Convicted Ex-Suffolk DA Thomas Spota and Aide Christopher McPartland Ask Trump for Pardons

Thomas Spota, the former Suffolk County District Attorney, and his onetime top aide Christopher McPartland have filed petitions with the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney seeking clemency from President Trump, according to the agency's public database as reported by the New York Post and Newsday.

Both men were convicted in 2019 on federal charges including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and acting as accessories to the deprivation of a prisoner's civil rights. Spota, now 84, ran the DA's office for 16 years as a Democrat. McPartland, listed as 60 in Newsday's report (50 in the Post's), headed the office's anti-corruption bureau.

The underlying crime dates to 2012. Then-Suffolk Police Chief James Burke had a duffel bag stolen from his department vehicle by Christopher Loeb, a heroin addict arrested on burglary charges. The bag contained Burke's gun belt, ammunition, Viagra, sex toys, and pornography. Burke and a group of detectives Newsday describes as his "palace guard" beat Loeb while he was handcuffed at a police precinct. Spota and McPartland were convicted of orchestrating the cover-up that followed.

Burke pleaded guilty separately to federal charges tied to the beating and served most of a nearly four-year sentence. He is not listed in the pardon database, according to the Post. Burke was arrested again in August 2023 on accusations of exposing himself in front of an undercover park ranger; the Post reports those charges are expected to be dropped later this year if he stays out of trouble.

Spota and McPartland each received five-year federal sentences and served roughly two years apiece. Both were disbarred. Spota has taken work as a clerk at a Long Island law firm; McPartland now runs his own consulting firm, McPartland Federal Prison Strategies, advising well-off convicts, according to the Post.

McPartland's public pitch

Unlike Spota, who has stayed quiet, McPartland has taken his clemency campaign public. He sat for an interview with conservative TikTok personality Nick Shirley, telling him the prosecution was "a classic, textbook example of weaponization" and crediting the Trump administration with trying to "uncover and expose" that kind of misconduct, according to Newsday, which reviewed the interview.

McPartland also told Shirley that before 2016 he had "stumbled across some very high-level federal law enforcement misconduct" under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, suggesting his prosecution was retaliatory rather than merited.

The argument a reasonable supporter of the pardon would make is that a Democratic-appointed U.S. Attorney's office pursued two local Republicans-turned-prosecutors with unusual zeal, and that McPartland's claimed discovery of separate federal misconduct explains why he became a target. This is the actual basis McPartland has given in public, on the record, under his own name.

But that claim doesn't erase what a jury found. Spota and McPartland weren't convicted for investigating anyone. They were convicted for helping bury the beating of a handcuffed suspect by the county's own police chief, a case that involved documented physical injury to Loeb and a conspiracy that ran through the prosecutor's office meant to check police abuse, not cover for it. Attorney Anthony La Pinta, a longtime friend who worked on Spota's defense and once employed him as a work-release clerk, told Newsday that Spota's pardon request rests on his personal and professional record, not a dispute over the facts of the case. Neither Spota nor McPartland responded to Newsday's requests for comment.

Context: this isn't Trump's first Long Island clemency question

Newsday's opinion section, in a piece examining former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano's own upcoming resentencing, noted Trump has already granted clemency to a string of Long Island-connected figures: former Rep. George Santos, whose sentence was commuted after he served three of 87 months; and Jonathan Braun, a convicted drug dealer whose sentence Trump commuted and who was later sent back to federal prison for 27 months on new charges, including allegedly threatening a hospital nurse and groping a family nanny. Trump also pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and issued blanket clemency to nearly 1,600 people charged in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, at least 19 of whom Newsday says have since been charged with new crimes.

Mangano, convicted of pressuring the Town of Oyster Bay to backstop loans for a restaurateur who gave his wife a $454,000 no-show job, is due to be resentenced September 15 by U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack after an appeals court threw out part of his 2019 conviction. His lawyers are asking for a reduced term; prosecutors want the original 12 years upheld.

No decision has been made on the Spota or McPartland petitions. Both sit with the DOJ's Office of the Pardon Attorney, which reviews clemency requests and forwards recommendations to the president. There is no public timeline for when, or if, Trump will act.