An ex-NYPD cop has gone on trial alongside two others for allegedly working for a Chinese government campaign of intimidation.
Michael McMahon, a former Sergeant within the New York City Police Department, has denied that he had any knowledge that a private surveillance job he took had any links to the Chinese government.
As previously reported McMahon, alongside four other men, was arrested back in 2020 in relation to a targeted campaign aimed at forcing a former Chinese official to return to the country in order to face criminal charges.
According to a report by Reuters, U.S. prosecutors believe the ex-CCP official was being intimidated as part of China’s Operation Fox Hunt, an international plot aimed at coercing and intimidating enemies of the Communist regime to return home.
The ex-officer’s legal council denies that he had any knowledge of this plot, claiming that McMahon thought he was actually working for a Chinese construction company looking to recover assets from the former CCP official.
In his opening statement to the court, McMahon’s lawyer even said that the former law enforcement official even alerted local American law enforcement to his activities.
“If he’s secretly acting on behalf of the Chinese government, is he going to call the cops and tell them?” lawyer Lawrence Lustberg asked the court. “He had no idea, none … that he was working for China.”
Prosecutors have meanwhile alleged that McMahon did in fact know the true nature of the job, and merely opted to look the other way.
Speaking on the ongoing trial, a Chinese government spokesman denied that McMahon nor either of his co-defendants were Chinese law enforcement officials, describing the charges as “nothing but rumors and slanders”.
Paradoxically, the official also reportedly appeared to justify their alleged actions, saying that “[r]epatriating corrupt fugitives and recovering illegal proceeds are a just cause widely recognized by the international community”.
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