Emailgate: Staten Island DA McMahon Suffers Selective Amnesia, Forgets Decade-Long Feud with Luthmann

By Frank Parlato

Richard Luthmann lives in Florida.

The Staten Island DA, Michael McMahon, signed a felony criminal contempt complaint against Luthmann on July 14, 2025. He said he is afraid for his safety or his life because of Luthmann, who is 1200 miles away.

McMahon was not acting in his official capacity as District Attorney, but rather as a personal and allegedly terrified victim of Luthmann when he swore out a criminal complaint. He said he was scared for his safety and his very life.

What sent this timid man over the edge was that Luthmann, a former Staten Island attorney-turned-felon, turned journalist, sent him his Substack newsletter.

An Email did the Trick

According to a filed NYPD criminal complaint, McMahon, as a private citizen-victim, alleged that Luthmann committed a felony violation of a criminal protective order when Substaack sent out a July 13 newsletter from Luthmann’s Substack account that landed in McMahon’s inbox – not his private inbox but his public Richmond County District Attorney inbox.

The email in question went out to not only McMahon but to 33,000 other subscribers.

The distraught McMahon said Luthmann’s email placed him in mortal fear of death or bodily harm and that whoever this guy Luthmann was, he was a “stranger” to him.

Being a stranger, as you know, sets off alarm bells for law enforcement- a stalking stranger. He could be anywhere. Hiding behind the corners, waiting in the shadows for the jittery DA McMahon, or even more harrowing, Luthmann might be sending him emails through Substack along with 33,000 others.

McMahon had been receiving the Luthmann newsletter for three weeks. McMahon had been a subscriber; somehow, he was on a subscribers’ list. Maybe he subscribed himself, or the scary Luthmann might have put it on there.

He Looked at Plenty of Emails

But in three weeks, the horrified and easily cowed McMaghon, according to Substack records, had received more than 80 emails of the newsletter, on an array of topics. Substack sends out an email every time Luthmann posts a story.

Which he does dozens of times every week.

And being on a subscriber list, Substack keeps track of how often subscribers open an email. The now-disquieted DA even clicked on the links, taking him directly to Luthmann’s Substack page, according to Substack records, which must have frightened the bejesus out of him.

Suddenly, on July 13, a triggered McMahon got his 84th email from Luthman’s subscriber series, along with 34,000 others, and it scared him mightily and greviously. Scared him for his safety or life. A diaper-filling kind of scare that cowardly men often experience even when there is no real threat.

But an email came- on a Sunday morning. And the harrowed Mr. McMahon waited for what one can only imagine as an interminable period of mortification and fear, some 24 hours, until he called in the police on Monday to protect him from an email.

It would make sense if the email in question were named McMahon – or even named him once in it- but the email was not about McMahon – it was unrelated to McMahon.

Luthmann did not write the email – other than an introductory word. A psychiatrist named Bandy Lee wrote it for Luthmann’s Substack. It was about a judge in New Jersey. It doesn’t even tangentially relate to the easily-rattled DA Mike McMahon.

Yet after receiving 83 emails, opening 25 of them, going on and off Luthmann’s Substack page for weeks, the uber-paranoid McMahon got mortified by Substack email newsletter 84 and filed a criminal complaint that Luthmann violated some protective order.

Luthmann says he never received personal service of any protective order, was never in New York State, and was unaware of any restrictions about sending a mass email to the inbox of McMahon or anyone on earth. He is in the business of amplifying his work.

But the tremulous McMahon said they were strangers.

That’s not true based on any normal person’s definition.

His panic attack – perhaps caused by guilt or for other reasons – may have caused a sort of temporary amnesia.

Not Really Strangers

Luthmann and McMahon share a history within Staten Island’s Democratic circles. Both men were active in the Democratic Organization of Richmond County, a local party apparatus with its own Facebook and Google Groups forum, until a schism in 2015.

Luthmann broke ranks with the party and crossed party lines to endorse McMahon’s Republican opponent, Joan Illuzzi, for DA. Luthmann issued a press release touting Illuzzi’s credentials and castigating McMahon’s lack of prosecutorial experience.

He previously represented a whistleblower against McMahon’s wife, Judge Judith McMahon, which caused McMahon’s wife to be demoted.

Later, McMahon, claiming he was a victim, got a special prosecutor to criminally charge Luthmann for a Facebook parody page Luthmann had made mocking McMahon.

It was cute the way McMahon timed the charges. Luthman, at the time, had a more serious federal issue and took a plea deal to both the federal case and, almost as an afterthought, the stupid Facebook case.

So McMahon, on the record, was a victim of Luthmann. Not of physical threats, not for anything violent, but for a Facebook parody twisted into impersonation. That was 10 years ago.

But Luthmann’s 2025 Substack is not impersonating McMahon. It is in Luithmann’s name. No doubt about that. And it did not mention McMahon—no question about that.

This is not a stranger but a political adversary who uses legal speech, not threats.

But the petrified McMahon filed a complaint and said, “Luthmann? Who is he?”

Improper Influence

A clue to the tomfoolery lies in the police side of things.

A silly man by the name and title of NYPD Detective John Wilkinson, who is evidently so used to doing things at MaMchon’s bidding and without scrutiny that he thought he could say anything, any stupid thing at all, to Luthmann’s attorney.

Det. Wilkinson is the man handling the warrant for McMahon’s criminal complaint against Luthmann. He admits on tape that any warrant request, even false ones, gets rubber-stamped if McMahon wants it.

“With the victim who it is [McMahon], I get whatever I want,” Wilkinson says, in what amounts to a criminal confession made to, of all people, Luthmann’s attorney, who taped the statement.

The talkative NYPD detective says that he, McMahon, and the judges around Richmond County are as corrupt as Luthmann always said they were.

Wilkinson admits that the Richmond County judges are under McMahon’s thumb, and the not-so-wiley detective offers a de facto racketeering threat invoking federal implications:

[“Tell your client to] come in or we’ll send the U.S. Marshals to Florida.”

All this before a judge even signed a warrant.

Wilkinson incredible confession.

Abuse of Process and Obstruction

Filing a felony criminal complaint over a mass newsletter is, in most places, frivolous. Especially since McMahon was a subscriber, and the content was not about him. But this is Staten Island.

Wilkinson’s recorded comments suggest collusion between police and prosecutors.

Suggesting that judges sign warrants without legal scrutiny is an indictment in the wings for someone in Richmond County’s judiciary.

Psychological Insight

But then there is the psychological aspect.  It was some great psychologist who probably said, “the Devil always takes a step too far- or says a thing too much.”

Wilkinson’s step too far or slip of the lip was when he referred to Luthmann as “the victim“ of the complaint. He quickly corrected himself to say Luthmann was the subject of the complaint – but we all knew what he meant.

McMahon wants Luthmann prosecuted for speech. 

This case has the earmarks of: 

• A First Amendment retaliation prosecution,
• A bad-faith criminal complaint,
• A judiciary that’s functioning ike an enforcer of political vendettas rather than an arbiter of law.

Illegal

This isn’t just DA McMahon railroading Luthmann – perhaps for the second time. It’s a microcosm of how, in Staten Island, local political power can co-opt the justice system.

If emails sent to a public official can trigger felony warrants, and if judges and police work as extensions of that timorous official’s fragile ego, then the safety threat isn’t Luthmann.

It’s what Staten Island’s courthouse has become: A personal enforcement squad for Michael McMahon.

Wilkinson’s taped comments may warrant a federal investigation. The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau has already assigned IAB Log #2025-24036 to investigate the Wilkinson matter.

Psychological Questions About McMahon’s Mental Health

For purposes of a deeper insight and possibly in a vein of satirical commentary, we spoke to FrankReport’s resident and potentially fictitious psychiatrist, Dr. Edwin Maxwell, to find out what ails McMahon.

Dr. Maxwell said, “Mr. McMahon exhibits manipulative affective presentation suggestive of strategic symptom amplification or feigned emotional distress, inconsistent with genuine psychophysiological indicators of fear or trauma response.

“Or said more simply, Mr. McMahon’s reported fear response appears to be inconsistent with known trauma symptomatology and may reflect a pattern of strategic symptom fabrication consistent with malingering or factitious behavior, potentially underpinned by narcissistic and antisocial personality traits. His presentation suggests a calculated effort to assume the victim role for external legal and reputational advantage, rather than a genuine affective disturbance.”

Doc, we knew it all along. 

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

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