NOTE: This piece first appeared on NYNewsPress.com.
By M. Thomas Nast with Richard Luthmann and Michael Volpe
Bribery Bust Mayor Back as Barrister – With Strings Attached
Former Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III – once New Jersey’s youngest mayor – is a free man with a freshly reinstated law license. Cammarano, 45, was arrested just three weeks into his term in 2009 after accepting a $25,000 cash bribe from an FBI informant. The payoff – part of the FBI’s sprawling “Operation Bid Rig” probe into political corruption, money laundering, and even organ trafficking – landed Cammarano in federal prison for two years.
He resigned after only 23 days as mayor, trading City Hall for a cell. As a felon, he was disbarred in both New Jersey and New York.
Now, in a move some call a second chance and others a sellout, a New York judicial panel quietly restored Cammarano’s license to practice law, citing his apparent contrition. The judges found he showed “genuine remorse for his conduct,” noting he “acknowledged the gravity of it, particularly its impact on not only him, but also his family, his former constituents, and the public at large.”
In his application, Cammarano argued that being a lawyer again would help his prison consulting business, a venture he started to coach would-be inmates on life behind bars. The ex-mayor-turned-consultant cast the move as part of his rehabilitation.
But reinstatement comes with strings: by putting Esquire back on his name, Cammarano also re-accepts the tight leash that a law license places on speech and conduct.
It’s a trade-off he’s willing to make. After all, the courts giveth only as much as they taketh away.
The ‘Shackles’ of a Blue-State Law License
Cammarano’s return to the bar illuminates a hard truth: a law license can be a gag in disguise – especially in “blue” jurisdictions where justice is most often weaponized. Defense lawyers and dissidents in such states know that stepping out of line can cost them dearly.
“If you dare to criticize the machine, they come for your bar license, your freedom, or your reputation,” one New York political operative warned. In other words, attorneys who offend powerful interests may find themselves disbarred, jailed, or smeared into silence.
Free speech takes a back seat when the courts flex their muscle. Even the First Amendment offers little shield once you’ve sworn the attorney’s oath; from that day, every word is watched.
Former Staten Island “Trial By Combat” lawyer Richard Luthmann learned this lesson the hard way – and he’s shouting about it from the rooftops.
Luthmann maintains that “no First Amendment exists for lawyers,” particularly in places like New York, where bar members are expected to bite their tongues and even “lie to cover” for corrupt officials.
“Lawyers don’t have the First Amendment. In New York, your bar card means you lie to protect corrupt judges and officials,” Luthmann says. “Or else, you’re gone. It’s worse than the mafia.”
He argues that a law license in a one-party enclave is effectively a muzzle, a pact to keep quiet about the misconduct of judges and prosecutors. Gag orders and ethics rules become bludgeons to ensure compliance. In extreme cases, authorities twist laws to criminalize mere speech.
In one infamous New York case from the 1990s, reformer John Kennedy O’Hara was disbarred and prosecuted over a minor voting technicality, widely seen as retaliation for challenging Brooklyn DA Charles “Joe” Hines’ political machine.
The message is clear: rock the boat, and the system will throw you overboard.
Critics say this climate has only worsened in the era of “lawfare,” where legal processes are perverted into weapons against dissent.
The result is a legal caste that’s timid, toeing the line to avoid becoming the next target. “Free” speech isn’t so free when a bar card is hanging in the balance.
Disbarred and Unbowed: Luthmann’s War on ‘Weaponized’ Justice
Luthmann, a disbarred attorney turned investigative journalist, has taken the opposite path of Cammarano. Rather than attempt a return to what he calls the “shackles” of a law license in “Commie” New York, Luthmann, 45, has reinvented himself as an uncaged scourge of corruption.
Once a Staten Island lawyer and the NYS Reform Party Law Chair, he ended up convicted on fraud-related charges in 2019 and spent four years in prison. New York and New Jersey promptly disbarred him. But Luthmann never looked back or begged for reinstatement. He says he never will.
Instead, now based in Florida, he’s embracing the First Amendment with a vengeance – and aiming it squarely at the power players who, he says, abused theirs.
In recent weeks, Luthmann has “officially declared war on Staten Island’s political elite,” unloading allegations of a “RICO-level” conspiracy in the borough’s courts. His chief target: Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon, whom Luthmann accuses of orchestrating a personal vendetta spanning a decade.
The bad blood dates back to 2015, when Luthmann publicly broke ranks with McMahon’s party and later mocked the DA with satirical Facebook posts – an act McMahon never forgave.
Fast forward to 2025: McMahon secretly arranged for Luthmann’s felony arrest without a warrant over a mass-distributed Substack email that didn’t even mention McMahon. The DA swore under oath that he “feared for his safety or life” from this single email, a claim Luthmann calls absurd.
Records show McMahon himself had subscribed to Luthmann’s newsletter for weeks before crying foul. Luthmann believes the trumped-up contempt charge was a ploy to lure him back to New York and lock him up without bail to “shut him up” and have the NYPD secure “fingerprint cards” to cure a defective 2020 plea deal.
What followed could be ripped from a spy novel: a court hearing on August 1 was abruptly sealed, then the entire case vanished from the public docket without explanation.
“F**ing disappeared. The case doesn’t exist,” Luthmann fumed on The Unknown Podcast with his co-host Michael Volpe. Luthmann described to his fellow journalist, who also tried to get into Staten Island Judge Raymond Rodriguez’s virtual courtroom, that public access was mysteriously closed to his supporters.
No dismissal order, no trace – just a void. The charges still stand.
“They want to make it confusing… This is corruption, and it’s very easy to understand corruption,” he said, arguing the episode was a blatant cover-up.
Indeed, critics say McMahon’s phony “victim” act was perjury, part of a years-long vendetta to silence Luthmann for exposing political corruption.
Attack, Attack, Attack
Richard Luthmann is one critic who’s been through that wringer – and rather than submit, he’s tearing at the machinery from the outside.
Rather than cower, Luthmann is doubling down. He’s filed motions accusing McMahon’s allies on the bench of bias and even got one judge to recuse for coziness with the DA.
He’s gone public with recordings: in one bombshell tape, an NYPD detective admits he gets “whatever [he] wants ” from judges as long as McMahon is the “victim,” revealing a rigged warrant scheme.
Luthmann blasted the Staten Island justice clique as a “real crime family” and says law enforcement has been weaponized to shut him up.
“It’s my First Amendment right to make fun of politicians, public figures, and hacks,” he insists – and he’s willing to fight to prove it.
The Wars to Come
The fiery ex-lawyer has even taken his battle beyond New York: he’s tangling with internet influencers he brands as enablers of cancel culture.
Luthmann accuses YouTube personality Jeremy Hales of unleashing troll swarms and “weaponized lawsuits… and fake conspiracies” against critics. Hales is suing him in federal court, alleging defamation-based claims. But Hales hasn’t managed to tag Luthmann with legal papers yet.
Another lawsuit targets TikTok provocateur “Delusional” Danesh Noshirvan for an online defamation, fraud, and harassment scheme that Luthmann says caused him serious traumatic brain and other personal injuries.
“Danesh Noshirvan called me a pedophile, so I’m suing the sh*t out of him,” Luthmann said. “In Commie Mandami’s New York, child sexual abuse is a ‘preference.’ In Florida, they give you the needle.”
From family court scandals in New Jersey to YouTube satire gone haywire, the gadfly-turned-reporter has inserted himself into every corner of corruption he can find – or as his enemies might say, cause.
“They’ve hurt me before, and I have the goods on them,” Luthmann warns of the powers that be.
Living in “Commie-imposed exile” in Florida (where “it’s hard for ’em to whack me down here”, he quips), he’s determined to shine a light on what he dubs Soviet-style injustice up north.
“They’re All Going to Have Theirs”: Calls for Handcuffs at the Top
Luthmann’s endgame is as subtle as a wrecking ball. He isn’t content to merely tell his story of judicial payback – he wants his persecutors prosecuted.
“Using my pen, I’ll take them down in handcuffs,” he vows, describing his media crusade to flip the script on those who abused their power.
He’s been in contact with federal authorities and Trump-world allies, handing over what he claims is evidence of a “weaponization” conspiracy in Staten Island’s courts. The goal: to spark a RICO investigation that could haul McMahon and his cohorts into criminal court as defendants.
“Lawfare is the weapon of choice for my enemies – but two can play that game,” Luthmann said defiantly.
He believes the DA, certain judges, and politically connected lawyers operated as a racketeering ring to bury him, and he’s hell-bent on seeing them answer for it.
“I promise you, I’m going to have my day–in a real court–and they’re all going to have theirs,” he declared.
In his eyes, turnabout won’t just be fair play – it’ll be sweet justice.
The renegade ex-attorney points to New York’s highest offices as well. Luthmann has lambasted State Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James for playing corrupt political justice while turning a blind eye to wholesale corruption in her own ranks. He accuses James of “weaponizing her office against Trump while skimming $41K in taxpayer funds” on personal perks – and predicts her aggressive lawfare will boomerang into “color of law” legal trouble of her own.
In Luthmann’s view, James and McMahon are cut from the same cloth: blue-state enforcers who twist the law to target foes. And he has a blunt message for all of them. Those who misuse the justice system, he thunders, belong behind bars themselves.
He likens the McMahons to the Clintons in their ruthlessness, and Luthmann openly fears he could be “suicided” for what he knows. That hasn’t stopped him from keeping the spotlight glaring.
“That’s another reason I went to the feds,” he explained, noting that if anything happens to him now, retaliation will only bolster his case.
While Peter Cammarano humbly returns to the legal fold, muzzled by professional codes and penance, Luthmann relishes his outsider status. Freed from the bar’s yoke, he’s saying all the things barred attorneys only whisper about.
Time will tell if his scorched-earth approach lands the McMahons, Jameses, and untouchables of the Empire State in the dock, or if the system closes ranks to protect its own.
But one thing’s for sure: in this saga of redemption versus revolt, the louder voice is coming from a disbarred lawyer unchained – and he’s shouting for handcuffs all around.
