US journalist sentenced to 2 years in federal prison
Journalist Who Wrote for China's State Media Gets Two-Year Prison Term for Foreign Agent Work
Tyunews.com – A Texas-born reporter who spent more than a decade writing for Beijing's state-run media outlets has received a two-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to functioning as an undisclosed agent of a foreign government. The Justice Department confirmed the ruling on Tuesday, marking another chapter in an escalating wave of prosecutions targeting Americans accused of quietly advancing Chinese state interests without filing required disclosures.
Thomas Weir Pauken II, 51, was arrested in February after returning to the United States in January 2025, where Customs and Border Protection officers flagged him at the border. He subsequently entered a guilty plea earlier this year. His attorney, Charles Burnham, confirmed that no appeal will be pursued.
"Pauken betrayed his country for money" for supporting "Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) operations, recruiting, and gathering of sensitive information from potential assets," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg in the department's news release.
Beyond the prison term, the court imposed 36 months of supervised release during which Pauken may not travel abroad. The combination of incarceration and post-release restrictions signals that prosecutors viewed the case as more than a routine foreign-agents filing violation.
A Career Built Inside China's State Media Apparatus
Pauken relocated to China in 2010 and quickly embedded himself in the country's official news ecosystem. He wrote for multiple Chinese news organizations, including the state broadcaster CCTV, and most recently served as an editor at Xinhua, the government's flagship wire service, a role he occupied from 2024 onward. Over those years, he published two books under his own name: a 2019 volume examining U.S.-China relations and a 2023 work focused on Shenzhen, the mainland city directly opposite Hong Kong.
For much of his time in China, however, Pauken operated under a different identity. At his father's request — his father, who shares the same name and had served as chairman of the Texas Republican Party in the 1990s before running for governor more than a decade ago — the younger Pauken adopted the alias "Tom McGregor" when appearing as a commentator and writer. The arrangement allowed the senior Pauken to keep a distance from his son's China-linked output.
The "Cathy" Network and Classified-Information Recruitment
Court documents reveal that from at least 2019 through February 2026, Pauken produced reports at the direction of individuals he understood to be employed by China's government. Central to that arrangement was a contact he first met in 2017, identified in filings simply as "Cathy." A February 27 federal affidavit, filed by FBI Special Agent Timothy J. Healy, states that "Cathy" told Pauken his written reports were read by President Xi Jinping.
The compensation was substantial: the Justice Department said Pauken received at least $100,000 for his work with "Cathy." Travel expenses for his repeated trips back to the United States were also covered, with wire transfers routinely deposited into his wife's bank accounts, the affidavit noted.
The assignment extended beyond writing. "Cathy" directed Pauken to recruit additional sources who could supply classified information. In one documented instance, he was instructed to meet a figure labeled "Person 1" in the affidavit and hand over a Samsung phone, a computer, and login credentials for Signal, Telegram, and NetDisk — a set of tools designed to facilitate secure communication with Beijing.
When Pauken was interviewed by CBP and FBI agents after his January 2025 return, he told investigators he was "80 percent sure" that a job-seeker in the Trump administration would pass classified material to China, though he had counseled that individual against doing so.
Context: A Pattern of Foreign-Agent Prosecutions
This sentencing arrives amid sustained friction between Washington and Beijing and follows a string of federal cases in which Americans were charged with working for Chinese state interests without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Each prosecution has drawn attention to how deeply state-directed information operations can penetrate American professional life, particularly in journalism, academia, and technology.
Burnham emphasized that his client accepted the court's judgment. He added that, as the government acknowledged in open court, Pauken never handed over any classified information to Chinese officials — a distinction that may explain why the sentence landed at two years rather than a longer term.
"Mr. Pauken has accepted responsibility and respects the court's sentence," Burnham said, adding that "as the government agreed in court, Mr. Pauken did not provide any classified information to the Chinese."
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. In the most recent publicly visible Facebook post under the McGregor name, Pauken shared photographs of his wife and child on a trip, captioning them with a note about enjoying time in Washington, D.C. He was arrested later that same month.
The case underscores a broader question now facing American readers: how easily state-directed intelligence operations can recruit professionals who appear, on the surface, to be ordinary journalists or academics, and how the absence of a single required disclosure form can transform a career into a criminal matter.
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