years old, and John Flynn was in his late twenties.

Months later, Ryan Flynn was arrested and held without bail.

He was charged with violating an order of protection through an anonymous social media post.

Four court-appointed attorneys have cycled through his case. He remains untried.

The DA’s Record

The filing also raises questions about what it characterizes as selective prosecution during former District Attorney John Flynn’s tenure.

Flynn built his public profile on victim advocacy, declaring “I stand with the child” in a press conference charging political rival Steve Pigeon with sexual assault of a teenager and seeking life imprisonment. After this publication reported evidence that the accuser’s account contained significant falsehoods, Flynn offered Pigeon a misdemeanor plea of eight months. Pigeon accepted.

When more than 900 clergy abuse victims came forward in the Buffalo diocese scandal, Flynn did not prosecute a single priest.

His uncle Ed Cosgrove was the attorney for the Diocese.

When his own cousin accused him of childhood sexual abuse, the accuser was jailed on unrelated charges.

Evidence Tampering Claims

In court filings, Ryan Flynn alleges that police altered text messages submitted as evidence, adding language to make them appear more threatening.

He further claims that a motion he filed challenging the evidence was destroyed by the court. Those allegations have not been independently verified.

The Crangle Network

Dennis Crangle’s recorded statements describe his brother John as a kingmaker in Erie County Democratic politics. He says John Crangle was instrumental in securing the DA endorsement for John Flynn, and that the two “exchanged political favors” for years.

Such claims remain allegations.

Dennis Crangle described his brother and the former DA as so powerful that locals “used to call them the Kennedys of Tonawanda.”

A local dynasty, at least in reputation.

What Remains Unverified

People who know Dennis Crangle have listened to the recording and state unequivocally that it is his voice. No forensic authentication has been conducted.

The sexual abuse allegation against former DA John Flynn has not been investigated or adjudicated.

No outside investigation — federal, state, or judicial — has been initiated.

Ryan Flynn remains in jail.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: I was born on Staten Island. I was politically exiled by the crooked McMahon Democrat machine. I write this from afar, watching the borough I loved get carved up in a Manhattan courtroom. The Staten Island I knew is dying under racial gerrymanders, tax hikes, and legacy media spin. I’m glad I escaped. I hope others do before the match is struck. Hell isn’t coming. It’s already there. This piece is “Laline’s Blame Trump Farce,” first available on NYNewsPress.com.

By Richard Luthmann

Laline’s Blame Game vs. Staten Island’s Reality

(STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK) – Hi, Neighbor. They’re Coming for Your Block.

I’ve read Staten Island Advance Hack-in-Chief Brian Laline’s latest blame-Trump screed, and it’s a doozy. I’ll break it down in one sentence. Laline essentially says, “Blame Trump because Democrats raped the Constitution.”

In his TDS-driven telling, Staten Island’s congressional district is being ripped apart – and somehow it’s Donald Trump’s fault. This is classic DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. Laline flips the script, casting Staten Islanders as villains for electing Republicans and casting Democrats as saviors “forced” into racial gerrymandering.

It’s absurd. It’s maniacal. It out-Herods Herod.

The truth is, Democrats launched a calculated lawfare attack to steal NY-11. Kathy Hochul, who has effectively become Kamala Harris’ political twin, admitted as much. Now, Laline is running cover for them. He openly cheers this partisan power grab as a civil-rights victory even though it disenfranchises Staten Island voters with veiled racism.

Talk about blaming the victim!

Laline’s piece drips with Trump-derangement and convenient omissions. He ignores that New York Democrats already tried an illegal gerrymander in 2022 and got smacked down by the courts. He pretends this new racial “equity” map is about fairness, when it’s really about diluting white votes.

He even has the gall to claim Trump “started this mess” by urging Republicans to shore up maps – as if that excuses Democrats breaking the rules now.

Sorry, Brian, that spin won’t fly. Trump isn’t the one slicing up Staten Island’s district – your pals in the Democratic machine are. Blaming Trump is a lazy dodge from the ugly truth that your party is rigging the game at voters’ expense.

I won’t let you gaslight your readers unchecked. Let’s lay out the facts you ignored.

Laline’s Blame Trump Farce: Democrat Lawfare and the Race-Based “Frankenseat”

Here’s what Laline won’t admit: a gang of Democrat lawyers led by Hillary Clinton/Steele Dossier lowlife Marc Elias cooked up a lawsuit to carve up NY-11. Their goal? Turn New York City’s only GOP-held seat into a safe Democrat district by any means necessary.

They couldn’t beat Rep. Nicole Malliotakis at the ballot box, so they ran to court. Four hand-picked plaintiffs – two from Staten Island and two “ringers” imported from Manhattan – sued in a friendly Manhattan court, claiming the current district (drawn by a neutral special master in 2022 after Democrats’ last gerrymander was struck down) “unconstitutionally dilutes” Black and Hispanic votes. Never mind that Malliotakis herself is the daughter of a Cuban immigrant and the first Latina to represent Staten Island – facts don’t matter in this cynical race-pretext power play. It is a fundamental precept of modern politics that reality matters little to Libtards.

Elias’s team invoked New York’s brand-new Voting Rights Act in a way even its authors never intended. Crucially, according to Hakeem Jeffries (aka Dollar Store Obama) that law “does not apply to congressional…redistricting” at all. But a Hochul Hack judge let them wield it like a partisan bludgeon anyway.

The result?

That Manhattan judge (more on him soon) ruled that Staten Island’s district must be redrawn to increase “minority influence” – code for crafting a Democrat seat. The new “Frankenseat” map is downright ghoulish. It rips Staten Island in half, grafting the North Shore onto left-wing Lower Manhattan and shoving the South Shore into a Brooklyn tract dominated by housing projects.

This is a naked racial gerrymander dressed up as social justice. Republicans blasted it as blatantly unconstitutional – a “naked attempt to disenfranchise voters,” as NY GOP Chairman Ed Cox put it. He’s right (remarkably).

The Democrats want to “erase the city’s lone GOP voice” in Congress by slicing up Staten Island’s community and submerging it in overwhelming blue areas.

And Brian Laline applauds this as righteous.

In reality, it’s a raw power grab that treats Staten Islanders as pawns on a racial chessboard. It is racial engineering and DEI-driven social tinkering enshrined in an electoral map – precisely the kind of scheme the U.S. Constitution was designed to prevent.

Laline’s Blame Trump Farce: Legal Malpractice Handed Democrats the Knife

As angry as many are at this outcome, let’s get one thing straight: it never should have gotten this far. The blame lies not only with scheming Democrats, but also with inept Republican lawyering that fell asleep at the switch. Malliotakis’s legal team absolutely flopped this case from day one.

Instead of yanking this fight into federal court – where a race-based redraw would’ve met a cold dose of constitutional scrutiny – they left it in the lions’ den of Manhattan state court. That was strategic malpractice, plain and simple. They effectively handed Marc Elias home-field advantage in front of a judge with obvious ties to gobbler Governor Hochul’s Democratic machine.

Elias ran the table.

Now Staten Island is paying the price for the GOP lawyers’ blunder.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Pearlman – a.k.a. Hochul’s pet judge – eagerly validated this lawfare. He bought the plaintiffs’ dubious theory whole-hog, citing a “highly dubious interpretation” of New York’s constitution to justify this racial gerrymander.

No reasonable judge should hand a congressional seat to one party on such flimsy, race-fixated grounds. A federal court likely would have thrown this out or at least set a much higher bar.

But thanks to the Malliotakis team’s missteps, it never got to federal court. It’s like the lawyers watched a partisan hit job unfold and responded by complaining about the scoreboard after the fact.

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Make no mistake, this was not a fair fight in an impartial forum – it was partisan lawfare rubber-stamped by a machine judge. This Pearlman ruling has zero legitimacy, and should be nulllified and ignored. Maybe his other “so-called” orders should be too. Democrats want a breakdown in the rule of law. It’s part of their electoral strategy.

Malliotakis’s counsel – zero for their last four in big-time election law cases – should be candid: “We blew it. We failed to protect our client’s rights. We let Staten Island down.”

Instead, they pretend this outcome was some unavoidable tragedy.

Bullsugar.

They had a “slam dunk” federal jurisdiction case and they blew it. It’s legal malpractice in slow motion, and Staten Island is left holding the bag. If I were Nicole, I’d stop payment on the check and find someone to sue the ever-loving tar out of these Chicago-based bums.

Laline’s Blame Trump Farce: Will the U.S. Supreme Court Restore Colorblind Justice?

Now, the only thing standing between Staten Island and this grotesque Frankenseat is the U.S. Supreme Court. Nicole Malliotakis has filed an emergency petition to the high court, arguing (correctly) that the New York order forces a racial gerrymander in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Think about that: a state judge is literally prohibiting elections unless the state redraws lines on racial grounds.

If that isn’t a twisted perversion of equal protection, I don’t know what is. Even in 2023, the High Court made clear that race-based redistricting is strictly limited – yet here we have a politically crooked New York State court openly embracing race as the primary factor to re-engineer a district. It flips the spirit of the Voting Rights Act on its head.

Staten Island’s citizens are effectively being told their votes count less because of their skin color and political leanings. The Republic cannot endure while that precedent stands.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will slam the brakes on this. If they do, prepare for Laline and his progressive pals to howl that “Trump’s judges” are racists for upholding a colorblind Constitution.

And if the Justices don’t intervene, Laline will gloat that not even Trump’s appointees saved Malliotakis.

See how the game is rigged? For folks like him, it’s heads they win, tails we lose. But this fight is bigger than Laline’s snide commentary. It’s about reaffirming that equal protection under the law isn’t optional. Race-based gerrymandering is just as poisonous whether done by Republicans or Democrats – and in this case it’s Democrats blatantly doing it.

Never forget this basic, uncomfortable truth: it is the Democrat Party that is historically tied to racism in America. Slavery was defended by Democrats. Jim Crow laws were written and enforced by Democrats. The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist enforcement arm of Democrat political power in the South.

That is not rhetoric. That is history.

Now the same party that once imposed segregation claims moral superiority while weaponizing race for modern social engineering. Instead of poll taxes, they use racial gerrymanders. Instead of literacy tests, they use “equity” mandates. The tactic is the same. Divide Americans by race. Sort them into categories. Manipulate political outcomes accordingly. The branding has changed. The objective has not.

The New York State constitution may have some nebulous provision about minority voting power, but it does not give license to concoct a Franken-district that tramples on communities of interest and fairness. If anything, New York’s highest court already warned Democrats in 2022 that partisan map manipulations won’t fly.

What do Democrats do now? Shopping for a single trial judge to give them cover under a new theory. It’s transparent and ugly.

So yes – I am hoping the Supreme Court steps up to stop this madness. Staten Island voters and American voters deserve a district that’s drawn naturally, not one spliced together for racial social-engineering experiments.

And if the High Court declines to hear it? Then God help us – voices must be heard even louder to overcome this engineered disadvantage.

If they steal the lines on a map, and in so doing, the People’s right to representative government, and the courts do nothing, then it’s time to think inside AND outside the box. It’s time for natural law remedies.

Laline’s Blame Trump Farce: Legacy Media Hacks and the Coming Backlash

Brian Laline likes to fancy himself a neutral newsman, but with this saga he’s ripped off the mask. After 50 years in the newsroom, he’s nothing more than a political hack-tivist with a byline. He peddles Democrat narratives and calls it truth. He smears ICE agents as “Gestapo,” cries that democracy is dying, yet cheers when his pals literally subvert democracy by disenfranchising his “Neighbors” through the courts.

His credibility? It’s shot.

Legacy media figures like Laline are panicking as the public keeps rejecting their narrative. Fear is his last weapon. Facts belong to the People. And the facts say he’s on the wrong side of this fight.

He asks if we’re scared. I’ll tell you who should be scared: the Demcrat Party establishment that thinks ordinary Americans will just roll over. Fighters never have. Staten Islanders never have.

If the Democrats and their media apologists think they can gaslight the masses with phony racism claims and maybe even rile up chaos in the streets like it’s 2020 again, they’ve got another thing coming. Laline would probably call that paranoia – he scoffs at the idea of “paid agitators” stirring unrest, parroting paid media agitators masquerading as fact-checkers who claim there’s “no evidence” for that.

Easy for him to say from his cozy desk in Atlantic Highlands, or at the corner bar stool at the Richmond County Country Club.

We watched American cities burn once, and a stolen election moths later. We won’t let the republic burn again. Come this summer, if professional instigators try to terrorize neighborhoods to sway a November election, I predict law-abiding Americans won’t sit on their hands. We’re done being victims.

The greatest backlash will be at the ballot box in 2026 – a red wave so huge no amount of gerrymandering or media spin will contain it. Mark my words, the harder they push, the louder voters will roar.

So blame Trump all you want, Brian. We see through your act. No one is buying your “Blame Trump” baloney. The Constitution might be under assault by your buddies, but it’s not dead yet. And neither is the fight. You and your cabal have run out of road. Your narrative is collapsing, your relevance is dwindling.

In the end, justice will prevail – either in the courts or in the streets on the way to the polls.

And to those betraying America’s voters under false racial pretenses, I say this: Get out while you can. It ain’t gonna be pretty. But it might get Pretti Good, and for that you can thank the Democrat Party.

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LUTHMANN NOTE: I actually like Julie Menin. I respect her effort to include all five boroughs in City Council leadership. That matters. Staten Island deserves a seat at the table. But leadership isn’t about geography. It’s about judgment. Elevating Kamillah Hanks to Majority Whip without fully vetting the baggage was a mistake. This lawsuit was public. The allegations were known. If inclusion was the goal, there were better options. David Carr. Frank Morano. Both serious. Both capable. Instead, Menin chose party loyalty over prudence. That choice may now cost her — and the Manhattan Democratic establishment — dearly. This piece is “WTF Julie Menin?”

By Rick LaRivière with Richard Luthmann

WTF Julie Menin: A Toxic Whip Promotion

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK) – Council Speaker Julie Menin has a leadership crisis on her hands. She tapped Councilmember Kamillah Hanks as Majority Whip – the first ever from Staten Island – in a bid to broaden her team’s appeal. But that celebratory promotion is turning into political poison.

Hanks is entangled in a “deadbeat” lawsuit rife with allegations of campaign dirty dealings and extortion that threaten to splatter back on Menin.

The lawsuit, Luthmann v. Hanks et al, claims Hanks stiffed former-attorney-turned-journalist Richard A. Luthmann (a contributor to this outlet) for roughly $86,000 in legal work for her 2017 campaign and other matters. Luthmann – a controversial figure – says he helped Hanks’s insurgent campaign only to be left holding the bag when it came time to pay up. He blasts Hanks and her co-defendant, longtime partner Kevin Barry Love, as “deadbeats” who exploited his own legal troubles to dodge their debts.

The suit paints an ugly picture behind Hanks’s rise. In 2017, Luthmann knocked a rival off the ballot and even won a court order so Hanks’s daughter could graduate on time – emergency legal feats Hanks and Love begged for. Once the work was done, he alleges, they vanished without paying a dime beyond a token retainer.

Now those ghosted bills have come back to haunt City Hall. Menin’s decision to elevate Hanks looks increasingly ill-fated. The Majority Whip is now a defendant in a politically toxic courtroom drama featuring accusations of off-the-books campaign cash and threats of extortion by her husband, the very stuff that makes reformers’ blood boil.

Menin’s judgment is under the microscope: she hitched her wagon to a councilmember mired in a scandal that could explode at any moment.

In tabloid terms, the Speaker’s prized Whip has become a public-relations whipping post.

WTF Julie Menin: Conflict-of-Interest Crisis in Court

This “deadbeat” lawsuit isn’t just spilling dirt on Hanks – it’s exposing cracks in New York’s judiciary. Hanks’s co-defendant, Kevin Barry Love, has emerged as the saga’s enforcer figure. Rather than settle up, Love “chose confrontation over resolution,” issuing threats, flaunting political connections, and scaring off Luthmann’s collections lawyers.

Luthmann says Love’s M.O. is intimidation, not compromise – even accusing him of menacing Muslim community activists during Hanks’s recent re-election campaign.

Such allegations of attempted extortion and strong-arm tactics have turned a routine fee collection into a high-stakes political scandal.

And now the drama has landed in a Manhattan courtroom that itself is under fire.

Enter Justice Emily Morales-Minerva – and yet another conflict of interest. She’s the judge currently presiding over Luthmann v. Hanks, but she also happens to be married to Domenico “Nico” Minerva, the Manhattan Democrat Party chair, a “longtime lieutenant” of party boss Keith L. Wright, and a partner at Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP.

In other words, the judge’s spouse is a power broker at the apex of the same political machine that Hanks calls home.

That sets off alarm bells. Luthmann’s recusal motion, citing Judiciary Law §§ 14 and 9 and even CPLR 3211, argues that no reasonable person could trust the court’s impartiality under these conditions. After all, Wright – Nico Minerva’s mentor – is “the power broker who controls judicial screening and county committee muscle in Manhattan.”

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Now Wright’s protégé’s wife sits in judgment of a case entangling a machine-aligned councilwoman. The appearance of impropriety is as subtle as a sledgehammer.

The lawsuit has already pinballed through a half-dozen judges amid a carnival of recusals and reassignments. What “should have been a routine contract case” has instead turned into a wild game of judicial pinball. Over nearly three years, Luthmann’s case “ricocheted” between judges, each seemingly eager to hand it off, with the case “bounced around New York County like a hot potato nobody wanted to touch.”

One judge, Justice Brendan T. Lantry, recused himself shortly after the case was randomly assigned to his inventory. In a written recusal order, Lantry explained that he had previously served as Staten Island Republican Party chair and had supported Ronald Castorina Jr.’s 2020 judicial campaign, and that his “impartiality may be questioned due to [his] personal relationship with several parties.” He therefore stepped aside sua sponte rather than proceed under that cloud.

Luthmann praises Lantry’s exit as a rare act of integrity – “he wanted no part of this circus” – and fumes that not all judges have been so forthright.

Now Justice Morales-Minerva’s refusal (so far) to recuse has become the focus of a conflict-of-interest showdown. As one observer put it, she’s essentially presiding over an “apparent friends-and-family judicial protection racket” by clinging to the case.

Every day she stays on the bench without addressing the elephant in the room is another day the case languishes – and another blow to public confidence in a fair shake.

WTF Julie Menin: Machine Meltdown: DSA Eyes a Takeover

The Hanks saga isn’t just an isolated tale of one lawsuit – it’s a live grenade rolling around the foundations of New York’s Democratic machine. Manhattan’s Democratic old guard, personified by figures like Menin, Hanks, former Assemblyman Wright, and party chair Minerva, now find themselves on the defensive. This case shines a floodlight on their cozy interconnections.

It has even sparked talk of a “Democrat Party contract” – an unspoken pact among insiders to ensure Luthmann’s case “never reaches discovery”, protecting a sitting Majority Whip, sitting Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castorina, Jr., and over a dozen notable New York politico-witnesses, from any on-the-record reckoning.

Luthmann openly questions whether the political establishment has effectively put out a hit to bury his lawsuit – a cover-up to shield the machine’s own. In his words, the pattern of delays and denials looks less like a coincidence and more like “political containment — the machine insulating its own from scrutiny.”

Each postponement conveniently delays the day Hanks, Love, and Castorina might have to raise their right hands and tell the truth.

No wonder Luthmann vows, “Now it’s not about the money… I want depositions and sworn testimony. There will be perjury traps set carefully and lawfully.”

The implications extend far beyond one court case. The Manhattan Democrats are already split by an ideological civil war – “open trench warfare” between Wright’s old-guard club and ascendant progressive insurgents. The city’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) faction has been chomping at the bit to smash the county party establishment. They’ve been systematically running allies for county committee seats to “dismantle Wright’s old-guard machine” from within.

Now Luthmann’s explosive allegations hand them potent ammunition. DSA firebrands like Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Council Member Tiffany Cabán could seize on this scandal as proof that Tammany-style corruption still thrives in the Manhattan party clubhouse.

The sight of Menin and company circling wagons around Hanks – a party insider accused of fraud, extortion, and Islamophobia – is a dream come true for the movement’s narrative. It underscores every argument the reformers make about a Democratic establishment more interested in protecting cronies than delivering justice.

Manhattan’s machine leaders may soon face the same fate that befell their counterparts in Queens and Brooklyn in recent years. In those boroughs, progressive upstarts and DSA-aligned organizers have already rattled, and in some cases toppled, entrenched party bosses.

Now the Hanks affair could be the tipping point for a hostile takeover in Manhattan. The scandal hits all the notes that energize a grassroots rebellion: a privileged pol accused of cheating a working-class lawyer; a judge with family ties to the party elite; backroom deals to suppress the truth. It’s a perfect storm for those hungry to “throw the bums out.”

If Luthmann’s case keeps unfolding in headlines – with each new revelation of machine meddling or judicial double-dealing – the pressure on Wright’s camp will only grow. What started as an $86,000 fee dispute might end up fueling a full-blown party purge.

As one notable Democratic Consultant quipped, “The ‘old boys’ club’ of Manhattan Dems is looking more like an endangered species, and the shark in the water is a galvanized DSA bloc smelling blood.”

This high-voltage lawsuit could be just the spark the socialists need to burn down the house that Wright built.

In the end, Julie Menin’s ill-fated Whip promotion may unwittingly light the fuse on a political revolution – with the Manhattan Democratic machine going up in flames as collateral damage.

WTF Julie Menin?

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LUTHMANN NOTE: What Navy is doing this season matters far beyond the Patriot League standings. In an era where NIL money, transfer chaos, and academic shortcuts dominate college sports, the Midshipmen are winning the hard way — discipline, defense, depth, and leadership. Jon Perry didn’t rebuild with gimmicks; he restored standards. This team doesn’t chase highlights, it strangles opponents over forty minutes. That’s how March games are won. In a one-bid league, Navy understands the mission with military clarity: earn it or go home. If any team is built for the pressure of March Madness, it’s this one. This piece is “Cruising into March Madness.”

By Greg Maresca

At the U.S. Naval Academy, optimism is cultivated with purpose and discipline. This season, the Navy Midshipmen men’s basketball team has transformed that discipline into one of the most compelling runs in the Patriot League’s 40-year history.

With a commanding league lead, a new head coach who has stabilized and energized the program, and a roster that has matured into one of the league’s most balanced and resilient teams, Navy has emerged as a legitimate contender for something that has eluded them since 1998 – a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

The Midshipmen stormed into Sojka Pavilion as Patriot League frontrunners last night and sailed out with a 76-60 takedown of the Bucknell Bison. Despite the orange-out condition of a boisterous crowd, the Midshipmen were able to lock up their 12th league win against one loss, and their 20th victory this season, the first time since 2022.

Ironically, the only team in Patriot League men’s basketball history to finish a league season undefeated is Bucknell, which went 14–0 twenty years ago.

This campaign marks Navy’s first full season under head coach Jon Perry, who took over following the retirement of longtime coach Ed DeChellis. Perry has guided the Midshipmen to a dramatic turnaround, lifting them from a 15-19 finish last season to the best record in the Patriot League.

Success has extended beyond the hardcourt for Navy as the Midshipmen closed their football season, ranked No. 23 in both the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches Polls, clear-cut evidence that, even in the NIL era of college athletics, success in the classroom and on the field is still possible.

As Coach Jon Perry summed it up, “Our guys prove every day that you don’t have to sacrifice academics to compete at the highest level. Discipline travels whether it’s in the classroom or on the field.”

Navy’s season has been anchored by strong performances from returning veterans. Senior leadership, especially from senior guard Austin Benigni and center Aidan Kehoe, has shaped both the culture and on-court execution. Perry’s command has reinvigorated the program, balancing discipline with adaptability. Navy boasts a top‑25 defensive rating nationally (96.1), while its offense is averaging 73.7 points per game.

The Midshipmen finished their football season ranked No. 23 in both the Associated Press (AP) Poll and the USA Today Coaches Poll. All proof that in this NIL world of college athletics, it can be done both academically and athletically.

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Fueling Navy’s success is the relentless backcourt fire of Benigni paired who is averaging 18-points per game paired up with the imposing interior muscle of Kehoe who averages nearly 11 boards and 15-points per game. Like the rest of the teams in the Patriot League, Navy is not built around a single superstar; it is a team-oriented roster where contributions routinely come from a rotation comprising 8-10 players. Such depth has allowed the Midshipmen to withstand injuries, maintain fresh legs deep into the contest, and execute Perry’s system with precision.

Early in the season, the Midshipmen traded baskets with the 11th-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels, who slipped past them 73-61 back on November 18. It was those early games that hardened Navy into a tough and composed team that has confidently dominated Patriot League play.

At some point during the season, the switch turns and doesn’t dial back. For Navy’s that occurred when the weather went Arctic, the Midshipmen caught fire, turning midwinter into their own personal heat wave. Navy’s 85-68 dismantling of Holy Cross on January 21 set the tone, and three days later, their 84-56 victory over longstanding rival Army confirmed loudly and unmistakably that the Midshipmen had become the Patriot League’s most balanced team.

Their lone conference loss on January 12 at American University served as both a setback but also a reset. Poor shooting and rebounding lapses contributed to the 65–51 defeat, but Perry immediately reframed the stumble as fuel rather than failure. “Losses don’t derail us, they teach us,” Coach Perry articulated. “We take the lesson, fix the mistakes, and get better.”

Navy is not just winning games, they are cutting through the Patriot League like a destroyer at flank speed. Their blend of lockdown defense, timely scoring, and deep, steady personnel makes this squad the most seaworthy unit the Academy has launched in years, charting a course for a deep run into March.

For a program in a one-bid league, the most straightforward path to the NCAA Tournament is winning the Patriot League Tournament. The league has yet to receive an at large bid and perhaps never will.

With Navy’s potential home court advantage at Alumni Hall looming where they are 12-1 this season, the Midshipmen will steer the helm of its own season, charting the course toward March Madness on its terms with an NCAA Tournament berth finally within striking distance.

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NOTE: New York’s courts are not broken by accident. They are broken by design, protected by cowards, and enabled by men who confuse robes with immunity. I’ve seen the rot up close. I’ve lived it. Judges like Castorina abuse power. Judges like Pearlman rewrite laws to serve political masters. Judges like McMahon flee when the lights get too bright. And the so-called ethics cop, Tembeckjian, plays bodyguard instead of watchdog. Then Brendan Lantry did something rare. He read the file. He told the truth. He stepped aside. That took brains. That took backbone. And in this sewer, that makes him stand out. This piece is “A Gem Amidst the Rot.”

By Richard Luthmann

Rot in New York’s Courts

I have seen New York’s so-called “justice” system up close. The rot runs deep. Judges meant to uphold the law instead of treating the bench like a throne, dispensing bias and incompetence.

Look at Justice Juan Merchan – a man whose impartiality is shot. Even President Trump blasted Merchan as “corrupt, biased, and incompetent” after Merchan’s heavy-handed, politically tainted rulings in 2024.

Also in New York County, Jeffrey Pearlman represents a different but equally corrosive strain of judicial rot. Pearlman is not merely incompetent; he is a partisan operative in a robe. His infamous NY-11 redistricting opinion didn’t just redraw lines. It disenfranchised most of Staten Island and effectively smuggled racial sorting and identity politics into the New York State Constitution, a document that contains no such mandate.

At Kathy Hochul’s direction, he carved Staten Island apart, diluted its voting power, and justified it with sanctimony, treating voters as demographic chess pieces rather than citizens with equal rights.

What makes Pearlman’s ruling so dangerous is its arrogance. He didn’t apply neutral law. He advanced a political project and dared anyone to call it out. The opinion bent over backward to sanctify a predetermined outcome aligned with Democratic power brokers who benefit from a fractured Staten Island.

That is how judicial legitimacy collapses—not with bribes in envelopes, but with judges who believe their politics are so righteous they can rewrite constitutions, override voters, and call it justice. Pearlman clung to power and imposed his will.

Then there’s Staten Island’s own Judith R. McMahon, the undisputed queen of the McMahon machine and one of the most destructive judges to ever sit on that bench. Judy McMahon didn’t just bend the system. She ran it.

As an administrative judge almost a decade ago, she steered warrants and cases to friendly judges in the now-defunct Part N to benefit her husband, District Attorney Michael McMahon, padding his stats and protecting his political future. This wasn’t a rumor or gossip. It was an open secret on Staten Island. Prosecutors knew it. Defense lawyers knew it. Judges knew it. And the system tolerated it because it was useful.

McMahon coasted through re-election on backroom deals and party protection, insulated by power and fear.

Then, suddenly, she was gone. At 68, with years of recertifications still available, she “retired.” Officially, it was age. Unofficially, it was panic. Judges do not walk away from power like that unless something is coming.

She didn’t leave triumphantly. She fled under a cloud. Files vanished. Questions went unanswered. No public accounting ever happened. No real investigation ever saw daylight. And that silence tells you everything.

Judy McMahon didn’t just damage individual cases. She poisoned faith in the Staten Island courts. Her exit wasn’t the end of the scandal. It was the cover-up.

Presiding over this gallery of judicial misfits is Ronald Castorina Jr., the worst of the lot. He embodies the corruption, dishonesty, and abuse of power that have turned New York’s courts from institutions of justice into a public joke.

Hovering over all of this misconduct is Robert H. Tembeckjian, the ultimate judicial bodyguard. As head of the Commission on Judicial Conduct, Tembeckjian doesn’t police corrupt judges — he protects them.

Complaints disappear. Investigations stall. Consequences never come.

His job has become less about ethics and more about damage control, shielding politically useful judges from accountability and ensuring the rot never reaches sunlight.

These individuals aren’t guardians of justice – they’re political hacks in robes, accountable to no one.

But every so often, even in New York’s judicial sewer system, a clean note rings out. A single decision reminds you that the robe is supposed to mean something. That judges are meant to protect the integrity of the process, not game it, not hide conflicts, not circle the wagons around political allies.

In a state where the bench is littered with hacks, climbers, fixers, and outright liars, one judge just did something shockingly rare: he told the truth about himself and stepped aside.

That judge is Brendan Lantry.

In a system that rewards silence, complicity, and corruption, Lantry’s recent recusal in my case against Kamillah Hanks, Kevin Barry Love, Ron Castorina, and others wasn’t just correct. It was judicious and smart.

And it stood in humiliating contrast to the parade of bums, political operatives, and ethically bankrupt judges who cling to cases they have no business touching.

A Gem Amidst the Rot: How a Simple Fee Case Turned Into a Political Crime Scene

My case against Hanks, Castorina, and their orbit didn’t start as some grand crusade. It started as math. Old legal fees. Services rendered. Work done. Bills unpaid.

I needed to collect those debts, so I could square up with the federal government and move forward with my life. Simple. Clean. Ordinary. The kind of case New York courts see every day.

I filed in November 2023. From day one, the case should have been routine. Contracts. Quantum meruit. Account stated. End of story.

In fact, it almost was over early. My collections lawyer was ready to offer the defendants (like others who resolved the suit) to take fifteen cents on the dollar. A deal. I would have taken it. Who wants to lock horns with a maniac for the better part of the next decade?

The government would have been paid. Everyone walks away. I would have given less thought to Staten Island. Heck, maybe I might not have learned to love journalism.

Then Kevin Barry Love did what Kevin Barry Love always does as Kamillah Hanks’s self-appointed enforcer.

He threatened my lawyer.

Across state lines. On a recorded call. Talking about law licenses, reputations, and “what happened to Trump’s lawyers.”

That single act blew the case apart. My collections counsel dropped me cold. No motion. No warning. Just gone. It was 2023.

“I don’t want the NY Dems to do to me what they’re doing to Trump’s lawyers,” is what I heard. The guy was no Sidney Powell.

And with Kevin’s threat, and Luthmann left to satisfy the federal government alone (with no lawyer or guardrails), the case stopped being about money.

That’s when the cover-up began.

What followed was a year-plus of procedural ping-pong. Transfers. Reassignments. Delays. Silence. The case bounced around New York County like a hot potato nobody wanted to touch.

Not because it lacked merit, but because of who it named and what it exposed.

This wasn’t just about unpaid fees anymore. It was about how Hanks and Castorina tried to dodge payment, dodge scrutiny, and bury their past political misdeeds by leaning on power, fear, and institutional protection.

And here’s the truth: now it’s not about the money for me.

I want depositions. I want sworn testimony. I want a video. I want perjury traps set carefully and lawfully.

I want Kevin Barry Love explaining his threats under oath. I want Kamillah Hanks explaining campaign finances, off-the-books work, “Hey Baby,” “Cut It”, and who knew what and when about the Debi Rose Fake Facebook page.

I want Castorina answering simple questions that he has spent years dodging, particularly under oath at a 2018 grand jury.

And I want the media there when it happens.

Because this case has grown teeth, it has documents. It has recordings. It has witnesses. It has a paper trail that scares people who are not used to being questioned.

The deal was there once. They blew it. Now they don’t get to buy peace.

They get discovery.

They get depositions.

They get sunlight.

And I have a strong feeling that, one way or another, I’m going to get exactly that.

Did I say that Brendan Lantry is smart? Who would want to be part of this circus, let alone the ringmaster? One that would have probably gone away for about $25,000 each in 2022.

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A Gem Amidst the Rot: Why Lantry Got Out Early — and Why That Took Brains and Backbone

This case didn’t need another compromised judge digging in and daring the parties to come after him. Brendan T. Lantry was smart enough to see that immediately.

Smarter still, he didn’t wait for a motion. He didn’t force a public brawl. He didn’t make me file what would have been a recusal motion for the ages. And trust me—it would have been a doozy. You think Rich Hoffman has stories? That motion would have read like a Staten Island political autopsy, served with wine and cheese.

Lantry reviewed the case and saw what too many New York judges ignore or bury: prior political relationships matter. Personal history matters. Appearances matter.

Instead of daring the parties to challenge him, instead of hiding behind technicalities or pretending the record didn’t exist, he put the truth on paper.

In black and white. Signed. Filed.

“My impartiality may be questioned due to my personal relationship with several parties named in this action… Accordingly, I am recusing myself from hearing this matter.”

That single sentence puts Lantry in the top one percent of New York judges. Not because it is extraordinary, but because the rest of the bench refuses to do it. Most judges cling to cases like territory. Lantry stepped away from one he knew would rot the moment he touched it.

He didn’t stop there. He disclosed the uncomfortable facts.

He disclosed that before taking the bench, he served as Richmond County Republican law chair and party chairman. He disclosed that he supported Ronald Castorina Jr. during Castorina’s 2020 judicial campaign. In New York’s clubby, incestuous judicial culture, that fact is usually hidden, denied, or laughed off as irrelevant.

Lantry didn’t hide it. He didn’t minimize it. He didn’t insult the intelligence of the parties or the public.

He acknowledged it. And he stepped aside.

That is integrity. That is accountability. That is how a judge protects the court instead of himself.

By recusing sua sponte, Lantry avoided further poisoning the case. He avoided years of appeals. He avoided turning the courtroom into another credibility graveyard.

He understood something his peers refuse to accept: there are no winners when a conflicted judge, factually or politically, stays on a case. Justice loses. The public loses. The judiciary loses.

So let the record be clear. I commend Brendan Lantry. Not because he did me a favor. He didn’t. Not because he took a side. He didn’t.

I commend him because he showed judgment before exercising power, and restraint before ego.

That should be the rule in New York. Instead, it is the rare exception.

A Gem Amidst the Rot: “Lying Ron” Castorina’s Conspiracy

If Brendan Lantry represents what a judge is supposed to be, Ronald Castorina Jr. is his polar opposite. Where Lantry showed judgment, restraint, and respect for the institution, Castorina shows ego, cruelty, and contempt for the people who appear before him.

Lantry stepped aside to protect the court. Castorina digs in to dominate it.

Ronald Castorina Jr. is a liar and a bully. He is a disgrace to the bench. I know because I’ve lived it. In his courtroom, the law bends to his ego.

Take Michael Perez’s case. Perez, a pro se litigant, came in asking for basic fairness. Castorina didn’t read the papers. He didn’t listen.

He sneered, “You’re taking the bus home. Give me the keys,” ripped the man’s car away, and left him stranded.

Another victim, retired NYPD detective Guy Simonetti, was too ill to travel from Florida. Castorina issued a bench warrant anyway and suggested Simonetti hire a “private ambulance” to haul himself north.

It took another judge to undo that cruelty so Simonetti could spend his father’s final days with him. Castorina calls this “following the law.” I call it abuse.

That cruelty is matched only by Castorina’s corruption. I have filed detailed claims accusing “Lying Ron” of orchestrating a conspiracy to destroy me. Beginning in 2021, he and his political allies — Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks and her partner Kevin Barry Love — lied to federal authorities to try to violate my supervised release and silence my reporting.

They lied to the feds. That is a felony. 18 U.S.C. § 1001.

Castorina also perjured himself before a 2018 grand jury, lying under oath about his role in a fake Facebook smear campaign. This was not some rogue operation. It was a dirty political hit job that Castorina himself helped run.

A sworn affidavit from veteran consultant Michael J. Cox confirms it: “The fake Debi Rose Facebook page was the worst-kept secret of the 2017 campaign. Everyone, including Kamillah and Kevin, knew Luthmann was running the page.”

Cox also confirmed I was promised payment and stiffed — they had money for Paris vacations, but not to pay their workers.

After the scheme collapsed, Castorina denied our long friendship and lied about his involvement to dodge scrutiny.

This is who sits on the New York Supreme Court bench. Ronald Castorina Jr. doesn’t belong in a robe. He belongs in handcuffs.

A Gem Amidst the Rot: The Watchdog Who Won’t Bark

Why do judges like Castorina and McMahon still wield power? Because the watchdog supposed to stop them is asleep – or complicit. I’m talking about Robert Tembeckjian, the longtime Administrator of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

He’s the ethics cop who’s supposed to keep judges in line. Instead, he protects them. Under Tembeckjian’s watch, flagrant judicial misconduct gets a slap on the wrist or a blind eye.

Castorina lies to federal agents and tramples on litigants – the Commission does nothing.

Judge McMahon and her District Attorney husband were implicated in the Part N case-fixing scandal, steering cases to favor Mike McMahon’s prosecutorial stats. No public discipline came of it.

The Commission’s silence is deafening. Perhaps it’s because Tembeckjian himself is tangled up in conflicts of interest. While drawing a taxpayer salary to police judicial ethics, Tembeckjian quietly took a side gig with Balchug Capital, an investment fund with Kremlin connections. He sits on Balchug’s advisory board, working with Russian financiers, even as he’s supposed to judge our judges.

State records show no disclosure of this role; he hasn’t recused himself from cases involving Russian interests. This is the man guarding judicial integrity?

It’s a sick joke.

New York’s top ethics enforcer is moonlighting for a firm tied to Putin’s orbit.

Tembeckjian has authored plenty of articles on ethics, but his own ethics are in shambles. He appears more interested in cashing checks and protecting his cronies than in holding corrupt judges accountable.

The Commission on Judicial Conduct under Tembeckjian has become a black hole where legitimate complaints vanish. It’s all ethical rot and cover-up.

We have a fox guarding the henhouse – and the hens are our courts. No wonder New York’s judiciary reeks of corruption.

A Gem Amidst the Rot: Clean House – Now

There are still glimmers of integrity on the bench. Justice Brendan Lantry is one honest judge amid the chaos. But one decent act by one judge won’t fix this broken system.

We need a purge.

Remove Ronald Castorina from the bench, immediately. The evidence of his misconduct is overwhelming – he lied to law enforcement, violated his oath, and abused litigants.

Each lie to federal agents, each perjury under oath is a crime. If New York’s authorities have any backbone, they must prosecute Castorina for his felonies and make an example of him.

And we must shine a blinding light on Robert Tembeckjian and his fiefdom at the Commission on Judicial Conduct. Subpoena their records, follow the money, and expose every backroom deal that kept corrupt judges like these on the bench.

New Yorkers deserve a judiciary that works for them, not for the political insiders. We’re done with judges who think they’re untouchable. Clean house. End the careers of the crooked judges and the fixers who shield them.

Justice in New York will only be restored when no judge – not Castorina, not McMahon, not Merchan, not Pearlman, not anyone – is above the law.

The time for excuses is over. It’s time for perp walks. It’s time to take the courts back.

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NOTE: Brian Laline isn’t warning Staten Island about tyranny—he’s warning us about irrelevance. His own. After decades posing as a neutral referee, he finally admits he’s just another activist with a byline, mistaking panic for principle and hysteria for insight. Calling ICE “the Gestapo” and elections “dangerous” isn’t courage; it’s collapse. America isn’t dismantling—institutions are working, courts are intervening, and voters are deciding. What is crumbling is the credibility of legacy media figures who can’t accept that the public keeps rejecting their narrative. Fear is Laline’s last argument. Facts are mine. This piece is “Brian Laline’s Subversion Narrative Exposed,” first available on NYNewsPress.com.

By Richard Luthmann

Hi there, Staten Island and beyond. I just read Brian Laline’s latest “Letter from the Editor,” and let me tell you, it’s a doozy. After 50 years masquerading as a neutral newsman (to some), he’s finally showing his true colors as a partisan hack.

His piece drips with fearmongering and Trump-derangement, peddling a narrative of “democracy dismantled” that ignores facts and context.

Well, Brian, you asked if we’re scared. I’ll tell you what we should be scared of: so-called journalists like you torching truth to stoke hysteria. Allow me to torch your phony narrative with facts.

Brian Laline’s Subversion Narrative Exposed: Not an Editorial – Propaganda

Laline’s screed reads like a political hit job, not a responsible editorial. He sees fire everywhere except where it’s actually burning. According to him, one “wannabe-dictator” (we know who he means) is single-handedly “dismantling the greatest nation on earth.”

That hyperbole might win applause in some MSDNC echo chamber, but it collapses under scrutiny. Our nation’s institutions are alive and kicking: courts are checking executive actions, Congress is holding hearings, the press (yes, even the Advance) is free to publish wild accusations.

If this were a true dictatorship, Laline wouldn’t be freely ranting in print – he’d be muzzled. Instead, he’s enjoying First Amendment freedoms to accuse the president of burning the Constitution. The irony is rich.

Let’s examine who’s really subverting democracy. Laline ignores that his own allies have engaged in questionable tactics. For instance, the Democratic legal machine (hello, Marc Elias and co.) has been trying to toss out election maps and voters’ choices through lawsuits and “lawfare.” On Staten Island, we see an attempt to gerrymander NY-11 and erase the borough’s voice in Congress through the courts, under the guise of “fairness.”

Laline cheered that on as a matter of “civil rights,” even when it meant disenfranchising Staten Island voters using veiled racism. Talk about subverting democracy!

Laline sees dictatorship only when it suits his narrative. His “Letter” is pure propaganda – a case study in muscle-memory bias formed by decades in a one-party newsroom.

Brian Laline’s Subversion Narrative Exposed: Crying ‘Dictator’ – Yet Checks and Balances Abound

According to Laline, President Trump “doesn’t believe in democracy” and has “gifted himself limitless power.”

Really?

Last I checked, Trump was elected in 2024 by tens of millions of Americans in a lawful election – that is democracy, Brian. He’s operating within the powers of the presidency (yes, sometimes aggressively so), but hardly “limitless.”

Don’t take my word for it: look at the pushback he’s gotten.

When Trump’s Justice Department brought cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York AG Letitia James – whom Laline calls “targets” of Trump’s vengeance – what happened? The judiciary intervened. A federal judge dismissed those indictments, ruling that the prosecutor’s appointment was invalid.

Civil libertarians were right to raise alarms. But here’s the part Laline omits: a federal judge tossed the indictment because the prosecutor was improperly appointed. That’s not dictatorship—that’s the judiciary doing its job. Comey may never face trial, but a grand jury found probable cause. Former FBI directors aren’t immune from the law.

Same story with Letitia James. She campaigned on “getting Trump,” sued him, then found herself indicted over a disputed mortgage filing. Political payback? Almost certainly. But again, the courts stepped in and dismissed the case on procedural grounds. Laline claims Trump controls the system while ignoring the fact that the system stopped him.

In other words, our independent courts checked the executive branch, exactly as designed. The cases were tossed without prejudice (meaning they could be refiled) due to a technicality in the appointment of the U.S. Attorney, not because Comey and James were innocent angels.

But the key point is: if Trump were a dictator “weaponizing” the DOJ without oversight, judges wouldn’t dare throw out his prosecutions. But they did, and the Justice Department is appealing through proper legal channels. This is called the rule of law – messy, slow, but still very much intact.

Laline wails about “one man” dismantling America, yet in the next breath, he lists institution after institution that stood up to that man. Universities resisted his directives (more on that soon), companies pushed back, and even members of Trump’s own party have spoken out when concerned.

After the controversial Minneapolis incidents that Laline highlights (we’ll delve into those), Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in demanding transparency and investigations. GOP Senator Thom Tillis called for a “thorough and impartial investigation” of the shootings; Sen. Bill Cassidy urged a joint federal-state inquiry, calling events “incredibly disturbing”. A half-dozen other Republican Senators – from Ted Cruz to Susan Collins – publicly insisted on credible, independent reviews.

Does that sound like blind obedience to a dictator? No – it sounds like American democracy working as it should, with leaders of both parties insisting that no one is above scrutiny.

Laline’s Chicken Little routine (“the sky is falling, fascism is here!”) simply isn’t borne out by the facts. We have plenty of watchdogs still watching.

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Brian Laline’s Subversion Narrative Exposed: Enforcing the Law Isn’t “Dismantling” the Nation

Campus Anti-Semitism

Laline claims Trump has “forced institutions of higher learning to change policies to suit his whims, extorting money from them so federal grants would be reinstated,” citing Columbia University’s $200 million payment. He frames it as a shakedown. Here’s the fuller story he omitted: Columbia (my alma mater) was embroiled in controversy over massive pro-Palestinian campus protests in late 2024 that targeted Jewish students.

The Trump administration, back in office, took a hard line against what it saw as Columbia’s inaction on campus antisemitism. In March 2025, the Department of Education suspended $400 million in federal funding to Columbia, citing the university’s failure to protect students from harassment.

That’s right – this wasn’t about Trump’s “whims,” it was about enforcing civil rights laws (Title VI) that prohibit antisemitic harassment.

Facing the loss of research grants, Columbia entered negotiations. By July 2025, they had settled: Columbia agreed to major policy changes and a $200 million payment over three years to restore its funding.

What “whims” did Columbia have to bow to? Not exactly what Brian implies. They had to start disciplining students who violently disrupt campus, reform their faculty governance, ensure viewpoint diversity in Middle Eastern studies, eliminate racial preferences in hiring/admissions, and end all DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) programs that had been instituting ideological litmus tests.

Yes, Trump’s Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, proudly stated that Columbia will “bring viewpoint diversity” and “end DEI programs” as part of the deal.

Is that subversion of America?

Many would call it a restoration of merit and true diversity of thought on campus. Columbia’s autonomy over academics was preserved – what changed was that taxpayers would no longer subsidize a university that tolerated antisemitic hate and one-sided indoctrination. Columbia chose to pay up and implement changes rather than continue losing funding.

Framed as “extortion,” it was actually accountability. If a university takes federal dollars, it had better ensure a safe, non-discriminatory environment for all students. Columbia didn’t, and got called to the carpet. That’s not the sky falling; that’s consequences for one of our elite institutions. By the way, Columbia’s president himself said the deal “preserved our autonomy” while complying with reasonable terms.

Ending Discrimination and DEI

Laline also bemoans that Trump “coerced companies, with threats, to drop diversity programs” and even “stripped every federal department website of any mention of diversity.”

He’s referring to President Trump’s Day 1 executive orders in 2025 rolling back the sprawling DEI bureaucracy. Yes, Trump unapologetically vowed to “terminate every diversity, equity, and inclusion program across the entire federal government.”

This was not a secret – it was a campaign promise, and he delivered, signing orders like Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity on Jan 20, 2025. Those orders eliminated all federal DEI initiatives and training programs imbued with critical race theory, which the administration argued were themselves discriminatory or wasteful. Agencies removed or reworded web content to comply, focusing on equal opportunity for individuals rather than group identity slots.

Far from some dark subversion, this was an openly touted policy. You can disagree with it (the ACLU and others certainly did), but let’s not pretend it was done in the dead of night.

As for “coercing companies,” The administration did issue warnings to federal contractors and even law firms. In fact, Trump signed EOs targeting big law firms that were, in his view, undermining national security or abusing the legal system to harass him.

Stripping Security Clearances from Lawfare Lawyers

One highly publicized move in March 2025 was terminating the security clearances of two prominent law firms that had represented his political opponents. These firms employed attorneys who cycled in and out of government, possibly retaining access to sensitive information. The White House justified it under an order titled Preventing Abuses of the Legal System, arguing that lawyers who spearheaded what Trump calls “lawfare” (meritless political litigation like we are now seeing with the anti-white NY-11 Congressional District ruling) shouldn’t enjoy special federal perks.

Over 500 law firms sued over these orders, calling them retaliation. But ask yourself: didn’t President Biden’s White House also quietly encourage firms not to represent certain clients (remember the pressure on lawyers during the Mueller probe and second impeachment)?

The difference is that Trump made it an explicit policy – arguably heavy-handed, yes, but not without rationale. If a law firm were effectively a Democratic operative hub (like Perkins Coie, involved in concocting the Steele Dossier smear), is it a “dictatorship” for the President to say that firm’s security clearances and federal contracts are revoked?

Or is it protecting the Executive Branch from sabotage?

Reasonable people can debate it. What Laline does is distort it. He’d have you think any attempt by Trump to counter his legal tormentors is an attack on the rule of law. Yet when Trump was the target of endless investigations (some based on flimsy or falsified evidence), did Laline ever lament “weaponization”? Spoiler: he did not. It was all “accountability” then.

In short, Trump’s actions on universities, DEI, and even law firms were aggressive policies aimed at what he and his voters saw as ideological capture of American institutions. You can call that overreach or applaud it, but it’s not the cartoonish “subversion of the nation” Laline portrays.

It’s a policy fight – one that’s being fought in courts, Congress, and the court of public opinion right now. Democracy, not dictatorship.

Brian Laline’s Subversion Narrative Exposed: ICE Is Not the Gestapo – Context Matters

The most reckless line in Brian Laline’s letter is his comparison of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “the Gestapo.” That’s not rhetoric—it’s slander. ICE is not a Nazi secret police force rounding people up for race or ideology. It is a federal law enforcement agency executing immigration warrants under U.S. law. You can criticize tactics without abandoning reality.

The current surge of federal agents didn’t happen in a vacuum. DHS launched Operation Metro Surge, deploying roughly 2,000 agents to Minnesota after state leaders openly refused to cooperate with immigration enforcement under sanctuary policies. When local authorities block detainers and refuse cooperation, the federal government has two choices: either surrender to the law or enforce it directly. Trump chose enforcement.

Aggressive? Yes.

Controversial? Absolutely.

Gestapo? No.

ICE agents are not randomly targeting people for “looking foreign.” They pursue named subjects tied to warrants—often individuals with prior removal orders or criminal histories. That doesn’t mean mistakes can’t happen. It does mean Laline’s caricature is dishonest. When dramatic encounters occur—like the St. Paul gas-station arrest—context matters: a surveillance zone, a refusal to identify, escalation under legal authority. It looks ugly, but ugly is not the same as fascism.

The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are real tragedies and demand accountability. But as we conduct the post-mortem, it appears more and more that Good and Pretti only have themselves to blame.

Newly released footage in the Renee Good shooting from the ICE agent’s own cellphone actually corroborates that the officer felt endangered and fired in self-defense. In the video, agents had ordered Good out of her SUV; instead, she reversed and then accelerated forward, turning the steering wheel sharply as the agent stood near the car.

The ICE agent (Jonathan Ross) can be heard yelling “Whoa!” right before firing three shots. An earlier bystander video suggests the SUV may have made contact with Ross as it lurched forward. DHS officials maintain that Good “weaponized her vehicle” in an attempt to harm officers, and that the agent reasonably feared for his life.

This is not a baseless lie, but an account supported by video evidence. In fact, the same footage shows Good and her passenger taunting the agent (“Come at us, big boy!”) moments prior and defying commands.

These context details, which Laline omits, underscore that this was a chaotic confrontation – not a cold-blooded execution of a peaceful protester. Calling ICE agents “Gestapo” because a traffic-blocking protest turned deadly is abhorrent.

No one likes to see a life lost, but Good’s own actions – blocking traffic, refusing orders, then driving toward officers – directly contributed to the outcome. That’s a far cry from Laline’s one-sided tale of a woman “shot in the face” for no reason.

Laline then describes another Minneapolis protester, a man with a licensed pistol, who was pepper-sprayed, knocked down, and fatally shot while allegedly only brandishing a cellphone. He asserts that Trump smeared this man, Alex Pretti, as a “domestic terrorist” within hours. This is a serious matter, so let’s look at what actually happened.

According to a detailed video forensics analysis by The Washington Post, Pretti was armed with a 9mm handgun during the altercation (he had a carry permit). Bystander videos show Pretti initially filming agents with his phone and yelling – but when another protester was tackled, Pretti intervened and physically engaged the officers. He was pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by as many as 8 agents.

Crucially, one agent successfully disarmed Pretti, removing his gun from his waistband while he struggled on the ground. Seconds later, another agent opened fire, not realizing Pretti had been disarmed, hitting Pretti with multiple shots.

Pretti died at the scene.

This sequence – corroborated on video – suggests a tragic split-second confusion: officers knew Pretti was armed and resisting, one got the gun away, but others may have still perceived an imminent threat and reacted with force. In other words, it was a chaotic melee, not a summary execution.

The videos raise questions about whether Pretti was truly a deadly threat. But let’s be clear: Pretti was armed, he interfered in an arrest, and he grappled with federal agents. He was not a passive bystander shot for filming; he was an active participant in a volatile confrontation.

Laline labeling him a blameless victim is clearly false.

The proper response is an objective investigation (which is underway), not Laline’s fevered claim that Trump’s jackboots are murdering people in the streets.

In both Minneapolis cases, Laline insists “law enforcement lies,” and the administration is covering up murders. The evidence paints a different picture: tense, dangerous situations arising from confrontations that spiraled out of control.

But here’s the part Laline ignores: public outrage worked. Investigations followed. Officials were reassigned. The operation was scaled back. Lawsuits are pending. Pressure came not just from the left, but from conservatives, gun-rights advocates, and members of Congress. That is not authoritarianism. That is accountability.

None of these excuses for misconduct. But calling ICE “the Gestapo” isn’t moral clarity—it’s hysteria. America can enforce immigration law and punish abuses. It’s not either/or.

Brian Laline’s Subversion Narrative Exposed: Facts Over Fear

Brian Laline ends his rant, warning that if Americans don’t “wake up,” we might get President J.D. Vance in 2029—as if elections themselves are now a threat. That’s the tell. Laline’s problem isn’t that democracy is dying; it’s that his side keeps losing at it.

When voters reject progressive chaos, the response isn’t reflection—it’s panic. So populists get branded Nazis, dictators, or existential threats. That way, Laline never has to ask why so many Americans keep voting against his worldview.

We deserve better than Laline’s bombastic fiction. Yes, our nation faces challenges and sharp divisions – but no, we are not living under the Third Reich 2.0. Your 401 (k) will survive. ICE agents are not coming to knock on random doors. The year 2026 is not 1936.

Brian Laline’s letter is an insult to readers’ intelligence and a disgrace to the journalistic standards he pretends to uphold.

The real question is why anyone lets Laline’s nonsense slide. He’s crying, “The sky is falling,” while ignoring the real storms around us. My job here is to torch his phony narrative with facts, and I trust I’ve done that. The next time Laline tries to masquerade as a neutral observer while spewing DNC talking points, remember this rebuttal.

Laline’s dystopian prophecy belongs in the fiction aisle. Reality paints a far brighter picture of America – a nation that is still free, still strong, and still guided by We the People, not any one man. Don’t let partisan propagandists like him scare you into thinking otherwise.

Sources: The facts cited herein are backed by evidence: Columbia’s settlement addressed antisemitism (not “extortion”); companies adjusted DEI policies after a lawful order; video footage and DHS statements support the agents’ accounts in Minneapolis; and documented incidents of left-wing violence underscore that political extremism is not one-sided. Don’t just take my word for it – read the sources and decide for yourself:

Columbia University / Federal Funding / Antisemitism

1. Reuters – Columbia University to pay $200M to resolve U.S. antisemitism probe
   https://www.reuters.com/world/us/columbia-university-pay-200-million-resolve-us-antisemitism-probe-2025-07-24/

2. U.S. Department of Education (OCR) – Title VI Enforcement Authority
   https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/civil-rights-laws/title-vi-civil-rights-act-1964

3. White House Press Release – Administration Statement on Campus Antisemitism
   https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2025/03/07/statement-on-combating-antisemitism-on-campus/

DEI Rollbacks / Executive Orders

4. White House – Executive Order: Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity
   https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-restoring-merit/

5. Wall Street Journal – Companies Pull Back DEI Programs After Federal Guidance
   https://www.wsj.com/business/companies-dei-programs-cutbacks-2025

6. Supreme Court – Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (Affirmative Action Ruling)
   https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

James Comey

7. Reuters – Judge dismisses charges against former FBI Director James Comey
   https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-dismisses-charges-against-ex-fbi-director-james-comey-2025-11-18/

8. DOJ Inspector General Report – Comey Memo Leak Findings
   https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o1902.pdf

Letitia James

9. Reuters – Judge dismisses indictment against New York AG Letitia James
   https://www.reuters.com/world/us/judge-dismisses-indictment-against-new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james-2025-12-02/

10. New York Times – Legal Experts Warn of Retaliation Claims in James Case
    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/us/letitia-james-indictment-analysis.html

Jerome Powell / Federal Reserve

11. Wall Street Journal – Justice Department Examines Fed Renovation Under Powell
    https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/justice-department-federal-reserve-powell-investigation-2025

12. Reuters – Powell says Fed independence will not be deterred
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fed-chair-powell-says-independence-will-not-be-deterred-2025-12-14/

13. Bloomberg – Treasury Warns DOJ Probe of Fed Could Rattle Markets
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-10/treasury-warns-fed-probe-could-spook-markets

Pam Bondi / DOJ Oversight

14. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee – Pam Bondi Confirmation Hearing
    https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/confirmation-hearing-for-attorney-general-pam-bondi

ICE / Operation Metro Surge

15. Department of Homeland Security – Statement on Operation Metro Surge
    https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/operation-metro-surge-immigration-enforcement

16. Reuters – U.S. deploys 2,000 agents in Minnesota immigration crackdown
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-deploys-2000-agents-minnesota-immigration-crackdown-2026-01-06/

Renee Good Shooting

17. Reuters – ICE agent cleared in shooting of protester Renee Good
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ice-agent-cleared-renee-good-shooting-2026-01-10/

18. Associated Press – Video contradicts DHS claims in Minnesota protest shooting
    https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-ice-protest-shooting-video

Alex Pretti Shooting

19. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Truth Social Post, Truth Social (Jan. 29, 2026), https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115979320622868287 (accessed Jan. 30, 2026).

20. Reuters – Man killed during ICE protest was armed but not threatening, video shows
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/alex-pretti-ice-protest-shooting-video-analysis-2026-01-25/

21. Washington Post (Video Analysis) – What the videos show in the ICE protest shooting
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/01/25/ice-protest-shooting-video/

22. New York Times – Gun rights groups condemn DHS rhetoric after protester death
    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/us/ice-protester-gun-rights-reaction.html

Political & Law Enforcement Pushback

22. Reuters – Republican senators call for independent probe of ICE shootings
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republicans-call-independent-probe-ice-shootings-2026-01-27/

23. Reuters – Federal prosecutors resign amid Minnesota ICE controversy
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-prosecutors-resign-minneapolis-shooting-2026-01-09/

Weaponization Context / Prior DOJ Abuse

24. DOJ Inspector General – Crossfire Hurricane / FISA Abuse Report
    https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o1912.pdf

25. Durham Special Counsel Final Report
    https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf

Historical Political Violence Context

26. U.S. DOJ – Congressional Baseball Shooting (2017) Findings
    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/virginia-attorney-general-congressional-baseball-shooting-terrorism

27. Department of Justice – Arrest of Man Planning to Assassinate Justice Kavanaugh
    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-man-charged-attempted-murder-supreme-court-justice

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LUTHMANN NOTE: This wasn’t law enforcement. It was score-settling. John Flynn didn’t just bar a Black reporter from a press conference—he sent a message: challenge the family legacy, expose the machine, and you will be punished. Betty Jean Grant did journalism. She documented facts. Flynn responded with prosecution, radio-show verdicts, and podium theatrics. He lost in court. Then the bar smacked him for ethics violations. That’s not “confusion.” That’s abuse of power. Meanwhile, real election violations went untouched, real abusers went uncharged, and political patrons were thanked. This is the Flynn Doctrine in plain English: protect allies, crush enemies, and call it justice. This piece, “Flynn Hates Black Reporter,” was first published on FrankReport.com.

By Frank Parlato

(ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK) – The only Black reporter trying to cover the exoneration of two Black men wrongfully prosecuted by John Flynn’s uncle was barred at the door.

Two months later, Flynn would prosecute her.

He would lose in court.

And the bar would discipline him for it.

But first, he would commit the same ethics violations—nine days apart—against two different targets. One was a 73-year-old journalist and civic leader named Betty Jean Grant. The other was his political enemy, Steve Pigeon.

Flynn Hates Black Reporter: The Buffalo Five and Uncle Cosgrove

In 1977, five Black teenagers were implicated in the death of William Crawford in Buffalo. Two of them—John H. Walker Jr. and Darryl A. Boyd—were convicted and spent more than two decades in prison.

The prosecutor who put them there was Edward Cosgrove. John Flynn’s uncle.

For years, advocates fought to prove Walker and Boyd were innocent. Betty Jean Grant, a former Erie County Legislator and chairwoman of the Erie County Legislature, wrote approximately 40 articles about the case for the Challenger Community News, a newspaper serving Buffalo’s African American community.

On August 18, 2021, State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns set aside the convictions. Walker and Boyd were exonerated.

It was a vindication for the men—and an embarrassment for the Cosgrove legacy.

John Flynn called a press conference. He wanted to tell reporters he was “confused” by the ruling, that he would not retry the two men, and that his uncle’s office “would never have railroaded” the defendants.

Flynn Hates Black Reporter: The Only One at the Door

Minutes before Flynn’s press conference began, two of his investigators—Mark J. Vaughn and Michael Nigrelli—waded into the gathering of about ten reporters. They started asking for credentials.

The demand was unusual. The email notifying reporters of the event said nothing about credentials. Still, the reporters complied.

In an era when police departments no longer issue press passes and formal credentials have largely ceased to exist, the demand itself seemed a pretext to exclude a specific journalist from a specific story.

Betty Jean Grant showed her identification but had no press ID issued by the Challenger. Flynn’s aides told her to leave.

Grant called her editor, Alnisa Banks. Banks would vouch for her. One of Flynn’s investigators refused to take the call, saying Grant “could be talking to anyone.”

When Grant asked if she could wait outside the office near the elevators—to interview reporters as they left—Vaughn sent her away entirely.

Grant recorded the scene and posted it on Facebook.

Flynn’s press aide, Kaitlyn Munro, later explained that the office had requested credentials because it anticipated that “non-reporters might try to disrupt the proceedings.”

Munro said: “People in the DA’s office knew Grant was an advocate for the parolees but did not know she wrote for the Challenger.”

They knew who she was. They knew she had advocated for the men Flynn’s uncle had wrongfully imprisoned. They removed her.

“The press conference was for members of the media only,” Munro said, “not advocates.”

The only Black journalist who had spent years covering the wrongful conviction of two Black men was excluded from the press conference announcing the district attorney’s “confused” position on the exoneration.

Two Months Later: The Polling Place Video

Two months later, on October 23, 2021, Betty Jean Grant went to vote at the Delavan Grider Community Center in Buffalo during early voting.

She saw a woman—not a poll worker, not a Board of Elections employee—helping a voter complete her ballot.

The helper was a supporter of Byron Brown, the incumbent mayor, who was running a write-in campaign after losing the Democratic primary.

Under New York Election Law §8-306, voters may only receive assistance completing their ballots under four specific conditions:

• The voter cannot read.

• The voter cannot see the ballot even with glasses.

• The voter is physically unable to mark the ballot.

• The voter cannot enter the voting booth without aid

Legally, not knowing how to fill in a write-in vote is not a qualifying condition.

The law requires that poll workers administer oaths to both the voter requesting assistance and the person providing it. The person assisting the voter must swear that she is not trying to influence the voter’s choices and not reveal how the voter voted.

This did not happen. The woman assisting the voter (and possibly other voters) appeared to be carrying a rubber stamp with Byron Brown’s name to facilitate the write-in process.

Election law prohibits anyone assisting voters from marking or influencing ballots.

Grant did what journalists do. She recorded. She went live on Facebook, narrating what she observed:

“The woman in the blue jacket is a private citizen who is being allowed by the polling inspectors to compromise the voting process. Why is she being allowed to tell a voter who to vote for? Why is she having contact with voters if she is not voting, or she has finished voting? Why is she still in the room? She does not work for the Board of Elections. This is voter intimidation!”

Grant was documenting what appeared to be election irregularities—irregularities that benefited the candidate supported by Democratic Party Chairman Jeremy Zellner.

Flynn Hates Black Reporter: The Political Machine Responds

But Zellner is not only the Chairman of the Erie County Democratic Committee—the head of the local Democratic Party—but also an Erie County Democratic Election Commissioner. He is a public official responsible for ensuring fair elections. And that person responsible for ensuring fair, nonpartisan elections is simultaneously the head of a political party that benefits from specific election outcomes.

Two days after Grant posted her video, Zellner appeared on WGRZ television demanding an investigation. Not one of the election law violations Grant had documented. But of Grant herself.

“The Erie County Board of Elections asked the District Attorney’s Office to investigate,” news reports stated.

District Attorney John Flynn was ready to oblige Elections Commissioner Zellner.

It was only fair, since Flynn had twice been endorsed by Democratic Party Chairman Zellner to run for District Attorney and might need his support in future endeavors.

On December 6, 2021, Flynn’s office charged Grant with one count of Misdemeanor in Relation to Elections under New York State Election Law and one count of Harassment in the Second Degree. If convicted, Grant faced a maximum sentence of one year in jail.

Flynn didn’t wait for the arraignment to announce his case.

Flynn Hates Black Reporter: Flynn Tries the Case on the Radio

On November 23, 2021—two weeks before Grant was arraigned, Flynn appeared on WBEN radio to discuss it.

What followed was a violation of Rule 3.6 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct—the rule governing trial publicity.

Rule 3.6 prohibits lawyers from making extrajudicial statements that have a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” a proceeding. Prosecutors are barred from publicly opining on a defendant’s guilt or innocence, discussing inadmissible evidence, or failing to note the presumption of innocence.

Flynn opined on Grant’s guilt. He discussed evidence. He characterized the case in ways that could prejudice potential jurors or the judge.

He revealed something about his standards.

“It’s not the crime of the century,” Flynn admitted.

Then why prosecute a 73-year-old civic leader and journalist?

“When I have a victim who was outraged by this, it’s a no-brainer,” Flynn explained, referring to the voter and possibly Zellner.

Flynn prosecuted Grant based on feelings. “Outrage” doesn’t establish the elements of a crime.

Flynn also declared the innocence of the poll workers who did not follow the law, and the Brown supporter who happened to be on hand to help a voter who did not know how to fill in the write-in part of the ballot.

“No crimes were committed by any of those voters,” Flynn said.

This was a legal conclusion that contradicted the plain text of Election Law §8-306. The person providing illegal voter assistance—and apparently carrying a stamp with Brown’s name—committed no crime, according to Flynn. Only the journalist who documented it would be charged.

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Nine Days Later: “Big Boy Rape”

On December 2, 2021—nine days after the WBEN interview—Flynn held a press conference to announce charges against Steve Pigeon.

Pigeon was Flynn’s political enemy. In 2007, Pigeon arranged endorsements that helped Frank Sedita win the Democratic nomination for District Attorney over Flynn, forcing Flynn to drop out. In 2015, when Flynn ran again, Pigeon backed his opponent.

Now, Flynn had Pigeon where he wanted him.

The charges were predatory sexual assault against a child, carrying a potential life sentence.

Flynn stood at the podium and declared:

“This is a he-said, she-said case… and I believe the child.”

“I stand with the child.”

He explicitly said he did not need corroborating evidence.

He called it “big boy rape.”

He said Pigeon “should be in jail for the rest of his life, quite frankly.”

The same Rule 3.6 violations Flynn had committed against Grant: opining on guilt, prejudicing the proceeding—he now committed against Pigeon, but magnified.

Flynn didn’t tell the public that the accuser had a documented history of fabrications. He didn’t mention that the accuser’s mother had a record of making false accusations against family members. He didn’t disclose that suicide notes written by the accuser before her outcry addressed her older brother and a “very special relationship”—but never mentioned Pigeon.

He did not say that the accuser was under pressure to explain a sexual video she made about the same older brother when she ‘out of the blue’ named her uncle, Steve Pigeon.

None of that reached the podium.

The case against Pigeon would eventually collapse. What began as “big boy rape” with a potential life sentence ended with a plea offer of a single molestation count and eight months in jail.

Pigeon faced risking a life sentence if he lost at trial, and life would mean being locked in a New York state prison. He took the plea deal.

The damage was done. Pigeon lives with a sex offender status based on a case so weak it imploded under its own weight.

Flynn Hates Black Reporter: The Charges Against Grant

Four days later, on December 6, 2021, Flynn’s office issued a press release on Grant:

“Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn announces that 73-year-old Betty Jean Grant of Buffalo was arraigned this morning before Buffalo City Court Judge Andrew C. LoTempio on one count of Misdemeanor in Relation to Elections under New York State Election Law and one count of Harassment in the Second Degree (violation).”

The press release stated: “No charges will be filed against any other person involved in the alleged incident.”

Translation: The woman with the Brown stamp who illegally assisted voters? No charges. The election inspectors who allowed it? No charges. Only the journalist who documented it.

The release concluded: “DA Flynn commends the Erie County Board of Elections for their assistance in the investigation.”

Flynn was publicly thanking the entity whose failures Grant had documented—the entity run by his political patron, Zellner.

The Amicus Brief

Attorney Peter A. Reese, a veteran election law practitioner, filed an amicus brief in Grant’s defense.

Reese obtained canvass sheets through a Freedom of Information request and found no documentation of the oaths required by Election Law §8-306. The Board hadn’t even provided a place on its forms for such documentation.

“Obviously, neither of the Commissioners nor their duly certified employees performed their legislatively mandated tasks properly in the case at bar,” Reese wrote. “However, this did not prevent them from publicly asking for a criminal investigation of Ms. Grant to deflect attention from their failures to fulfill their sworn legal obligations.”

Reese argued that Grant’s video recording was constitutionally protected free speech—the documentation of facts necessary for petitioning the government for redress of grievances.

He cited the political relationship between Flynn and Zellner.

He noted Flynn’s public hostility to Grant, having barred her from the Buffalo Five press conference two months earlier.

He called for Flynn’s recusal: “Mr. Flynn’s close political relationship to and dependence on Democratic Election Commissioner, Jeremy Zellner, has been described above. Flynn has twice been endorsed to run for District Attorney by Zellner and needs his support in his future endeavors. Furthermore, Mr. Flynn has previously forcibly removed Ms. Grant, a regular contributor to a local newspaper, The Challenger, from his press conference.”

Reese raised the specter of federal civil rights violations, citing 18 U.S.C. §241 (Conspiracy Against Rights) and §242 (Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law).

The brief argued that Election Law §17-130(7)—the statute under which Grant was charged—was unconstitutional. The law prohibits entering a “voting booth,” but New York hasn’t used voting booths for more than a decade. The term “privacy booth” appears 38 times in election law but is never defined. Reese argued that Grant was being prosecuted under an antiquated and unenforceable statute.

Flynn Loses

On July 21, 2022, Judge Andrew C. LoTempio granted the defense motion to dismiss the Election Law misdemeanor charge.

Flynn didn’t drop it. He lost it. The judge rejected his case.

The harassment charge was resolved with an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal—what prosecutors offer when they want to save face but can’t win at trial.

Flynn’s press release announcing the outcome used the same line he’d used in December:

“DA Flynn commends the Erie County Board of Elections for their assistance in the investigation.”

After losing the case, Flynn was still thanking Zellner.

Flynn Hates Black Reporter: The Bar Acts

The Frank Report has learned that the New York bar sustained an ethics complaint against John Flynn for his conduct in the Grant prosecution. Flynn was privately admonished and ordered to attend ethics classes.

Prosecutors are rarely disciplined. But Flynn created a record the bar couldn’t ignore—recorded statements, public press conferences, his own words declaring guilt before trial.

The bar discipline proved the Grant prosecution wasn’t just politically motivated. It was professionally improper. Flynn’s licensing authority said so.

The Pattern

Betty Jean Grant was not Flynn’s only target. She was part of a pattern.

• Grant: Prosecuted for documenting election violations. The judge dismissed the main charge. Bar disciplined Flynn.

• Steve Pigeon: Political enemy. “Big boy rape” press conference. The case collapsed from a life sentence to eight months.

• Ryan Flynn: Flynn’s cousin. Accused Flynn of childhood sexual abuse. Held without bail on a screenshot.

• Seminarian protesters: Charged for protesting clergy abuse cover-ups. Dismissed.

• Diocese of Buffalo: 900+ abuse claims. Zero priests prosecuted in seven years. Uncle Cosgrove was employed by the diocese.

The doctrine is clear: Enemies get prosecuted. Allies get protected. Critics get silenced.

Flynn will prosecute at the behest of political patrons—and thank them publicly after losing.

Flynn will target journalists who embarrass his family.

Flynn will violate ethics rules in pursuit of his targets—the bar sustained the complaint.

Flynn will protect actual lawbreakers while prosecuting those who document lawbreaking.

He remained District Attorney until 2024. Now he’s in private practice with the prominent law firm Lippes Mathias, telling reporters he’s making so much money he wouldn’t take a pay cut to run for office again.

That’s the Flynn Doctrine.

• Part 1: Former DA John Flynn Accused of Child Sexual Abuse by Cousin; He Prosecuted Pigeon on Similar, Uncorroborated Charges

• Part 2: Former DA John Flynn’s Accuser Speaks From Jail as Case File Reveals New Details

• Part 3: Held Without Bail, Without Heat, Without Water: Ryan Flynn Speaks from Jail

• Part 4: ‘Publish or I Die’: Ryan Flynn’s Hunger Strike

• Part 5: Judicial Complaint Filed Against Judge Who Jailed DA’s Accuser

• Part 6: Ryan Flynn Moved Out of Delta Unit After Coverage; Still Jailed Without Bail

• Part 7: The Flynn Doctrine, Part 7: No Bail for His Accuser, No Charges for the Priests

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NOTE: This is what lawfare looks like when the accused is protected, and the accuser is expendable. Ryan Flynn is not in jail because of evidence. He is in jail because he broke the rule. He accused the wrong man. John Flynn built his career on “believe the victim” prosecutions, no bail, and moral grandstanding. The moment that doctrine turned inward, the system snapped shut. No bail. No heat. No water. No mercy. This is not justice. It is punishment. It is political custody. It is the New York Democrat machine running personal protection for one of its own—by disappearing the accuser. This piece, Kathy Hochul Gulag Exposed, is built upon the investigative work of Frank Parlato at FrankReport.com.

By Richard Luthmann

(ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK) – Ryan Flynn, 32, says he is rotting in a freezing, fetid jail cell as payback for accusing former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn of molesting him as a child. Held without bail on a flimsy charge, Flynn describes nightmarish conditions in what he bitterly calls Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “gulag.”

“It was like a rusted-out sink… covered in rust and black mold” in the only area he could get water, Flynn said of his previous jail unit.

The sink inside his own cell didn’t work for a month, leaving him without running water.

Heat was a luxury: “No heat, no. They would turn the heat off… for like four days to mess with us,” Flynn recounted, adding he had warmth only “one or two days” over nearly two weeks.

As temperatures plunged below freezing outside, guards allegedly even opened windows while the heat was off. Flynn, who suffers from asthma, had to sleep fully bundled under a thin, hole-ridden blanket as his cell dropped to frigid temperatures.

Only after investigative reporter Frank Parlato exposed these conditions did jail officials abruptly move Flynn out of the worst unit.

But the message was clear: the man who dared accuse a powerful Democrat was left to freeze and filth, “being held here unlawfully” as a political prisoner, Flynn insists.

Kathy Hochul Gulag Exposed: Judge Gruber, John Flynn & the Lawfare Machine

Flynn believes the New York Democrat apparatus is conspiring to silence him.

“All the people that are aligned against me are all Democrats,” he said, accusing local Democratic judges, prosecutors, and even Governor Hochul’s allies of targeting him for exposing their corruption.

The judge who jailed him, Town of Tonawanda Judge J. Mark Gruber, is a longtime associate of John Flynn – the two men worked together in the same small-town government for six years. Despite this conflict, Gruber did not recuse himself and has been instrumental in Flynn’s ordeal.

“His name’s Mark Gruber… I feel like he’s retaliating against me and teaming up with [John Flynn],” Ryan said of the judge.

On Gruber’s order, Flynn has been held without bail since October 21, 2025 – a stunning decision for a nonviolent charge under New York’s lenient bail reform. In fact, John Flynn himself championed those bail reforms, bragging that “no one will be held in jail for nonviolent crimes” in Erie County – yet his own accuser languishes behind bars without bail.

Flynn’s case reeks of “lawfare and weaponization of justice” by political insiders, as he describes it. Gruber’s court even bent basic procedure to keep Flynn caged: he was arrested for an anonymous online threat against Flynn’s wife based on nothing more than a screenshot, with “no IP address, no device records, no metadata” tying it to Ryan.

“They can’t even establish the [post] came from me, yet they’re holding me in pretrial detention,” Flynn noted.

He further alleges authorities seized his phones and evidence “without a warrant… doing so much illegal stuff… It’s beyond corruption” [Interview Transcript]. To Flynn and his defenders, Judge Gruber and company are not upholding the law – they’re weaponizing it to protect the former DA and punish his accuser.

A formal complaint has already been filed with the NYS Commission on Judicial Conduct over Gruber’s ties to Flynn and his heavy-handed rulings.

Kathy Hochul Gulag Exposed: Told to ‘Keep Quiet or Be Killed’ – Then Thrown in Jail

Flynn’s saga began with a family secret that exploded into the public. He claims that John J. Flynn, his older cousin (often referred to as “uncle” because of the age difference), sexually abused him on two occasions when he was about ten years old. In a recorded jailhouse interview, Flynn gave a chilling account of the abuse.

One late night at Flynn’s father’s house, John Flynn allegedly crept into the boy’s bedroom: “He came into my bedroom, leaned all his body weight across my legs… took my privates out of my pants and was touching me” for a minute or two.

On a second encounter, John Flynn allegedly tried to make the child perform oral sex.

“I refused,” Ryan said. “And he told me if I ever told anyone, he would ruin my life or kill me.”

Terrified, Ryan kept quiet for decades. But in 2024, spurred by other family members, he reported the molestation to police. That’s when his life derailed.

“As soon as I came forward, he put me in jail,” Flynn said of his cousin’s retaliation.

Within months of Ryan’s police report, prosecutors loyal to John Flynn hit him with a dubious felony charge – accusing him of making an online threat that he emphatically denies. The supposed threatening account even kept posting after Ryan was locked up, evidence that the real culprit was still at large.

No matter – Ryan Flynn was swiftly arrested and locked in the county pen, where he’s now spent over twelve weeks and counting. He believes this is explicit payback for daring to speak out about his childhood abuse.

“I think it’s all connected to me… trying to expose his corruption,” Ryan said.

Inside jail, other prisoners delivered more ominous warnings. One inmate sucker-punched Ryan in the head – and later admitted someone paid him $1,000 to do it.

Another inmate told Parlato on the record that a guard offered extra commissary to anyone who would “take Ryan Flynn out” – jailhouse code to attack or even kill him.

Flynn now genuinely fears for his life. He calls himself a “political prisoner” and has even waged a hunger strike to draw attention to what he calls an attempted cover-up by incarceration.

In Flynn’s view, the message from his powerful adversaries is unmistakable: stay silent about the abuse – or rot in jail.

Kathy Hochul Gulag Exposed: Believe the Victim – Unless the Accused Is John Flynn

John Flynn’s handling of this case drips with hypocrisy. As District Attorney, Flynn was known for aggressively prosecuting others accused of sexual abuse – even on tenuous evidence – under a self-proclaimed “believe the victim” philosophy.

In 2021, Flynn charged political rival G. Steven Pigeon with a child rape based solely on one troubled teen’s story, declaring at a press conference: “This is a he-said, she-said case… and I believe the child… I do not need corroborating evidence.”

The animus between John Flynn and G. Steven Pigeon is long-standing and well known in Erie County political circles. In 2008, when Pigeon chaired the Erie County Democratic Party, Flynn demanded that Pigeon push for his nomination as Secretary of the Navy in the Obama administration. Pigeon refused, privately and publicly concluding Flynn was grossly unqualified.

Once Flynn became district attorney, he used the power of his office to engineer political payback through a prosecution that bore all the hallmarks of lawfare rather than justice. He boasted about “standing with the victim” and didn’t even interview Pigeon before charging him with a potential life sentence.

The case later fell apart – Flynn quietly downgraded the charges and let Pigeon plead to a minor offense, but with a lifetime sex offender tag.

But when the accuser was his own kin, John Flynn did the opposite of “believe the victim.” By all accounts, the system circled wagons around him. Ryan Flynn’s allegation was not investigated or taken seriously – instead, he was painted as crazy, hit with an unproven charge, and jailed indefinitely under conditions Amnesty International might condemn.

The “Flynn Doctrine,” as Frank Parlato has dubbed it, exposed a double standard. The rule John Flynn preached for others – always believe accusers, don’t wait for proof – was thrown out the window when he became the accused.

And the bail reform he helped write and that Kathy Hochul champions – meant to prevent pretrial jail for cases like Ryan’s – was outright ignored.

“How could he rewrite the bail laws and then misapply them to me?… It’s the epitome of public corruption,” Ryan fumed.

Indeed, Flynn’s accuser has now spent nearly three months behind bars on a nonviolent charge with zero verified evidence. His continued detention defies New York law and basic decency, raising cries of political persecution.

Investigative journalist Frank Parlato, whose reporting first brought this scandal to light, frames it as a glaring case of corruption and lawfare – the use of law as a weapon – by political operators to shield one of their own.

Ryan Flynn’s story is a harrowing glimpse into what he calls “Kathy Hochul’s New York State gulag,” where a whistleblower can be frozen, abused, and silenced in jail while the politically connected enjoy impunity.

In Flynn’s case, “believe all victims” was just a slogan – and justice only applies if you’re not accusing the wrong man.

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NOTE: The Staten Island Advance’s chief propagandist didn’t write an editorial. Brian Laline wrote a confession. Fifty years hiding in a newsroom will do that to a man. He sees fire everywhere except where it’s actually burning. This NY-11 redistricting scam didn’t start with Trump. It started with Marc Elias, the same Democrat arsonist who lit the Steele Dossier and walked away whistling. Laline calls it “fairness.” I call it lawfare, racial gerrymandering, and a Trojan Horse aimed at Staten Island’s throat. The Voting Rights Act excuse is garbage. The venue stinks. The judge is a Hochul hack. And if this case collapses, it won’t be because Nicole Malliotakis lost the argument. It’ll be because her lawyers forgot how to fight. This piece, Luthmann Responds to Brian Laline, won’t run in the Staten Island Advance.

By Richard Luthmann

(STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK) – I’ve just read Staten Island Advance editor Brian Laline’s latest “editorial” on the NY-11 redistricting lawsuit, and it’s a doozy. Laline parrots Democrat talking points so faithfully you’d think he was on their payroll. (In fact, he’s acted like DA Michael McMahon’s personal press flack for decades.)

His piece drips with partisan bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome – he somehow drags Donald Trump and “racism” into a congressional map dispute, casting Republicans as arsonists complaining about a fire they set.

Give me a break.

Laline all but calls Staten Islanders racist, co-signing a lawsuit that cites a 2017 campaign incident (involving yours truly) as supposed proof the borough is steeped in bigotry. He’s dead wrong, and he’s omitting the real story. As someone actually mentioned in this lawsuit, I’m not letting his nonsense slide.

Laline’s job may be carrying water for the Democratic machine, but my job here is to torch his phony narrative with facts. And the fact is, if there’s an arsonist in this redistricting chaos, it isn’t Donald Trump at all – it’s the Democrats’ legal hatchet man, Marc Elias. Laline can’t see past his anti-Trump hysteria to notice the real firebug who lit this blaze.

Well, Brian, allow me to introduce you.

Meet the Real Arsonist: Marc Elias’s FrankenDistrict Plot

Laline and his ilk want you to think Trump “sparked” this redistricting mess. What a joke. The real fire-starter is Marc Elias – Hillary Clinton’s favorite election lawyer and partisan mastermind of map warfare. Elias and his gang of Democrat attorneys have launched a legal blitz to burn down Staten Island’s voice in Congress.

Initially, they filed a lawsuit aiming to carve up New York’s 11th District into two grotesque “Frankenstein” districts. One would stitch Staten Island’s North Shore to left-leaning Manhattan; the other would lump the South Shore with a chunk of Coney Island housing projects. That transparently political plan was DOA, even with the presiding Hochul-hack Manhattan judge.

The new plan is to swap the Brooklyn portion of the NY-11 congressional district with downtown Manhattan in a surgical sleight of hand on the electoral map. The goal is simple: erase NYC’s lone Republican-held seat by any means necessary.

But this scheme isn’t just about election maps – it’s a social engineering Trojan Horse. Tie Staten Island to Manhattan, and watch how fast the city pushes its urban agenda on the suburban outer borough. Think high-density “affordable housing” projects sprouting in Tottenville and our South Shore neighborhoods under the guise of “equity.” They call it diversity; in reality, it’s an invasion. It’s gentrification-by-fiat, with Staten Island as the target.

No wonder Republicans have blasted the plan as a blatantly unconstitutional racial gerrymander – a “naked attempt to disenfranchise voters,” as GOP chair Ed Cox put it. (It’s good to see Ed found his spine, particularly after the political beating that Joe Cairo just dealt him).

The last time the Democrats tried a power grab like this in 2022, the state’s highest court struck down their gerrymander as illegal. (And the last time the Democrats were this upset about being challenged was when Lincoln freed their slaves.)

Now Elias and the Democrats (the party of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Big Steal) are at it again. They are attempting via judicial fiat what his party couldn’t achieve at the ballot box. This D.C. arsonist doesn’t care about “voting rights” or fair representation. He cares about flipping a red seat blue, period.

Remember, Elias was the architect of the infamous Steele Dossier smear campaign – shady tactics are his specialty. If you ask me, he belongs in federal prison, not drawing cartoonish districts to nullify Staten Island’s vote.

Brian, make no mistake: Marc Elias lit this fire, and he is the one trying to burn down our district’s democracy – not Donald Trump.

Twisting the Law and Crying “Racism” to Rig the Map

To justify this monstrosity, Elias’s team is twisting both law and facts beyond recognition. They’ve hung their case on New York’s new John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act – a state law that does not even apply to congressional elections or mid-decade redistricting.

That’s right: the NYVRA was meant to stop local voter suppression, not to redraw federal congressional maps. (Even Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries admitted the NYVRA’s protections currently exclude congressional districts.)

In other words, Team Elias is asking a judge to use a law in a way the legislature never authorized – a blatant act of judicial activism. Their lawsuit claims Staten Island’s current map “dilutes” minority voting power because the Black and Hispanic population has grown from about 11% in 1980 to nearly 30% today.

They allege minority voters are “routinely and systematically” unable to elect their preferred candidates under the present lines. Never mind that NY-11’s current congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis, is the daughter of a Cuban immigrant – the first Latina ever to represent the district.

No, Elias’s crew insists minority residents are “disenfranchised” because Malliotakis wasn’t the “candidate of choice” for most Black and Latino voters.

You read that right: their own lawsuit effectively says Staten Island’s minority voters preferred the Democrat (who happened to be a white male, Max Rose) over a Latina Republican, so somehow that equals racial disenfranchisement. You can’t make this shit up.

This is the absurd logic they’re peddling – all to paint the Staten Island community as racist and justify a radical redraw. And to bolster that warped narrative, they’ve dredged up a single anecdote from 2017 – one involving me – as Exhibit A to smear Staten Island. From the Democrat Party/Elias court petition:

D. Racial Appeals Have Occurred in Staten Island Campaigns
90. Political campaigns on Staten Island have featured overt racial appeals. For example, in 2017, a political operative, Richard Luthmann, allegedly created a fake Facebook page in Representative Debi Rose’s name, stating that she supported welcoming a “welfare hotel full of criminals and addicts” and turning a St. George property into “a heroin/methadone den.”

Well, let’s talk about 2017, shall we?

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The 2017 “Racial Appeal” Stunt: Democrat-on-Democrat Dirty Trick

The lawsuit eagerly cites a notorious 2017 incident as proof that Staten Island campaigns are rife with “overt racial appeals.” In court filings, Elias’s lawyers name-check me in an example about a Facebook page I created against then-Councilwoman Debi Rose, claiming she wanted to welcome a “welfare hotel full of criminals and addicts” and turn a local property into “a heroin/methadone den.”

Sounds damning, right? It was a nasty campaign gambit, no doubt. But here’s what Laline and the lawsuit conveniently omit: that stunt was orchestrated by Democrat insiders themselves. I know because I was hired to do it – by none other than Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (at the time a budding political rival of Debi Rose and now the NYC Council’s new Majority Whip) and her husband, Kevin Barry Love, currently under state and federal investigation for extortion of Staten Island developers.

SI Dems Party Leader and NYS Assembly Deputy Majority Leader Charles Fall referred the developers to Letitia James and the EDNY U.S. Attorney’s Office, respectively. (Hey Julie Menin, WTF?).

Yes, the very example being used to brand Staten Islanders as racists was a hit job commissioned by Democrats against a Democrat.

Hanks and Love wanted to torpedo Debi Rose (who, by the way, is Black, as is Hanks; Kevin Barry Love is Staten Island’s “main cracker“) in a primary power struggle. I, as a political operative, carried out their dirty tricks. And guess what? Hanks and Love later legally admitted to their roles.

Court filings show Hanks “admits she and Love created a fake Facebook page to attack political rival Debi Rose,” and that she enlisted my help – then stiffed me on the $86,000 bill for services.

In other words, the supposed “racial appeal” was literally Democrat-on-Democrat betrayal – “a case of ‘Democrat on Democrat crime,’” as I’ve said myself, not some widespread racist campaign by Staten Island Republicans. Both Hanks and Rose are Black; this wasn’t about race, it was about power and sabotage.

Do I regret my part in that ugly episode? Absolutely – I even personally apologized to Debi Rose, whom I consider a good woman, acknowledging that while my stunt was legally protected speech, it was morally wrong. I know now that crime doesn’t pay – and Kamillah Hanks and Kevin Barry Love are CRIME, plain and simple.

But let’s get something straight: the substance of those 2017 comments wasn’t fabricated out of thin air. There was a plan afoot to site a shelter/rehab facility in a residential area, and many locals were outraged. My tactics were over-the-top, but the concern I highlighted – dumping a “welfare hotel” full of problem cases into the neighborhood – was very real.

And in Zohran Mamdani’s New York, can any Staten Island resident say with a straight face that this isn’t a top-level concern? Labeling those issues “racist” is pure nonsense.

The real scandal is Elias’s team repackaging that old saga (cooked up by Hanks’s crew) as evidence of Staten Island bigotry. It’s a dishonest smear, and I won’t let it stand unchallenged.

Malliotakis’s Legal Fumble – and How to Stop the Scam in Its Tracks

While we expose the Democrats’ shenanigans, we also have to face an uncomfortable truth on the Republican side: Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis’s legal team dropped the ball early in this case. Instead of immediately yanking this fight into federal court, where a partisan state-court scheme could’ve been neutralized, her lawyers inexplicably left it in a Manhattan courtroom before a judge who’s anything but impartial.

The presiding judge, Acting Justice Jeffrey Pearlman, is a former top aide and counsel to Governor Kathy Hochul – essentially a Hochul political operative in a black robe. Pearlman has deep personal ties to six of the top Democrat respondents in this case (Hochul included) and has no connection whatsoever to Staten Island.

Yet Malliotakis’s attorneys did not move to remove the case out of his hands. Big mistake. This lawsuit centers on a federal election (a U.S. House seat) and raises federal constitutional issues, so it could and should have been heard in federal court from the start. Any competent lawyer knows that claims of racial vote dilution in a congressional district belong under a federal or state Voting Rights Act or the 14th Amendment – i.e., in front of a federal judge.

By failing to remove the case, Malliotakis’s team left Staten Island at the mercy of a blatantly conflicted “Hochul judge.” That’s legal malpractice in my book.

But all is not lost -yet. There may yet be room for legal intervention in the state case. A smart litigant could file an order to show cause and seek to either get the suit tossed (because the NYVRA doesn’t even apply to federal elections) or to remove the whole circus to federal court.

Even at this late stage, a removal to federal court would be a game-changer. It would drag the battle onto fairer turf (the EDNY bench is still packed with hand-picked Chuck Schumer commies) and likely bog down Elias’s gambit in procedural limbo for months – easily six months or more, tying up their FrankenDistrict scheme well into next year.

In practical terms, that delay could prevent any new map from being imposed before the 2026 elections, preserving the status quo that voters chose for the midterm elections. Time is on Staten Island’s side if someone has the moxie to force the issue into the federal arena. The Democrats thought they could ram this through a friendly state court quickly; a federal detour blows up that timeline.

This entire ordeal – a phony “voting rights” lawsuit that is nothing more than a partisan power play – is exactly what I call it: a Trojan Horse. Under the banner of civil rights, they seek to haul in an agenda that Staten Islanders would never accept at face value: racial gerrymandering, outside control of the district, even Mamdani-style housing “solutions” foisted on the neighborhoods.

Staten Island may be the Forgotten Borough, but I don’t think they are about to roll over and play dead. It would take an all-out legal street brawl to stop this fraud. Where are the brawlers?

Brian Laline will keep scribbling his partisan fairy tales, and Marc Elias will keep lighting matches. But the real question is this: Is Staten Island going down without a fight?

Federal removal will expose the lies, drag the truth into the light, and douse Elias’s legal fire. The “Frankenstein” map will die on the operating table. The Trojan Horse will be kicked back to where it came from. And Staten Island – defiant, loud, and free – will remain fully armed against this assault on representation.

You don’t like that, Mr. Laline? Too bad.

Hopefully, the people of Staten Island will have the last word, not the Democrat lackeys and lawfare arsonists trying to steal their voice.

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