An American journalist pleaded guilty Thursday to acting as an agent of the Chinese government.
Thomas Pauken II, who has lived in China for more than a decade, entered his plea in an Alexandria, Virginia, courthouse about a year and a half after U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped him as he entered the country with personal items that they said included $3,000 in cash and a yellow piece of paper filled with passwords for encrypted messaging applications.
During interviews with border patrol agents and the Federal Bureau of Investigations after he was stopped in January 2025, Pauken admitted he was traveling to the United States to recruit an unnamed individual seeking a job with the Trump administration in order to pass information to Chinese intelligence services, according to an affidavit filed in February by Special Agent Timothy Healy.
“By his guilty plea, Mr. Pauken has accepted responsibility for working as an agent of the People’s Republic of China without first completing certain required U.S. Government forms,” his lawyer, Charles Burnham, wrote in a statement on behalf of his client. “Mr. Pauken hoped his work would promote peaceful relations and advance the cause of religious freedom in China.”
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By day, Pauken was most recently an editor at the Chinese state news outlet Xinhua News. But the affidavit details an apparent double life: Pauken told investigators that he worked as a “middleman” between his handler, “Cathy” — who he said worked for China’s Ministry of State Security — and individuals who may have been willing to hand over information about the American government.
Over the course of seven years, prosecutors said the Chinese government paid Pauken a total of $100,000 plus travel expenses. Pauken faces up to 10 years in prison.
Pauken previously worked for China Global Television Network, China Central Television and China Radio International. He wrote under the name “Tom McGregor.”
His father, a prominent Texas political figure also named Thomas Pauken, asked his son to use the pen name to avoid being associated with his son’s activities in China, according to the affidavit.
The elder Pauken previously worked in President Ronald Reagan’s White House and chaired the Texas Republican Party. The younger Pauken’s Chinese handlers were “obsessed” with getting information about his father, the affidavit said.
“He’s taken first personal responsibility for his actions. He’s not divulged any American secrets. He’s not an American spy,” the elder Pauken told NOTUS in a phone interview Thursday. He advised his son to “take this forward and sort of rebuild your life” and said he was “supportive” of the agreement.
He described his son as a “very naive person” who he believes “got roped into something that was far beyond what he thought he was doing” and insisted his son’s crime was failing to register his activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Burnham asserted Thursday that his client did not seek “classified information,” as the government had originally alleged. But he did not disagree when Judge Leonie Brinkema characterized the intel as information not in the public domain.
John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, called Pauken’s actions “a betrayal of this nation and pose an unacceptable risk to our national security.”
Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence and espionage division, said the case “illustrates the lengths to which the Chinese Communist Party will go to undermine our democratic institutions and degrade our political freedoms.”
“Let this plea serve as a clear warning: If you attempt to help a foreign adversary as an unregistered agent in the U.S., the FBI will find you and bring you to justice,” Rozhavsky added.
The unnamed individual investigators say Pauken tried to recruit did not get the job they wanted in the Trump administration but worked for an unspecified government agency as of February, when Healy wrote the affidavit.
Burnham declined to comment on the identity of the unnamed individual when asked by Politico’s Josh Gerstein outside the courtroom.
Blanche characterized Pauken in his memo as a “serious flight risk” and a “significant danger to the public” — specifically, his intent to recruit people willing to pass information to the Chinese government.
“He is faced with [the] dilemma of needing to continue passing information to the MSS—such as the identity and status of potential recruits—in order to ensure a supply of money and, perhaps, the safety of his family,” Blanche wrote.
Neither the Chinese embassy nor Xinhua News responded to requests for comment.
Acting as a foreign agent is a heftier charge than violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a transparency statute that requires anyone conducting lobbying or advocacy campaigns on behalf of a foreign government to register and file regular updates with the Department of Justice.
In February 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolved the Department of Justice’s foreign influence task force and directed officials to focus on “more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.”
But the Justice Department has scored some high profile FARA wins in the last year.
Last month, former Rep. David Rivera (R-Florida) was convicted on FARA and money-laundering charges related to his lucrative unregistered lobbying activities on behalf of the Venezuelan government.
And in November 2025, Pras Michel of the Fugees was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of several crimes including acting as an unregistered foreign agent. He began his sentence in late April.
Rivera was charged during President Joe Biden’s administration. Michel was originally indicted in 2019, during Trump’s first term, and convicted in 2023.
The recent case of Eileen Wang, the former mayor of Arcadia, California, illustrates the shift away from FARA toward charges of acting as a foreign agent. Wang pleaded guilty last week to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government by disseminating propaganda through a website purporting to be a news source for the Chinese-American community, according to a copy of the plea agreement. Wang also faces up to 10 years in prison.
“Mr. Pauken urges all Americans working internationally to be ever mindful of the Foreign Agent Registration Act and related federal laws so what happened to him does not happen to you,” the statement from Pauken’s lawyer warns.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated when Pauken pleaded guilty. It was a year and a half after being stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents. This story has also been updated to include U.S. government comment.
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