Three United States citizens accused of helping fund ISIS attacks on American servicemembers were arrested on Friday morning by federal authorities.  According to the Department of Justice, FBI agents arrested 21-year-old Bisaam Ghafoor of Leawood, Kansas, 21-year-old Elias Shamsaldeen of Porterville, California, and 25-year-old Bereen Dzayee of Lakeside, California. The three men conspired from at least February 2025 through June 2026 to support the designated terror group, according to a criminal complaint filed in the District of Kansas. The men communicated through Discord chats, voice calls, and other messaging platforms, where they pledged allegiance to ISIS and promoted violence on the group’s behalf, according to the Department of Justice.  According to the complaint, the men repeatedly spoke about violence against Americans and U.S. military personnel.  Prosecutors say Ghafoor remarked that it would be “sick” to have his name written on a drone used in an attack on Americans, while Dzayee suggested drone strikes should target U.S. Special Forces. Shamsaldeen expressed a desire to stab a U.S. servicemember, and Ghafoor said he had long wanted to behead a female soldier before adding, “I wish I could kill 300,000,000 Americans.” Federal authorities accuse the three men of collectively providing over $2,000 to a person they understood to be a member of ISIS and trying to develop a cryptocurrency scheme to buy RPGs and drones to enable the designated terror organization to attack U.S. servicemembers.  According to prosecutors, Ghafoor’s name was inscribed on a rocket-propelled grenade that was purportedly intended for use in an overseas attack targeting U.S. servicemembers. Investigators also say that Shamsaldeen helped finance the purchase of drones that were intended to be used in attacks against American troops deployed abroad. The defendants also expressed a desire to travel outside the United States to fight and die on behalf of ISIS, according to authorities. The three men were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. “This administration has put terrorists, cartels, and gangs on notice,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Today’s arrest of three individuals who allegedly conspired to provide material support to ISIS makes clear our commitment to taking down terrorist networks — anywhere. Thanks to the vigilance of the FBI, their alleged scheme was dismantled and further acts of violence against U.S. service members were prevented.” FBI Director Kash Patel said the suspects “swore allegiance to ISIS, plotted multiple attacks, and even targeted U.S. service members.” “The success of this op shows once again this FBI’s continued record of stopping terrorist attacks before they happen,” Patel said. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said the defendants wished to betray their country. “According to the complaint, these defendants conspired to support ISIS, a ruthless terrorist organization, with the intent, among other things, to fund plans to kill American servicemembers abroad,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “Thanks to the work of the FBI, their plans to betray their country in the gravest way lies in ruin. Instead, these defendants will face justice in our courts.” The investigation was conducted by FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Kansas City, San Diego, and Sacramento, with assistance from FBI field offices in Richmond and Newark.

In the past few days, millions of people in Britain have realized — many of them for the first time — that their government is willing to go to extreme lengths to cover up a murder, as long as that murder involves a white man. To this day, British authorities are hiding critical evidence involving the murder of 18-year-old college student Henry Nowak. No member of the public — not even the jury that just convicted Nowak’s murderer, a foreigner named Vickrum Digwa — has seen the photos and cellphone videos Digwa took, in which he chased Nowak down and mocked him as he died a slow and horrific death.  “You’re not going to get away with this big man,” Digwa said as Nowak struggled to breathe. Digwa also said, “you’re not dying bro,” and “you were recording me thinking you’re sick” (meaning “tough”). The judge ruled that the videos are simply too shocking, even for the jury in a murder case.    According to the Daily Mail’s reporting, “This clip was not played in court for being ‘too disturbing to be shown.'” Yes, too disturbing to be shown, which suggests it’s somehow even more disturbing than the body camera footage. We’re talking about a sadistic execution that’s been hidden from the public. And speaking of the body cams, we also don’t have the full body camera footage of the police response to the murder. The footage cuts off the moment the authorities finally realize that Nowak has gone unconscious, more than 60 seconds after they dragged his body across the pavement and handcuffed him, and more than 15 minutes after he was first stabbed.  We were told, during the sentencing hearing, that officers supposedly reacted with shock when they began performing CPR on Nowak. That was supposedly the first time they realized he had a fatal chest wound. But strangely enough, the police haven’t released the full body camera footage of the moment the officers came to that realization. We have no idea what they said or did, specifically.  Yes, Nowak was seriously injured. He ultimately lost around 20% of his total blood volume. But the overall survival rate, when that same vein is injured by gunshot or stabbing, is around 20%. It’s not 0%. And Nowak was stabbed just down the street from a major trauma center.  Surgeons at the hospital could’ve inserted a tube into his chest and pumped out the blood. They could’ve sealed off the vein. But the authorities didn’t transport Nowak to the trauma hospital at any point. Instead, they arrested him and waited for the ambulance until he died.  Could the surgeons have saved Henry Nowak’s life? We obviously don’t know the answer to that question. But given all of this deception, Britons have no reason to trust the government’s pathologist in the case, who insisted that Nowak would’ve died no matter what, regardless of what the police did. The government didn’t even try to save Nowak. Instead, they engaged in a cover-up, which continues as we speak. In that respect — and many other respects — the slaughter of Henry Nowak bears more than a passing resemblance to the execution of 17-year-old white high school junior Austin Metcalf at a track meet last year in Frisco, Texas.  Yesterday marked the first day of testimony in the trial of Karmelo Anthony, who killed Metcalf — and who still managed to graduate from Centennial High School thanks to the local school district (which should be disbanded immediately).  Based on the trial so far, it’s clear that we still haven’t gotten anything close to the truth about this case. Once again, as we’ve seen so many times, the official narrative, which we all took for granted over the past year, is falling apart. Now that witnesses are testifying and evidence is being introduced, many of these lies are finally being exposed. The judge has banned audio or video recordings from the trial, but because a small number of reporters are in the courtroom, the truth is getting out, in some capacity. We’ll start with the revelation that, according to prosecutors, Karmelo Anthony lied to investigators during questioning after the killing. Already, we knew that Karmelo Anthony asked police officers whether he could possibly have a valid self-defense claim. We’ve also known that he threw the knife into the stands as a way of hiding the murder weapon. We know he told a police officer, “It’s not alleged, I did it,” when the officer mentioned the stabbing.  So, at the risk of understatement, Karmelo Anthony’s behavior, for a long time, has strongly suggested that he was aware he allegedly committed murder. But at least his responses — as incriminating as they were — seemed relatively truthful, as far as we knew. Now we learn that, in fact, some of his responses weren’t honest at all. This is a quote from NBC in Dallas, which had a reporter in the courtroom: Prosecutor Bill Wirskye continued his opening statement, saying that Karmelo Anthony lied to investigators when he said he told Austin Metcalf not to touch him. “He knows what he did. He knows he provoked the murder,” Wirskye said. “And that lie tells you all you need to know about his mindset that day. You simply cannot provoke someone, and when they push you, take their life,” Wirskye said. Later on, the same prosecutor stated that, according to witnesses, Karmelo Anthony did say to Austin Metcalf, “Touch me and see what happens.” In other words, Anthony went into the tent that was reserved for Austin Metcalf’s team. And then, when Austin Metcalf told Anthony to leave, Anthony responded by daring Metcalf to physically move him from the tent, along with a thinly veiled threat. Anthony also reached into his bag, as if he were going to produce a weapon — which Metcalf (and all the witnesses in the tent) thought was a bluff.  That’s evidently very different from the version of events that Anthony presented to investigators, in which Anthony was just minding his own business, telling Metcalf not to touch him, and then Metcalf grabbed him for no reason. In reality, Anthony was belligerent. He was looking for an opportunity to use the illegal flip knife he was carrying, which he knew was a prohibited item. Rather than simply leaving the tent, he began reaching into his bag for the knife. And before long, he dared Austin Metcalf to make physical contact, presumably so that he could have a pretext to murder him. We also learned during Thursday’s opening statements that, after Anthony stabbed Metcalf, coaches working for Metcalf’s school had to chase Anthony down and detain him. The prosecutor stated that Anthony tried to exit the stadium after disposing of the knife. But as Anthony fled, Austin Metcalf’s twin brother Hunter lifted Austin’s shirt and saw a “gaping hole in his chest.”  At that point, bystanders pointed out Anthony as he was running away, and some of the coaches ran after him. This was when a student named Hudson Dean told an athletic trainer that he saw Karmelo Anthony throwing a knife into the stands.  Meanwhile, a coach named Joshua Rebmann, who stayed with Metcalf, recognized immediately that he was going to die. Rebmann had military training and said Metcalf was making very labored breaths, indicating that his brain was running out of oxygen. Metcalf lost his pulse before the ambulance arrived on scene. According to NBC, Anthony fled the scene and tried to exit through the front gate. He attempted to blend in with the crowd, which was rushing out of the tent. But he didn’t get far, because “several coaches stopped him before he made it to the exit.”  In particular, Coach Robert Starr, who worked as head track coach at Metcalf’s school, testified that he “hopped over a gate and approached Anthony and stopped him.” So, Karmelo Anthony was trying to leave the scene. There’s no question about it.  There’s another major element of this trial that, until now, has been minimized and downplayed by the media. It’s the surveillance video showing parts of the altercation from a distance. This is footage that hasn’t been released to the public. The authorities are hiding it, just like the British government is hiding several of the videos involving the murder of Henry Nowak. But as we’ve discussed, a small number of news outlets have been allowed to see the video and describe it to their audience. In every case, the outlets have said it’s useless. They’ve told us for an entire year that there’s nothing interesting about the footage. But if that’s the case, it’s very odd that the prosecution made the video a centerpiece of their opening argument, as well as the first testimony that the jury heard. Jurors watched two versions of the footage — the raw video and a version that was enhanced. And then, prosecutors questioned a video forensic expert (who works with the DA’s office) about the footage. The entire tape lasted for 15 minutes and 20 seconds, and it begins with the Metcalf brothers entering the stadium. At the 3-minute, 24-second mark, Anthony enters the stadium. At 7 minutes, 57 seconds into the video, the forensic expert says that “people started paying attention to what was happening under the tent.” One person appears to push another person underneath the tent. The physical confrontation lasts just a couple of seconds. Then there’s a flurry of movement. As described by an NBC reporter in the courtroom, Anthony “exits the bleachers at the top of the tent, goes onto the walkway, down a ramp and into the parking lot, and appears to alternate between running and walking throughout.” As Anthony exits the bleachers, someone is pointing at him. At 12 minutes, 30 seconds, Anthony is being escorted out by police. From these descriptions — which were provided by reporters who could barely see it, since the TV wasn’t angled towards them — we can conclude that, indeed, the video footage is highly relevant evidence. It’s not worthless, as every media outlet claimed.  Instead, to the contrary, the footage is strong evidence of Anthony’s guilt. If Anthony had truly acted in self-defense and neutralized a dangerous threat, there would be no reason for everyone to run out of the tent in a panic and to point towards Anthony so that the coaches and the police would apprehend him.  When Daniel Penny neutralized the violent homeless schizophrenic on the train, people didn’t run out of the subway car and tell the police to arrest him. Instead, they helped Penny restrain the vagrant. And they were relieved when he took care of business.  So the fact that this footage shows the opposite reaction from bystanders — the fact it shows how horrified they were by what Karmelo Anthony did — strongly suggests that he committed murder. And the other students were worried that he’d kill them next, like a mass shooter. Also, it’s obviously noteworthy that Karmelo Anthony was briefly “running” as part of his escape. Who was he running from, exactly? It really makes you think. It’s also important to point out that one of Austin Metcalf’s classmates, who is black, ran after Karmelo Anthony. This is reporting from The Daily Mail, which was also in the courtroom: New state witness Vincent Cooper, a coach at Frisco ISD, is now testifying how he was assigned to manage Karmelo Anthony after the stabbing and stop him from leaving the football stadium. Later, Cooper was asked to calm down a teammate of Austin Metcalf (pictured below) who was angry about Austin’s stabbing. Austin’s teammate, who is black, wanted to attack Anthony. “He stabbed my brother,” the black Memorial teammate said of Austin Metcalf. The teammate explained that he was on the football team with Austin and he considered him family. This was an immediate reaction from Metcalf’s black teammate. His testimony is completely fatal to the Left’s entire narrative about this case. If he thought Austin Metcalf was attacking Karmelo Anthony because he’s black or whatever, then the odds are pretty good that this particular individual wouldn’t lunge after Anthony and try to avenge his fallen teammate. But that’s what he did because, in the moment, he recognized exactly what Karmelo Anthony had done. Although it’s not clear who did the pushing in the video, it’s certainly possible that it was Austin Metcalf. Witnesses said that Metcalf, as part of his effort to get Karmelo Anthony out of the tent, applied some physical force. But obviously, when you’re unarmed and you push someone (without even knocking them over), you’re not using lethal force. The person you push isn’t allowed to murder you, because he can’t possibly have a reasonable fear for his life under those circumstances. If the attacker is in the wrong team’s tent —where he’s not supposed to be — and he’s daring someone to push him, and he knows he has a knife, and his victim doesn’t — then there’s no viable self-defense claim. Period. Along those lines, one of the most important parts of Thursday’s testimony zeroed in on the fact that Anthony was in the wrong tent. Robert Starr, the head track coach, testified that “A tent marks your spot.” He said that it’s a “big deal” to ensure that other people are kept out of the tent, for a variety of reasons, including keeping property safe from theft. He said it’s widely understood at these track meets that you’re not supposed to go into another team’s tent. Additionally, on the day of the stabbing, Coach Starr had texted Metcalf, telling him and his brother that they needed to be “leaders” for the day and to step up, and essentially run the tent. They needed to “assist with getting tents off buses and carrying heavy equipment.” Metcalf responded, “for sure coach gotchu.” And after Metcalf’s death, Coach Starr testified that he replied to that message, “I love you man. Sorry I didn’t say enough.” The point is, by the broadly accepted standards of the track world, Karmelo Anthony was trespassing. On cross-examination, Karmelo’s defense attorneys tried to make the argument that, occasionally, students will go into the other team’s tent to chat briefly — especially if they see someone they know personally. And Coach Starr agreed that, in certain situations, this does happen. In this case, Karmelo’s defense attorneys say he saw someone named “Edwin Parra” in the Memorial High School tent (Memorial is Austin Metcalf’s school). And Parra is supposedly a “close family friend of Anthony’s girlfriend.” Karmelo Anthony, the lawyers say, had reason to remain in the tent with this acquaintance because it had begun raining. Evidently, Karmelo Anthony’s high school (Centennial) didn’t have its own tent. They only had a tarp. Contrast Anthony’s behavior with, say, Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny, George Zimmerman, Rick Chow, or anyone else who engaged in lawful self-defense and who the Left tried to send to prison for the rest of their lives. None of these people attempted to flee after they eliminated the threat.  Kyle Rittenhouse walked towards the police blockade in Kenosha. Daniel Penny remained on the subway platform. George Zimmerman didn’t move an inch from the pavement where Trayvon Martin tried to smash his head into a pulp. Rick Chow stayed at his gas station and voluntarily provided a comprehensive statement to police the moment they arrived.  Not that it really needs to be spelled out, but in general, innocent people don’t flee the scene after they defend themselves. They don’t try to hide the murder weapon. They don’t lie to investigators about what they were doing.

Something strange happened overnight in Los Angeles, and the internet noticed. Karen Bass and Nithya Raman each saw their vote totals surge by over 10,000 votes while the sun was down and people were asleep. Meanwhile, Spencer Pratt, the only candidate with a coherent plan to rescue a city drowning in vagrancy, methamphetamine, fire, and fecal matter, apparently received zero votes out of more than 20,000 cast. Zero. Not one. Statistically, that is not an anomaly. That is an impossibility. As for the gubernatorial race: days after election night, only 60% of ballots have been counted, with several million votes still outstanding. We do not yet know which mayoral or gubernatorial candidates will advance to the runoff. We may not know for weeks. Or months. Or, at the rate California operates, sometime before the next Ice Age. California’s voting system is not broken by accident. It is meticulously designed to corrode public trust, and it is succeeding. Here is exactly how they did it. California operates the most mail-in-dependent voting system in the country. Every registered voter automatically receives a ballot. Ballots can be postmarked on election day itself and still accepted up to seven days later. Counties then have weeks to verify signatures and process returns. “Election Day” in California is less of a civic event and more of a suggestion, a starting pistol for a bureaucratic marathon that ends whenever the state decides it’s done. California must have a case of dyslexia like their governor, Gavin Newscum, because they saw “Election Day” and read “months.” The predictable consequence, which is not a coincidence, is that Republicans routinely lead on election night, only to watch their margins dissolve as weeks of late mail-in ballots roll in and “flip” the race. It tends to feel like officials just wait to call elections until enough of their blue mail-in ballots come through the mail. Whether that is intentional coordination or simply negligent design that consistently benefits one party is, at this point, a distinction without a difference. Florida processes over 10 million votes in a single evening with paper ballots and same-day results. California, home of Silicon Valley, Stanford, and the most vaunted tech economy on the planet, cannot finalize an election before the next one is scheduled. The state that puts a computer in your pocket cannot count ballots in a week. In a world where you can design elections for speed and trust, it raises the question of why you wouldn’t, unless you had ill intentions, which California Democrats do. They’ve rigged election law to favor their own candidates, and the machine is able to coordinate its institutions and nonprofit apparatus to reap votes. It’s legalized and sophisticated fraud. We’re watching it happen. They’ve perfected the ballot harvesting game, where a third party can collect and submit an unlimited number of ballots with almost no oversight. Unions, Democratic Socialists of America chapters, activist networks, homeless-service groups, and the entire institutional apparatus of the California Left operate sophisticated, well-funded, voter-contact operations that collect and deliver ballots at scale. They know exactly which precincts to target, which populations to harvest, and precisely when to submit to maximize impact. They could just channel this energy towards, I don’t know, simply putting up normal candidates, but that would apparently be insane. Republicans, who do not have an equivalent organizational infrastructure in California and who remain ideologically skeptical of the practice itself, cannot match this. The asymmetry is not incidental. The rules were written by the people who benefit from them. Layered on top of this is no voter ID requirement for mail ballots and signature verification that is often rubber-stamped under pressure, and you get a system where people counting and delivering votes have more power than the voters themselves. Democrats in California do not need to be compelling, charismatic, or responsive to constituent concerns. They do not need innovative policy, persuasive messaging, or genuine community engagement. They need an organized harvesting operation and a permissive legal framework. They have both. Then there is the voter roll catastrophe, which is not a bug but a feature. A recent lawsuit exposed 873,000 inactive “ghost voters” still on California’s rolls. Of those, 150,000 had been inactive for four or more consecutive elections, a direct violation of the National Voter Registration Act, a federal law that California has simply elected not to follow. Los Angeles County alone carries 5.8 million registered voters, a figure that exceeds the total population of most American states and defies every reasonable demographic analysis. Yet the same registrar-recorder offices that get $336 million a year (and pay top officials almost half a million) can’t keep the lists clean. Taxpayer dollars are always being used with the utmost love, care, and respect in the Golden State. But inflated, unaudited rolls are not just embarrassing; they are operationally useful. They provide plausible deniability for questionable ballots, make large-scale harvesting easier, and create the conditions under which late vote “discoveries” in close races appear to be administrative processing rather than manipulation. When a system refuses to purge ghost voters but spends lavishly on ballot processing infrastructure, you are not watching negligence. You are watching strategy. Combine all of it: voter registration at locations without ID verification, no mail ballot ID requirement, unlimited harvesting with minimal oversight, unmonitored drop boxes, ballots counted weeks after election night, and rolls packed with hundreds of thousands of legally ineligible inactive voters. The result is a system where accountability is structurally impossible to enforce, and no one trusts a darn thing. People are not stupid. We can see what’s going on and draw rational conclusions. If Nithya Raman ultimately surpasses Spencer Pratt, it will further fuel distrust in elections and simply certify that Los Angeles hates itself. They’d rather engineer outcomes for the political machine that built it than abide by the will of the people. The fraud is not cinematic. There are no masked operatives rappelling into polling stations. It is drab, procedural, and conducted entirely in the open, in statutes, in nonprofit 990 filings, in late-night batch uploads, in signature verification logs that no one audits. It is legalized, systematized, and optimized. And California is proud of it. If they won’t change, then fine. Let them wither and rot in it. They don’t deserve Spencer Pratt or Steve Hilton.

For the second consecutive year, controversy has surrounded the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) girls’ track and field state championships because a biological male claimed several state titles. Last year, due to a pilot policy implemented by the CIF, the transgender athlete shared the highest spot on the podium with the top female finisher(s). Naturally, the CIF’s attempt at appeasement backfired, provoking the ire of parties on both sides of the issue. Why would supporters of the transgender athlete take umbrage with CIF’s policy when he was not only allowed to compete under his adopted gender identity but also take home hardware? Because it is not actually about participation. It is, however, about advancing queer theory and a far-Left ideology into every aspect of American life, including youth sports. Even though proponents claim that their position is about “inclusivity” and “fairness,” the real agenda is the forced acceptance and affirmation of a transgender athlete’s chosen gender. If everyone doesn’t agree that “trans women are women,” it’s hateful. As they see it, any rule or small measure taken that explicitly or implicitly reinforces biological reality invalidates and erases the trans individual’s claimed identity — this is why we hear phrases like “trans genocide” being used to describe America. This explains why there is outrage from the transgender athlete’s family, supporters, and activists over the CIF’s policy. While the girls’ California track and field championships drew major headlines, the West Virginia transgender athlete at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case West Virginia v. B.P.J. also received national coverage after dominating his female opponents en route to a state title. The biological male threw the shot put two feet farther than the top female finisher, a massive performance gap by the sport’s metrics. Ironically, the West Virginia teen’s attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued in January that their client, a male, has no physiological differences or competitive advantages compared to females. Unfortunately, the ACLU’s argument is rooted in ideological virtue signaling intended to advance a radical Left-wing agenda. It is absurd that society has to rely on scientific research and data to reinforce what humans have understood for thousands of years. Yet here we are in 2026 debating whether male athletes have an advantage over biological females. If you happen to be confused about this matter, I can assure you that after spending a quarter century coaching male and female athletes from junior high to NCAA Division I, there is a verifiable difference in athletic ability and performance between the two sexes. But regardless of how much data and common sense we inject into the cultural fray, those who are committed to the transgender cause are not going to stop pushing for policies that allow males to compete against females or to have access to female-only spaces. Today, it is a single biological male athlete here or there, but if this intrusion is not stopped, girls’ athletics teams across the country will feature multiple males who claim to be female. In fact, the Department of Education recently sent a warning letter to Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado over allegations that the district allowed more than 60 males to compete on female teams. Within the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will release its decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J. Hopefully, the outcome will help stop this madness. I am convinced there are school districts that would welcome the legal clarity to restrict males to male sports. No female athlete should be forced to compete against a biological male or have to share a state or national championship podium with one. Unfortunately, proponents of transgender athletes are not going to go away quietly. Which is why parents, school leaders, coaches, and community members need to demand a return to common sense and reject the far-Left, radical queer theory-based ideology colonizing sports and education. *** Rhyen Staley is a researcher for Defending Education. He holds a master’s degree in elementary education and has over a decade of classroom experience in both public and private schools. He has over 25 years of coaching experience from junior high to Division I.

An American journalist pleaded guilty Thursday to working as an unregistered agent for China after prosecutors said he helped a Chinese intelligence officer try to steal classified information from the U.S. government.  Thomas Pauken II, 50, admitted in a plea agreement with Justice Department prosecutors that he acted as an agent of China from 2019 to 2026. Prosecutors said Pauken worked for a member of the Chinese Ministry of State Security who sought sensitive information about the United States.  “Pauken admitted to being part of a conspiracy to obtain sensitive information from the U.S. government for the PRC,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg. “His actions are a betrayal of this Nation and pose an unacceptable risk to our national security.” Pauken has lived in China since 2010 and worked for the Chinese state media outlet Xinhua News. At the same time, prosecutors said, he was on the payroll of a member of the Chinese Ministry of State Security referred to in court documents as “Cathy.” According to prosecutors, Cathy directed Pauken to meet with human sources in the United States, provide those sources with laptops and cellphones, and send their reports back to China.  In February 2026, Pauken was arrested after an apparent FBI sting operation during a recorded meeting at a Washington, D.C. hotel. At the meeting, Pauken met with an unidentified U.S. government employee who had sought a job in the Trump administration and whom Pauken had allegedly been attempting to recruit on Cathy’s behalf. Prosecutors said Cathy wanted the official to produce reports she claimed would make their way to Chinese President Xi Jinping and shape policy. Pauken offered to pay the government employee a $10,000 bonus and subsequent payments funneled through a bogus nonprofit, according to court documents.   Court documents state that Pauken himself did not personally handle classified information, but acted as an “intermediary to recruit individuals to provide classified information to the Chinese.” Pauken also sold multiple reports to a group of Chinese people from Wuhan, according to prosecutors.  “PAUKEN’s Wuhan clients mainly sought information about technology and the U.S. Department of Justice,” a statement of facts compiled by prosecutors agreed to by Pauken said. “The Wuhan clients wanted PAUKEN to find an expert who would help them engage in cyber espionage.” Pauken told the FBI he believed his work would deter a military conflict between the United States and China and that he would support greater religious freedom through his contacts in both countries. His sentencing is set for September 1, and he faces up to 10 years in prison. “By his own admission, not only did Thomas Pauken attempt to infiltrate U.S. political circles at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security,” said FBI official Roman Rozhavsky. “But he gathered intelligence on his American targets and reported it back to his Chinese intelligence handlers.”