**LUTHMANN NOTE: There are different kinds of family court advocates. Dave Weigel is a top one-percent Wall Street fiduciary and internationally recognized human rights defender. I’m a former attorney, politically railroaded, and I rebuilt my life as a working journalist covering institutional abuse. Paul Boyne, the former publisher of the blog, was also railroaded, but into a twenty-year term amounting to an effective death sentence. (I fully expect him to be vindicated on appeal and become a millionaire at Connecticut’s expense, if they don’t “Kill Whitey” first.) But don’t confuse any of that with Jason and Erin Samaritano’s “accountability act.” It’s nothing more than a Bonnie and Clyde hustle. Their record includes a judicially condemned complaint campaign, Jason’s theft-related and stalking convictions, and new criminal charges of targeted retaliation, harassment, and threats. They are currently in pre-trial lock-up. Weigel and I defend the right to savage corrupt public officials in the defense of the victims of the family courts, rejecting the idea that the word “reform” can serve as camouflage for abusing others. Not so for the Samaritanos. While New Jersey prosecutors must prove these new charges, the established record already warrants contempt and scrutiny. Jason and Erin Samaritanos cannot borrow a persecution narrative to wash their own filthy **
By the time Ocean County, New Jersey, assigned Jason Samaritano booking number 15-240930, a judge had already described probation as his “last chance.” His wife, Erin, received the neighboring number, 15-240929. Their October 21 bookings put a hard date on a remarkable reversal for a couple whose public campaign has centered on accusing other people of misconduct.
The State of New Jersey laid 47 criminal charges between them, 35 against Jason and 12 against Erin, arising from what investigators describe as retaliation, harassment, and stalking directed at public officials. After years of pointing toward everybody else’s supposed corruption, the latest paperwork points squarely back at the accusers.
The charges carry substantial potential prison exposure, including ordinary terms of three to five years for third-degree convictions and up to 18 months for fourth-degree convictions. Consecutive sentences could push the aggregate into decades. Jason’s existing probation creates an additional potential sentencing consequence.
The complaint-warrants describe Jason’s conduct toward 14 officials, and Erin’s toward four, including repeated accusatory posts and photographs involving officials or their families. Jason’s reported conduct also includes calls and voicemails, along with a charge accusing him of threatening harm to influence a proceeding involving Judge Benjamin Telsey. Judge Robert L. Tarver Jr. found probable cause on October 19. The Ocean County summaries for Jason and Erin confirm their subsequent bookings and list retaliation, harassment, and stalking entries.
The arrests also sharpen a dispute this publication has followed for months. Human rights advocate and family court watchdog Dave Weigel says the Samaritanos are behind a similarly named website attacking his Family Court Fraud Warrior Project.
“A parent who reaches out for help may already be afraid of losing time with their child. Then we ask them to trust a stranger with some of the most painful details of their life. I take that trust seriously,” Weigel said. “Nobody should get to use a parent’s fear, grief, or desperation against them. But that is precisely what I believe Jason and Erin Samaritano have done.”
The New Jersey courts have already produced a record devastating to the Samaritano’s self-righteous act. Before these recent arrests came a mass of failed complaints, a statewide screening order, and a judgment documenting Jason’s theft-related and stalking pleas.
“What’s alleged in the Samaritano case is despicable, and I have lived it along with a legion of Family Court Fraud Warriors. Once the evidence shows, as I am certain that it will, that people were threatened and targeted in retaliation, everyone who claims to care about family court reform ought to have the spine to condemn it,” Weigel said
Anybody still applauding the Samaratianos’ performance should read what happened before the latest curtain went up.
A crucial document is the Superior Court’s September 16, 2025 opinion. It describes approximately 65 citizen complaints and an independent Gloucester County prosecutor’s review that found probable cause for none. The court found a pattern of frivolous or patently nonmeritorious claims.
Approximately 65 complaints, and no probable cause. That is an extraordinary failure rate for people presenting accusations as a public service. Volume gave their campaign the appearance of substance, while the review described by the court found the evidentiary foundation missing.
A mountain of paper can still be a monument to somebody’s inability to support what they are saying.
Judge Benjamin C. Telsey responded with a signed order in GLO-L-000834-25 requiring judicial screening of their pending and future new complaint requests throughout New Jersey before filing. The order preserved a route for meritorious submissions, required compliance with court rules, and demanded proper probable-cause certifications for criminal complaints.
Its practical meaning was humiliating: the accusation machine needed a gatekeeper. The people campaigning against the abuse of institutions had generated a filing record that prompted an institution to restrain their use of its machinery. That contradiction should follow Jason and Erin Samaritano’s credibility pitch into every forum where they ask to be taken seriously.
Consider the cost of that performance. Every unsupported complaint demands a response from somebody, consumes resources, and competes for attention with people carrying evidence of actual wrongdoing. The families these advocates claim to care about know exactly what delay and exhausted resources can do. A campaign of meritless filings feeds the dysfunction they say they oppose.
The screening order and the new prosecution remain separate proceedings. The chronology establishes an ample warning. A court had examined the complaint campaign, found it wanting, and imposed statewide supervision before October’s arrests ever occurred.
Then comes Jason’s March 2026 amended criminal judgment, which makes the integrity routine even harder to stomach. Its account of his history lists 25 arrests, eight indictable convictions, and a probation violation. The judgment records negotiated guilty pleas involving theft by deception, failure to make required disposition, and stalking.
The convictions and pleas matter far more than the arrest count: they place adjudicated dishonesty and stalking inside the record of a man publicly passing judgment on other people’s character. A reform movement that treats those facts as an inconvenient interruption has surrendered the very scrutiny it demands from everybody else.
The court described a “repetitive offender,” warned that Jason was “highly likely to reoffend” without a substantial attitude change, and characterized probation as his “last chance.” The amendment added $11,496.58 in restitution in one case. There is a concrete obligation to a victim sitting inside this story, beneath the grand claims about exposing other people’s misconduct.
Jason’s audience ought to spend some time with that document. He can challenge a judge, criticize a prosecutor, or condemn a court system. His own judgment still exists, with its convictions, restitution, and warning. A loud enough denunciation cannot make the reader unsee it.
His effort to obtain federal intervention brought another collision between accusation and the required evidence. In Samaritano v. State of New Jersey, the Third Circuit affirmed denial of preliminary relief on June 2, 2025, under Younger abstention, which generally bars federal interference with ongoing state criminal proceedings. The opinion found his unsupported conspiracy assertions insufficient to establish the exceptional circumstances required for an injunction.
That was a procedural ruling, and its message was precise: extraordinary relief required a showing he had failed to make. Jason Samaritano’s perpetual-persecution narrative had reached another court, where declaring a conspiracy did not supply the missing proof.
The campaign against Dave Weigel takes this story out of the courthouse and into the place where frightened families decide whom to trust. His Family Court Fraud Warrior Project operates at the singular domain, familycourtfraudwarrior.com, and describes a mission built around examining court records, analysis, and a public account of institutional misconduct. Families deciding whether to contribute records are making consequential choices about sensitive information. A campaign persuading them to distrust the recipient can cut off material before anyone has examined what it proves. That is why the attack on Weigel’s credibility matters beyond an ugly quarrel between advocates.
Add an “s,” and familycourtfraudwarriors.com takes readers to FCFWarriors, an anti-Weigel operation whose header attacks him by name. Weigel calls it a fake site impersonating his project.
The near-identical address is observable; the current site also openly proclaims its hostility. My April 3 reporting examined the campaign, including a warning against sending documentation to Weigel. I regarded that message as an attack on the evidence supply sustaining his work.
A domain one letter away from his project gives that attack an especially consequential position: directly in the path of people looking for him.
Weigel says he believes Jason and Erin Samaritano are responsible. The campaign he describes and the conduct Williams reports share a recognizable method: sustained personal targeting wrapped in the language of accountability. The evidence reviewed and its publishing timeline supply a lead.
“The look-alike website bothers me because I know what’s at stake for a parent trying to reach us. They may be about to share a custody order or information about their child,” Weigel said. “One extra letter in a web address shouldn’t put them in the middle of some deranged would-be Bonnie and Clyde’s criminal vendetta campaign. I want to know who runs that site, and I want parents to know exactly who they’re dealing with.”
A contact and community page carries a September 20 publication date and an October 11 update timestamp. October 11 was the latest dated update identified; no dated update after the October 21 arrests was found on the pages examined. That gap deserves investigation alongside Weigel’s allegation, although it cannot establish who held the controls.
The response history belongs here, too. Under a December 2025 article on this platform, a comment posted in Erin’s name disputed the coverage, denied that the couple had driven past Weigel’s residences, and offered their account of court corruption.
Our April reporting acknowledged uncertainty about who built the site. Those responses remain in the record. So does Weigel’s identification of the people he suspects.
The people behind this operation should expect the scrutiny they have directed at their target: names, records, responsibility, and evidence capable of surviving something more demanding than applause from their own audience.
The Samaritanos retain every constitutional protection owed to a criminal defendant. Fierce criticism of government is protected speech. State v. Burkert rejects automatically converting offensive expression into criminal harassment, and Counterman v. Colorado requires at least recklessness about a statement’s threatening character in true-threat prosecutions.
Everywhere under the United States Constitution (with the possible exception of Connecticut), prosecutors must prove the new charges; both Samaritano defendants here are presumed innocent. But their record makes their accountability performance an insult to the serious work of reform.
Approximately 65 complaints failed probable-cause review. A court imposed statewide screening. Jason’s judgment records theft-related and stalking pleas, prior convictions, and restitution. Families should not have to excavate that history after being asked to accept somebody’s authority to identify the villains in their lives.
“I’ll defend anyone’s right to criticize a crooked judge who has abandoned the Constitution and common sense. And that includes people who can’t stand me,” Weigel said. “I’ll also ask hard questions about the conduct of people who call themselves reformers. A parent deciding whom to trust deserves honest answers, especially when the answers are inconvenient for our own movement.”
Nor should advocates who share platforms and audiences with the Samaritanos confuse loyalty with the suspension of judgment. A microphone confers reach. It does not wash the record clean.
Family-court reform is too important to become a reputational laundromat. Parents confronting genuine abuse of power need advocates whose evidence holds up and whose own conduct can withstand examination. I’ve come clean about my own past, and will answer any questions about the Lawfare campaign lodged against me. The Samaritanos have dodged at every turn. Their documented complaint campaign has earned my contempt, and Jason’s judgment makes his moral-superiority act grotesque.
Jason and Erin have demanded exacting scrutiny of others (including me) while accumulating a record that demands answers from them. Any movement serious about protecting families should have the spine to examine it, require evidence from the people making accusations, and refuse to confuse a fellow advocate’s demand for loyalty with an entitlement to public trust.
The Samaritanos brought their accusations to the world. Their own documents deserve an equally large audience.
