STATEN ISLAND GOES SOVIET: DA WANTS FLORIDA JOURNALIST EXTRADITED FOR REPORTING AND FACEBOOK SATIRE
Luthmann’s Free Speech Targeted as Lawfare Escalates—But Who Is the Judge Behind This Stalinist Scheme?
NOTE: This piece was first published on NYNewsPress.com.
By Frankie Pressman and Rick LaRivière
FROM RED TO DEAD: HOW STATEN ISLAND BECAME THE NEW BERLIN WALL
Staten Island used to be the last stand for sanity in New York City.
Now it’s the front line of a Marxist war on speech and expression. Freedom of speech, press, and expression are under assault. And it’s not the first time.
Ask local artist and conservative firebrand Scott LoBaido, who Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon charged last year with serious crimes for “neighborhood beautification.”
“The revenues that Mike and Judy McMahon’s multiple pensions derive from NYC Speed Cameras had a lot to do with it,” said one local conservative activist. “If it were some woke snowflake, the McMahons would have probably given them an award.”
Now, independent conservative journalist and Trump supporter Richard Luthmann is sounding the alarm—and facing jail—for exposing corruption.
On July 14, Michael McMahon caused to be filed a felony arrest warrant for Luthmann, a Florida resident. McMahon was the alleged “victim” and complaining witness.
The alleged crime? Journalism.
McMahon claims Luthmann violated a protective order—one that Luthmann says was never served, never valid, and never enforceable.
The conduct at issue in the underlying case occurred during McMahon’s 2015 campaign for District Attorney, a decade ago. There, Luthmann discovered that DEAD PEOPLE had signed McMahon’s ballot access petitions.
Even the McMahon-sychophantic Staten Island Advance reported on it.
![Staten Island District Attorney Michael E. McMahon [L] and Brian Laline [R] at an event at the Richmond County Country Club.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ekii!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa9b18285-2f18-4b84-837b-b44e701cce3c_486x495.jpeg "Staten Island District Attorney Michael E. McMahon [L] and Brian Laline [R] at an event at the Richmond County Country Club.")
“In true Democrat Party fashion, Mike McMahon raised the dead for his political campaign. McMahon has also obtained the signature of the retired ADA Quentin Smith on the petition. The problem was Quentim moved to Ohio the year before, and denied signing,” Luthmann said. “Since then, he’s tried to put every knife in me he can. It’s the Charles Hines vs. John Kennedy O’Hara feud all over again.”
The new felony warrant for Luthmann’s arrest, issued without legitimate judicial review or probable cause, relies solely on McMahon and his underling’s word, Luthmann says.
That’s right—Staten Island’s top prosecutor filed a police report against a journalist, then had a subordinate NYPD cop type up charges, and a crony judge rubber-stamped it with no oversight.
“McMahon is acting as judge, jury, victim, and executioner,” said Luthmann. “If that doesn’t terrify you, it should.”
He calls it “Institutional Homicide by Lawfare.”
“Within a matter of days, I will be gagged and silenced, unable to report or practice my profession, once again. My outlets will likely go dark,” Luthmann said. “After that, they will try to kill me using the New York Criminal Justice System.”
New York Authorities recently tried the same thing with Steve Bannon.
STATEN ISLAND GOES SOVIET: IS THERE ANY JUDGE IN NEW YORK WITH A SPINE?
Luthmann questions whether any judge signed off on the felony warrant. If so, who?
“I find it hard to believe this was signed by any judge or reviewed in any court,” he said. “If it was, the judge was either brain-dead or a total political hack, and the fix is in.”
It happened under the watch of Administrative Judge Ray Rodriguez. That didn’t happen under his predecessor, Desmond Green.
“Punching my ticket to Rikers might be the price of McMahon’s blessing for Rodriguez’s re-election,” Luthmann warned.
And what if it wasn’t a judge at all—but McMahon’s wife?
“Wouldn’t shock me if the signature was Judy McMahon’s,” he said. “She’s already admitted on tape to silencing the press during her tenure by shutting up sources at 18 Richmond Terrace, her old courtroom.”
Judge Judy McMahon has long faced criticism for authoritarian, anti-press conduct. Audio exists of her bragging about “shutting down” whistleblowers feeding stories to the Staten Island Advance.
“If any judge signed this Star Chamber nonsense, they need to be named,” Luthmann said. “They are either braindead or corrupt. Either way, they cannot discharge their oath of office.”
STATEN ISLAND GOES SOVIET: MCMAHON’S POWER TRIP
This isn’t the first time McMahon has gone after Luthmann.
In 2018, special prosecutors working out of McMahon’s office brought charges of “Falsification of Business Records” against him. This charge would be the blueprint later used by Alvin Bragg against Donald Trump.
Now, it’s the same script: no grand jury, no hearing, no oversight. Just a press-hating leftist prosecutor going full Stasi.
“This is Soviet-style justice,” Luthmann said. “The prosecutor writes the charges, acts as the witness, and pressures the cops and the judges to go along.”
Luthmann’s “crime”? Posting investigative articles and memes about McMahon’s corruption and links to Kamillah and Ettore Mazzei.
“They hate me because I won’t shut up about public corruption by public officials,” he said. “So they want to silence me forever. They want to use the New York judicial-political machine to end me. I think the Ettore Mazzei prosecution is failing, so McMahon is trying to hurt me to look powerful.”
Luthmann says his reporting shows Kamillah Hanks’ husband, Kevin Barry Love, made threats against Muslim activists, and he walks away “scot free,” with no inquiry by the DA’s Office. Sources say the NYC Department of Investigation is looking into the matter.
One Staten Island attorney put it bluntly: “If a DA can arrest you for criticizing him on Facebook, we don’t have a First Amendment anymore.”
STATEN ISLAND GOES SOVIET: A JOURNALIST IN FLORIDA—A FELONY IN NEW YORK?
Luthmann has lived peacefully in Naples, Florida, for four years. He’s a Fourth-Degree Knight of Columbus and a devout parishioner.
He launched a journalism career covering news from New York and Florida, as well as family court reform, the impact of “woke” cancel culture, and the New American Golden Age under President Donald J. Trump.
He also co-hosts THE UNKNOWN PODCAST with Chicago-based fellow journalist Michael Volpe.
Now he’s facing extradition 1,300 miles away—because a blue state prosecutor wants to make an example of him.
On July 20, Luthmann filed a Local Rule 3.01(g) notice in federal court, alerting Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.
He will file a demand that Florida block the extradition under Fla. Stat. § 941.03, as the case is pure lawfare and unsupported by probable cause.
“This is not a crime,” he wrote. “This is political retribution. I’m trying to fight this in court while I am out because if the bogus warrant is executed and they arrest me, I will be sitting in jail for months in Florida while they figure things out.”
He calls it a warning to other red states.
“If Florida caves, every conservative journalist is next,” he said. “This is how Soros-style radicals spread their cancer.”
No one has seen the arrest warrant or affidavit. Luthmann says he will sue in federal court to obtain it.
He believes an NYPD officer-subordinate typed up the charges after McMahon filed his complaint.
“There’s no oversight,” he said. “Just McMahon crying ‘victim’ and using his power as the chief law enforcement officer to crush dissent.”
If a judge approved it, Luthmann says the public deserves to know who.
“If this garbage passed a judge’s desk, they need to be exposed,” he said. “Because right now, Staten Island looks like North Korea.”
STATEN ISLAND GOES SOVIET: FORCED GOVERNMENTAL RELOCATION
Luthmann says he’s likely to be forced back to New York to fight the charges.
“I’m a starving journalist now, and I plan on representing myself. This case is going to take a long time to resolve, so they are pulling me out of Florida, my domicile,” Luthmann says. “I will be forced to live in New York and try to cover more political, family court, and judicial corruption stories up there while I fight this because I can’t afford the travel. This is if they even let me out.”
New York’s no-cash-bail law, enacted in 2019, eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies, aiming to prevent incarceration based on a person’s ability to pay.
“I fully expect to go to Rikers Island and for one of McMahon’s Judges to tag me as a ‘violent maniac’ for keyboard strokes,” Luthmann said. “They were ready to give Scott LoBaido the death penalty for potted plants.”
Luthmann said that his faith in God, the Constitution, and Donald Trump will sustain him.
“I fully expect to be dragged back into the lion’s den as years will be taken from my life and my voice will be silenced based on a bogus pretext. I will do what I did before. If I am at Rikers, I will help other inmates with their papers,” he said. “I’d love to run into Ettore Mazzei. A couple of hours with him and I could give him a strategy to beat McMahon’s charges against him.”
Luthmann was previously incarcerated in the federal system at Brooklyn MDC, Devens FMC, and Allenwood LSCI. He was a jailhouse lawyer who made life difficult for prosecutors.
“I ran into Anthony Weiner, Peter Madoff, Martin Skreli, and the Silk Road’s number 2, Roger Thomas Clark. I also saved members of La Cosa Nostra, the Bloods, and others decades in jail because of bogus prosecutorial action under the Obama-Biden Deep State DOJ,” Luthmann said. “During COVID, there was a line out my cell door because I was getting people out on compassionate release.”
Luthmann said he thought the “bullshit” would end with President Trump’s re-election. He said President Trump is the “champion” of the incarcerated American, but his 2018 First Step Act still has not yet been fully implemented in federal prisons.
“The Marxists among us have doubled down,” he said.
STATEN ISLAND GOES SOVIET: THE FIGHT FOR NEW YORK’S SOUL
New York conservatives are tired. From Zohran Mamdani to Alvin Bragg, the radical left has hijacked the state.
Now even Staten Island’s red line is under siege.
“Staten Island used to be the last safe borough,” said Luthmann. “Now the DA acts like he’s running Pyongyang.”
He believes McMahon’s goal is to bankrupt him, derail civil lawsuits, destroy his reputation as a reporter, and ultimately silence him – finally.
“They want me silenced and broken,” he said. “But I won’t back down.”
He’s calling on every New Yorker and American to demand transparency and accountability about McMahon’s actions against him.
“We need to know—did any judge actually authorize this?” Luthmann said. “If not, McMahon has made himself a one-man kangaroo court.”
If so, then the Staten Island judiciary controlled by Administrative Judge Ray Rodriguez has become part of the problem.
STATEN ISLAND GOES SOVIET: “I’LL FIGHT UNTIL THEY SILENCE ME.”
Luthmann says he expects to be arrested within the week unless Florida Governor DeSantis and federal authorities intervene.
“They want me gagged and gone. This is weaponized justice,” he said. “But I’ll fight, fight, fight.”
He draws inspiration from Donald Trump.
“There is nothing they can do to me to shake my belief that God sent Donald Trump to Save America. If I have to suffer at the hands of the wicked, it is His plan,” Luthmann said.
Luthmann also sees his case as a test for Florida and the United States.
“This is a fifty-state issue, just like immigration,” he said. “If we don’t stop this here, we’ll lose the whole country. The Marxist subversion is already inside the gates.”
And his final message?
“If they can do this to me, they’ll do it to you. Wake up. Speak up. Fight back. God wants us to usher in the New American Golden Age, and he sent us Donald Trump.”
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What is happening to this country….Luthmann is an honest journalist. God help us all🙏🙏🙏🙏