NOTE: This piece first appeared on NYNewsPress.com.
By M. Thomas Nast with Richard Luthmann and Michael Volpe
“The McMahons Are Causing Me Not to Behave”
Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon is under fire for what critics call Stalinist tactics to silence journalist Richard Luthmann.
McMahon, 67, swore out a felony complaint against Luthmann on July 14, claiming he “feared for his safety/life” after receiving a mass email from Luthmann’s Substack newsletter.
Luthmann, a former Staten Island attorney-turned-felon-turned-journalist, is 1,200 miles away in Florida. The email that spooked McMahon wasn’t even about him – it was a cross-posted essay about a New Jersey judge.
Yet “THE HONORABLE MICHAEL MCMAHON” told police that Luthmann was a dangerous “stranger.”
In reality, the two men share a decade-long feud.
“I’ve tried to be good about Staten Island,” Luthmann said recently on The Unknown Podcast. “I’ve behaved… I think it’s time not to. I think the McMahons are causing me not to behave,” he declared, signaling an all-out journalistic and media counteroffensive.
Luthmann’s announcement came after what he views as the last straw – the McMahons’ latest “lawfare” push to lock him up over constitutionally protected speech.
Co-host Michael Volpe noted a pattern: another McMahon critic, a mother named Marta Bryceland, was jailed without a record.
“They’re gonna do the same playbook to me… try to arrest me, throw me in Rikers,” Luthmann warned on air.
Now, he says, the media gloves are off. The Staten Island political machine “wants to silence me,” he argues – but in doing so, they’ve unleashed me.
Reporter Luthmann Unleashed: Ten Years of Bad Blood and Payback
This bitter feud traces back to 2015. Luthmann was a brash Staten Island lawyer and Democratic party member. That year, Democrat Michael McMahon – a former City Councilman and one-term Congressman – ran for District Attorney.
![Nancy Pelosi [L] and Michael McMahon [R]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RmUB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2930b925-1635-4b80-b5c6-b8008ad845be_481x517.jpeg "Nancy Pelosi [L] and Michael McMahon [R]")
Luthmann broke ranks with his party, publicly endorsing McMahon’s Republican rival, Joan Illuzzi, and blasting McMahon’s lack of prosecutorial experience. He also exposed fishy details in McMahon’s campaign, including dead people’s names on McMahon’s ballot access petitions.
Luthmann didn’t stop there. In 2017, he represented whistleblower Michael Pulizotto against McMahon’s wife, Judge Judith “Judy” McMahon, uncovering a scheme in Special Narcotics Part N where Judy allegedly steered her husband’s cases to friendly judges. Secret recordings caught Judge McMahon “commanding and plotting” to route DA cases away from independent jurists.
The scandal led to administrative discipline – Judy McMahon was demoted and lost her role as Staten Island’s top judge and roughly $50,000 a year in pay. The McMahons, powerful as they were, had been publicly embarrassed by Luthmann’s revelations.
McMahon soon struck back. He cast himself as a “victim” of Luthmann’s election antics and in 2015 pushed for a special prosecutor to charge Luthmann over a satirical “Smilin’ Jack” Facebook page that mocked McMahon.
The parody page – clearly labeled as satire – lampooned “Tax Hike Mike” McMahon and his inner circle, dubbing them the “Irish Mafia.”
McMahon claimed the spoof was criminal impersonation. Under pressure and facing federal charges (which Luthmann says McMahon engineered), Luthmann pleaded guilty to the Facebook stunt as a minor add-on.
Thus, McMahon got his pound of flesh – a conviction on Luthmann’s record. But the bad blood only thickened. Luthmann spent time in federal prison on separate fraud charges, emerging hardened and reinvented as an investigative journalist.
He has since used his pen to target what he calls Staten Island’s “real crime family” – the McMahons and their courthouse cronies. For years, however, he kept some secrets holstered, focusing his reporting on other injustices.
Now, after the latest provocation, Luthmann says he’s ready to unload everything he knows about Staten Island’s ruling class.
Lawfare, Lies, and a “Disappearing” Court Case
McMahon’s recent maneuver might prove to be a spectacular own-goal. In filing that July complaint, McMahon triggered a chain of events that Luthmann and observers call “lawfare” – the weaponization of the legal system against a critic.
First, McMahon filed his police report as a private citizen, claiming to be “terrified” by an email. He omitted any mention of his long history with Luthmann, ticking a box to label him a random, menacing “stranger.” That potentially false statement under oath could itself be a crime – perjury or filing a false instrument – if proven deliberate. It conveniently portrayed Luthmann as an unknown stalker to justify swift police action.
Next, an NYPD detective hand-picked by McMahon, Detective John Wilkinson, took over.
In a jaw-dropping recorded call, Wilkinson bragged to Luthmann’s attorney that because McMahon is the “victim,” “I get whatever I want” from judges.
He admitted that any warrant request – no matter how flimsy – gets rubber-stamped if the McMahons want it.
Rather than seek a normal court-approved warrant, Wilkinson entered an ICARD alert (an internal police notice) to detain Luthmann in NYC, sidestepping judicial review.
“McMahon is acting as judge, jury, victim, and executioner,” Luthmann fumed.
Sure enough, a judge seemingly did McMahon’s bidding. Staten Island Administrative Judge Raymond Rodriguez – a close 30-year friend of the McMahons – suddenly reopened Luthmann’s old Facebook case.
Though that case was long closed (Luthmann had served his time), Rodriguez scheduled a mysterious hearing for July 11, July 14, and August 1, 2025.
No notice was given to Luthmann – he only discovered it via the court docket.
Luthmann filed a DETAILED MOTION RECEIVED BY THE COURT.
When he tried to log in remotely to Microsoft Teams through a link provided by Rodriguez’s chambers, the system locked him out. By day’s end, the docket showed a “reserved decision” pending.
By the next morning, the entire proceeding vanished from the public record, as if it never happened.
The court system now says “no upcoming dates on record” for that case. Such a Kafkaesque twist raised alarms. It appears a court hearing was held in secret, potentially related to the enforcement of McMahon’s protective order or to gag Luthmann, and then the evidence of it was scrubbed.
Judge Rodriguez did not recuse himself despite obvious conflicts. Critics note that with DA McMahon and Judge Judy McMahon essentially controlling Staten Island’s justice system, due process is on life support.
Even the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau has opened a probe into Det. Wilkinson’s taped comments (IAB Log #2025-24036).
The FBI may not be far behind.
Luthmann’s ordeal is galvanizing press freedom advocates, who warn that if a mass email can prompt a felony charge, then no journalist is safe.
Reporter Luthmann Unleashed: “I Know Where the Bodies Are Buried”
Richard Luthmann now says the McMahons’ hardball tactics have only emboldened him.
“They wanted me silent. Now I’ll talk about everything,” he vows.
He plans to broaden his investigations beyond just DA McMahon, NYC Council Member Kamillah Hanks, or Judge Ronald Castorina – figures he had already been scrutinizing.
“I’m gonna open up Staten Island,” Luthmann said, promising to shine a light on family court misconduct and “other judges in the St. George courthouse that I think are crooked.”
Insiders say Luthmann has deep files from his years in Richmond County politics, and still has friends who would benefit from seeing the McMahons topple.
He “knows where all the bodies are buried,” as the saying goes. He was once part of the club, and now he’s prepared to burn the clubhouse down.
Luthmann hints that explosive revelations are coming. He’s ready to talk about high-powered officials’ mistresses and the whisper-network of judges and fixers who attend cozy “wine-and-cheese” nights where deals are cut and “things besides envelopes are stuffed.”
He suggests that envelopes of cash and quiet payoffs have greased wheels in Staten Island’s courts for years – and he’s got receipts.
The embattled journalist isn’t taking chances with his safety, either. Luthmann says he has shared his files and evidence caches with other journalists and even authorities as a “dead man’s switch.” If something happens to him, the story will not die.
“Within days, I will be gagged and silenced… After that, they will try to kill me using the New York Criminal Justice System,” Luthmann wrote recently, describing what he believes McMahon has in store. “I’ve been saying for years that they are like Bill and Hillary Clinton. They will do anything and say anything to hold onto their power, and I believe that includes body bags.”
He’s effectively daring the power structure to come at him, while he holds a trump card of truth.
If Richard Luthmann disappears, we’ll all know why. And in the meantime, Staten Island’s halls of power are on notice: their one-time insider-turned-nemesis is done behaving – and he’s ready to blow the whistle loud enough to shake the borough.
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