An American journalist has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for acting as an agent of a foreign government in the United States, the US Justice Department said.
Thomas Weir Pauken II, 51, pleaded guilty earlier this year and does not plan to appeal, according to his defense lawyer, Charles Burnham. Pauken was also sentenced to 36 months of supervised release and barred from overseas travel, the department said in a news release Tuesday. He was arrested in February.
The case is the latest in a series of federal prosecutions involving people accused of working for the Chinese government without making the required disclosures, as tensions between Washington and Beijing remain high.
“Pauken betrayed his country for money” by supporting “Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) operations, recruiting, and gathering of sensitive information from potential assets,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in the news release.
Pauken worked as a journalist for several Chinese news organizations after moving to China in 2010, including state broadcaster CCTV. Most recently, he worked as an editor for Xinhua, China's state news agency, a position he had held since 2024.
“Mr. Pauken has accepted responsibility and respects the court's sentence,” his lawyer said, adding that “as the government agreed in court, Mr. Pauken did not provide any classified information to the Chinese.”
According to court documents, Pauken worked from at least 2019 until February 2026 at the direction of people he knew were working for the Chinese government. This included a person he met in 2017 who was identified as “Cathy.”
“Cathy” told Pauken that Chinese President Xi Jinping read the reports he prepared, according to a Feb. 27 federal court affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Timothy J. Healy.
The Justice Department said Pauken received at least $100,000 for his work with “Cathy.”
Besides preparing reports, Pauken was also asked by “Cathy” to recruit people who could provide classified information. In one instance, he was instructed to meet a person identified in the affidavit as “Person 1” and give that person a Samsung phone, a computer, passwords for Signal and Telegram, as well as access to NetDisk.
Pauken was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents after returning to the United States in January 2025. During interviews with CBP and FBI agents, Pauken said he was “80 percent sure” that a person seeking a position in the Trump administration would provide classified information to China, although he advised the person against doing so, according to the affidavit.
Pauken also told investigators that “Cathy” generally paid for his trips to the United States over the years and frequently sent payments to his wife's bank accounts, the affidavit said.
Pauken, a Texas native, used the alias Tom McGregor while working as a commentator and writer at his father's request. His father, who has the same name, wanted to distance himself from his son's work in China.
The younger Pauken published two books under his real name, Thomas W. Pauken II. One, published in 2019, focused on US-China relations, while another, published in 2023, was about Shenzhen, a city in mainland China across from Hong Kong.
Pauken's father was a former chairman of the Texas Republican Party in the 1990s and ran for governor more than a decade ago.
In his most recent publicly visible Facebook post under the McGregor name, Pauken shared photos of his wife and child during a trip and wrote, “My family and I enjoying our trip to Washington DC.” He was arrested later that month.