Trump Approves Pardon for Ex-Officer Convicted in a Chinese Government Plot

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Nov. 7, 2025 President Trump has approved a pardon for a retired New York police officer who was sentenced in April to 18 months in prison for his participation in a Chinese government plot to locate, surveil and intimidate a family in the New Jersey suburbs.

The former officer, Michael McMahon, of Mahwah, N.J., was convicted by a jury in 2023 of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and interstate stalking, as well as conspiracy.

Prosecutors claimed that the efforts of Mr. McMahon and his co-conspirators were intended to coerce a Chinese couple living in New Jersey to return to China to face corruption charges.

The prosecutors presented the plot as part of Operation Fox Hunt, a decade-long push that Chinese officials claim is aimed at repatriating fugitives. The Justice Department contended that the campaign was part of the Communist Party’s push to control Chinese nationals around the world.
But Mr. McMahon’s defenders say he was tricked into participating in the plot while working as a private investigator. They say he cooperated with the federal investigation, only to face aggressive tactics from prosecutors in the Justice Department during the Biden administration who were intent on making an example of Mr. McMahon.

While he was awaiting sentencing, he and his wife attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January. And they had support from people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, and Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump associate and friend who had urged the president to issue the pardon.

“I am glad that the president pardoned him,” Mr. Lawler said in an interview. “It was the right thing to do.”

That influence campaign followed a formula that has been shown to resonate with Mr. Trump, who has complained that he, too, was harmed by politically motivated investigations. Mr. Trump has used the unfettered presidential clemency power to reward allies and make political points, including casting prosecutions of his supporters as corrupt witch hunts.

A White House official echoed that framing in a statement confirming the pardon of Mr. McMahon. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, argued that the trial was flawed and that Mr. McMahon was tricked into participating in the effort by someone who cast it as an investigation into an individual who had embezzled funds from a construction company.

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