NOTE: This piece first appeared on NYNewsPress.com.
By M. Thomas Nast with Michael Volpe and Richard Luthmann
Irish Luck Runs Out – McMahon Machine on the Ropes
Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon’s empire is reeling like a stunned prizefighter. His beloved Fighting Irish of Notre Dame just suffered a shocking 27-24 upset loss to the Miami Hurricanes, and now McMahon’s own political machine faces an even bigger comeuppance.
The once-invincible “McMahon machine” is wobbling, hit by an onslaught of scandals and revelations. A bombshell podcast segment – and a trail of evidence from a fake Facebook case and beyond – has thrown McMahon on the defensive.
The timing is poetic: as Miami toppled Notre Dame with a last-minute field goal, ex-attorney turned convict turned whistleblower and investigative reporter Richard Luthmann is toppling McMahon’s luck in the courtroom and the court of public opinion.
Luthmann, a UM die-hard, holds a master’s degree from the University of Miami, having been a student in 2004, when Ken Dorsey, Frank Gore, and Roscoe Parrish led the Canes to a national championship.
Now it’s McMahon’s turn to feel the upset.
Luthmann, famous for once demanding “trial by combat,” has re-emerged as McMahon’s fiercest nemesis. On The Unknown Podcast, Luthmann unleashed a sensational mock cross-examination of McMahon and his ally-turned-judge, Ron Castorina, exposing lies, dishonesty, and cover-ups.
He accuses McMahon of running a “weaponized” justice system on Staten Island – a crony network now cracking under pressure.
“They have criminals running their grand jury rooms… criminals running their district attorney’s office. The criminal-in-chief, being Michael McMahon, in my opinion,” Luthmann proclaimed in the explosive podcast.
With his team’s morale shattered and his reputation on the ropes, McMahon is watching his luck run out in real time.
The Fall of McMahon: Castorina’s Perjury and the Worst-Kept Secret
The scandal swirling around Judge Ron Castorina is the “worst-kept secret in the world,” according to Luthmann. Once a close friend and political ally, Castorina allegedly betrayed Luthmann to save his own skin – and secure a judgeship.
In 2018, before he took the bench, Castorina testified to a grand jury that he “hardly knew” Luthmann and wanted nothing to do with him. He even claimed he had told Luthmann to stop his rogue antics.
Those claims were lies, Luthmann says, and he’s got the receipts. He published Facebook chats showing Castorina actively encouraging the very dirty tricks he later disavowed.
In one 2015 exchange, Luthmann boasted that McMahon’s people “must be going crazy,” and Castorina replied, “totally nuts. Good for you.”
In another, Luthmann suggested a fake campaign page, and Castorina responded that he was “looking for a photo to use.” These damning messages prove Castorina was no innocent bystander – he was a “willing co-conspirator” who lied under oath to save himself.
Luthmann argues Castorina perjured himself at McMahon’s behest, part of a quid pro quo to throw Luthmann under the bus in exchange for a judicial robe. Now that betrayal is coming back to haunt “Lying Ron.”
“I hope Ron is smart enough to make the deal with the feds and help out his Commander in Chief. Trump is the sheriff, and he’s going to clean up New York one way or the other,” Luthmann said. “Maybe Ron’s too stupid, and will go down as a Uni-Party Hack.”
With Castorina’s credibility shot, questions loom over every case he’s touched from the bench. The worst-kept secret is out, and the fallout has only begun.
The Fall of McMahon: Fingerprint Fiasco Unravels Fake Facebook Case
At the center of this war is the bizarre “Fake Facebook” prosecution that McMahon orchestrated against Luthmann – a case now on the brink of collapse. In 2015, Luthmann’s satirical Facebook page mocking McMahon as “Smilin’ Jack” infuriated the future DA.
After McMahon took office, he made sure Luthmann faced criminal charges for the parody. The first special prosecutor, Tom Tormey, declined to charge Luthmann on First Amendment grounds, but McMahon got a second prosecutor – a friend – to indict him. Luthmann calls it “political retribution dressed up as law enforcement.”
Luthmann, stuck in federal prison on unrelated charges, was presented with a bogus plea deal in 2020 to resolve the Facebook case. Now that deal is unraveling.
It turns out Luthmann was never actually arrested or fingerprinted for the Facebook charge – a fatal legal flaw. In New York, no fingerprints means no jurisdiction to prosecute. By law, the court should never have accepted his plea, so Luthmann argues the conviction is void.
When he raised this fingerprint fiasco in court, Judge Raymond Rodriguez, a McMahon crony, abruptly wiped the case’s public docket, making the papers vanish.
“The docket disappeared… I’m innocent here, but DA McMahon cannot allow that for political reasons,” Luthmann said. “And Ray Rodriguez is a corrupt hack. He throws families out on the street in the foreclosure part and takes his orders from the McMahons, who have all the banks on lockdown. There’s nothing redeemable there.”
It echoes a previous scandal: Luthmann once exposed the Part N scheme, in which McMahon’s wife, Judge Judith McMahon, was rigging case assignments to favor the DA. The scheme resulted in her demotion, and she lost $50,000 per year in salary.
With the fingerprint scandal erupting, Luthmann’s 2020 plea could be nullified and the Fake Facebook case retried from scratch. He’s not afraid. Luthmann notes he already served about three years – “I have… a free shot,” he said – so he’d gladly go to trial to finally grill McMahon and Castorina under oath.
The Fall of McMahon: Legal Armageddon – Luthmann’s Federal Offensive
Richard Luthmann smells blood in the water. He’s gearing up for what he calls “legal Armageddon” against the McMahon machine. On the podcast, he made it clear he knows “where all the bodies are buried,” and he intends to bring the whole rotten edifice crashing down.
First on deck: a federal civil-rights lawsuit aimed squarely at McMahon’s office. He says he’ll file a civil rights claim against the officers and against the City under Monell. Luthmann also plans to sue for malicious abuse of process and says McMahon, in his capacity as a private citizen, knowingly, intentionally, and maliciously filed a fraudulent police report.
Luthmann points to the DA’s sworn complaint, in which he stated that he feared for his life over a Substack email and dubiously labeled Luthmann a “stranger.”
“This guy is costing taxpayers millions over me, and the meter keeps running. I don’t even live there anymore, and he’s trying to pull me back in. At a certain point, you have to ask: Is this ‘Luthmann thing’ merely a vanity project, or is there something that Mike is trying to hide?” Luthmann said.
Luthmann is also taking his fight to the feds. He’s urging federal officials to treat McMahon’s conduct as a RICO racketeering and color of law civil rights deprivation scheme.
A recorded phone call already caught an NYPD detective bragging, “With [McMahon] as the victim, I get whatever I want.” Instead of a court warrant, that detective tried to use an improper NYPD “I-Card” – a judge-free arrest alert – to snare Luthmann.
They even schemed to “retroactively create a fake fingerprint card,” once Luthmann was in custody, he says.
Now Internal Affairs is probing this collusion, and Luthmann is pressing his advantage.
“Maybe the Rat Squad does something in the next two months, maybe they don’t. We’ll see,” Luthmann said. “I have a feeling that all of them will be answering federal questions very soon.”
According to sources, the “felony ICARD” remains active in the NYPD system, despite NYPD Detective Wilkinson admitting on tape in early July that he knew Luthmann lived in Florida, no judge signed a felony warrant, and there are clearly no “exigent circumstances.”
“This is textbook deprivation of a liberty interest. The longer they keep it up, the more damning it is for them,” Luthmann said. “When they finally have to stand up and answer the bell, they’ll all get knocked out.”
Like an unranked challenger upsetting a champion, Luthmann is confident McMahon’s reign is nearing its end.
“The only person in the universe that could destroy this entire McMahon machine is Rich Luthmann, and they f-ing know it,” he said.
He has already shredded McMahon’s and Castorina’s credibility with mock cross-examinations in the media.
Just as Miami’s Hurricanes stunned the Fighting Irish, Luthmann is poised to floor Staten Island’s most powerful man.
