21 hours ago
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A pair of Republican lawmakers are urging a federal judge to exonerate Michael McMahon, a former hero cop turned private investigator convicted of spying for the Chinese government — although he maintains he had no idea that’s what he’d been hired to do.
McMahon faces more than seven years in prison at his sentencing next week, The Post has learned.
Pete Sessions (R. Texas) and Michael Lawler (R. NY) are asking US District Court Judge Pamela Chen to give “full and fair consideration of the unique circumstances surrounding Mr. McMahon’s case,” according to a joint letter from the two lawmakers filed last week in New York’s Eastern District court.
“Since being charged Mr. McMahon has been unwavering in maintaining his innocence,” the letter said. “We also believe in his innocence.”
Two years ago, New Jersey-based McMahon, 57, was the first PI in the US to be convicted in Operation Fox Hunt, the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign targeting Chinese nationals abroad.
He and his family have long maintained he was a scapegoat, used by the Department of Justice to score political points by seeking a conviction on rampant Chinese spying in the US.
The McMahons said the DOJ did not communicate its concerns about Operation Fox Hunt until after McMahon was charged with conspiring to act as an illegal agent of China in 2020.
In June, 2023, McMahon, along with two others, was found guilty of stalking a New Jersey couple on behalf of the communist country, which has set up more than 100 overseas police stations to spy on dissidents and Chinese nationals around the world.
The Post was first to reveal a Chinese overseas police station situated above a noodle shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The Chinese government has also used a series of private investigators in the US to illegally obtain intelligence, according to court documents.
In their letter to Chen, the lawmakers stressed McMahon’s 14 years of service for the NYPD, which presented him with 75 awards for merit and bravery.
“We ask that you consider Michael’s dedication to the United States, his community, his service while on the NYPD, and the often pro-bono work he did as a private investigator for those in need,” said Sessions and Lawler in their letter.
“Since the onset of this case, Michael has lost nearly everything while never wavering from his declaration of innocence. Therefore, we ask that you give full and fair consideration of the unique circumstances of Michael and his family and that he not be sentenced to any term of incarceration.”
In addition to the Congressional Reps, a House Committee investigating China also questioned the DOJ’s prosecution of McMahon.
In their October 2024 report — “CCP Political Warfare: Federal Agencies Urgently Need a Government-Wide Strategy” — the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability cited McMahon’s case, noting that “it remains to be known whether DOJ will address valid concerns that it is engaging in ‘weaponization of the federal government.’
“Recent public reporting raises a number of questions as to DOJ’s enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) against an individual who reportedly was unaware that his client for private investigation services, a translation company in New York, was involved with the Chinese government,” continued the report, which cited The Post’s previous reporting on the McMahon case.
The five year legal battle has taken its toll on the father of three’s family, said his wife Martha Byrne, an Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the daytime soap opera “As the World Turns.”
“To listen to the assault on Mike’s character falsely portrayed by the government to a jury when he did not commit any crime and is a hero who puts all others before himself, was a shocking display of the ‘win at all costs’ tactics by the DOJ which is the antithesis of what our country is supposed to represent,” said Byrne, whose book about the case, “In the Interest of Justice: How My NYPD Hero Cop Husband Turned PI was Falsely Prosecuted by the FBI”will be released in May.
McMahon was hired in fall 2016 by what he believed was a translation company from New Jersey to do surveillance on a luxury Short Hills, NJ, home occupied by a relative of Xu Jin and Liu Fang, and to use public records to find companies and other assets registered to the couple.
He was told that he was locating assets for a civil court case.
Xu and Liu, he was told, had stolen money from a construction company and the people who hired him wanted to find where the cash had gone.
What he was not told was that Xu was a former official in Wuhan, who had fled China amid allegations of corruption.
English (US)