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.”
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?
