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A former Westchester County mayor convicted on charges he stole campaign funds is asking for a full pardon from Gov. Kathy Hochul, The Post has learned.
Richard Thomas, Mount Vernon’s mayor from 2016-19, sent a conspiracy-filled letter dated Tuesday claiming the probe that led to his guilty plea and ouster from office was improperly launched by high-ranking state officials who wanted him out of the way.
The letter is 537 pages long with various attachments, including memes, visual aids like a photo of the Bill of Rights hanging in his old office — and political cartoons depicting him illustrated by a former staff member.
Thomas defended the length of his request, saying “there’s no shortcut” to explaining his home city’s problems with corruption and how he ended up a victim.
“This situation cannot fit into a TikTok,” Thomas told The Post. “We’re looking to the governor to address this and really fix Mount Vernon, fix the problem and hopefully fix me – because I was unnecessarily broken by powerful forces that wanted to keep spending Mount Vernon’s money.”
The ex-mayor, who never did time behind bars as part of his guilty plea, said he feels vindicated by a scathing audit released by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli last month. It concluded one Thomas rival in City Hall issued millions through unauthorized electronic payments and didn’t pay some obligations on time, or at all.
But still Thomas blames DiNapoli and the state attorney general’s office for not heeding his calls to probe former city Comptroller Deborah Reynolds and other issues in the city of 70,000 years ago when he claimed to be sounding the horn. In one of the cartoons attached to his letter, Thomas is depicted with using a weedwacker labeled “truth, justice, transparency” and chopping down weeds and corruption while snakes lunge at him.
A spokesperson for DiNapoli noted the office has conducted several audits of the struggling city’s books.
“The former mayor pled guilty to multiple misdemeanors and admitted in court to stealing about $13,000 from his campaign,” Communications Director Jennifer Freeman told The Post. “Our office has conducted multiple financial and operational audits over the years of the city, including one released just a few weeks ago. The current mayor and city council have agreed with our findings and recommendations and are acting on them.”
Thomas was the youngest mayor in Mount Vernon history when he took office at age 33 in 2016 but two years into his first term he was arrested and slapped with a slew of charges including felony grand larceny. His 2019 guilty plea on misdemeanor charges, including his admitting that he improperly spent $12,900 from his campaign committee and agreeing to leave office.
He said he agreed to the plea to protect his family and avoid the possibility of jail time. But since his conviction, he has chalked up the charges to clerical errors that he should have been able to correct without criminal charges. Thomas had tried unsuccessfully to get a court to toss out his case when former state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned amid a sex-abuse scandal, saying the office lacked jurisdiction.
Thomas is also asking Hochul to pardon former top aide and Mount Vernon city attorney Lawrence Porcari, who was sentenced to 1 to 3 years behind bars for using $360,000 in money from the city Board of Water Supply to pay for Thomas’ attorneys and a public relations firm after the ex-mayor’s arrest, The Journal News reported.
Porcari’s case is on appeal and he isn’t a signee to the letter, which is addressed to Hochul and the Executive Clemency Bureau of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which would review the application and forward it to the governor if the request is found to be eligible.
“What happened to us was wrong and was retaliation from larger, darker, dirty political forces,” Thomas wrote in his letter. “A pardon can begin the process of restoring our good names and giving us another shot at living a normal life … It will also show that your Administration means to take action and not content itself with empty rhetoric of clean and ethical government.”
A Hochul spokesperson said the office couldn’t discuss the specific application from Thomas.
“While we cannot comment on pending clemency applications as the process is confidential, Governor Hochul is committed to improving justice, fairness, and safety in the criminal justice system, and we are reviewing applications in this context,” said Hazel Crampton-Hays, a spokesperson for Hochul.
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