In a high-profile development in the U.S. Department of Justice’s ongoing crackdown on undeclared foreign influence operations, American journalist Thomas Pauken II — who has resided in China and held positions with multiple Chinese state-run media outlets since 2010 — entered a guilty plea on Thursday to charges of acting as an undisclosed illegal agent for the Chinese government.
Pauken, who publishes under the pen name Tom McGregor to distinguish himself from his father, a former chair of the Texas Republican Party who ran for governor in the 2000s, is scheduled for sentencing on September 1 at a federal U.S. District Court. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars.
This guilty plea marks the most recent entry in a series of federal prosecutions targeting individuals accused of working on behalf of the Chinese government without meeting the legal requirement to disclose their foreign ties to U.S. authorities. Earlier this year, in May, former Arcadia, California mayor Eileen Wang reached a plea deal to admit guilt on identical charges of acting as an illegal foreign agent. Prosecutors allege Wang carried out directives from Chinese officials, including circulating pro-Beijing content to shape U.S. public opinion.
Another high-profile case involving similar accusations involves Linda Sun, a former senior aide to multiple New York governors. Sun faces charges including failure to register as a foreign agent, conspiracy to launder money with her husband, and facilitating illegal visa fraud for Chinese nationals seeking entry to the U.S. She has pleaded not guilty to all counts. A criminal trial against her concluded in December with a mistrial after the federal jury deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous verdict.
Court documents and the investigative affidavit outline the timeline of Pauken’s alleged activities. He was first taken into custody in February, following a trip to Washington D.C. after traveling from China. According to the affidavit, Pauken arranged a meeting with an individual who had previously pursued a position in the Trump White House. During the meeting, he provided the individual with a SIM card and offered a $10,000 payout in exchange for producing policy reports that would ultimately be delivered to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Investigators allege Pauken positioned himself as an intermediary between Chinese intelligence operatives and U.S.-based contacts who could supply sensitive, and potentially classified, information to Beijing. As of Thursday evening, Pauken’s legal team had not issued any public statement and did not respond to requests for comment on the guilty plea.
Court records show Pauken’s collaboration with Chinese agents dates back to at least 2019. He worked closely with an individual he identified as “Cathy,” whom he acknowledged he believed was affiliated with China’s national security apparatus. Between 2019 and 2025, Pauken received more than $100,000 in payments for the reports he delivered to Cathy, in addition to having all of his U.S. travel expenses fully covered by his Chinese contacts. Cathy explicitly told Pauken that the reports he produced would be read directly by President Xi, the affidavit states.
Pauken was first questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents when he reentered the United States in January 2025. During interviews with CBP and FBI investigators, Pauken admitted he planned to provide the Trump administration job applicant with a Samsung smartphone and a laptop computer. He told agents he was “80% sure” that if the contact was hired for a role in the new administration, they would pass classified U.S. government information to Beijing, according to the affidavit.
After that January interview, federal agents allowed Pauken to proceed with his planned meeting, instructing him to continue the operation as part of the undercover investigation. The contact who met with Pauken later told investigators that while Pauken initially requested only publicly available open-source information, he regularly noted that his Chinese clients sought access to far more sensitive, classified data. The contact also confirmed they never had any intention of cooperating with Pauken’s proposal.
A year after the first encounter, Pauken traveled back to the U.S. to reconnect with the contact, framing the outreach around a potential commercial oil and gas partnership. The pair met at a Washington D.C. restaurant on February 23, then held a second meeting two days later at a local hotel — a meeting that was closely monitored by FBI agents.
During the second meeting, Pauken provided the contact with the pre-arranged SIM card and reiterated the $10,000 offer for weekly reports that would “influence policy and be read by Xi Jinping,” the affidavit records.
U.S. government database checks confirm that Pauken never completed the required registration under the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act, nor did he notify the U.S. Attorney General that he was acting on behalf of the Chinese government, a legal requirement for all foreign agents operating in the U.S.
The Department of Justice also revealed additional allegations against Pauken: he also sold custom intelligence reports to a group of Chinese individuals based in Wuhan, central China. The group sought non-public information about U.S. technology sector developments and internal Justice Department operations, and asked Pauken to recruit a U.S.-based expert to assist them in carrying out cyberespionage operations against American targets.