Catherine Herridge Exposed a Suspected Chinese Colonel and Now the Supreme Court Could Step In

Catherine Herridge broke the story of a suspected Chinese military officer running a school that enrolled American troops.

Nobody was ever charged, yet an Obama judge found a way to make Herridge pay for that story.

Now she is asking the Supreme Court to step in, and the answer could decide who in Washington ever talks to a reporter again.

Herridge Takes Her Source Fight to the Supreme Court

Herridge's new petition, docket 26-461, asks the justices to protect the confidential sources behind her reporting.

It argues the D.C. Circuit's test was too narrow and should have weighed how solid the lawsuit behind the subpoena is and what exposing national security sources costs the country.

The justices last dealt head-on with a reporter's right to protect sources in Branzburg v. Hayes back in 1972, and the lower courts have been fighting over the answer ever since.

At least four justices have to vote to hear the case.

If they say no, the contempt order against her stands.

The FBI Raided the School and the Pentagon Cut Off the Money

It all started in February 2017, when Herridge and her Fox News team reported on Yanping Chen, founder of the University of Management and Technology in Rosslyn, Virginia.

The school sat about four miles from the Pentagon.

Old photos appeared to show Chen in the uniform of China's People's Liberation Army, and three experts identified one of those uniforms as a colonel's.

Her dissertation thanked her father, PLA General Chen Bin.

The school collected more than $6 million in Defense Department tuition assistance meant for American service members.

It bragged that it was "especially proud" of its students on U.S. military bases.

Whistleblower Stephen Rhoads claimed the military records of enrolled troops sat in a database that could be tapped from outside the building.

Chen's daughter reportedly told agents that workers in the school's Beijing office held the keys to that same database.

The FBI raided the school and Chen's Virginia home back in December 2012 as part of a counterintelligence case.

Even after those raids, the Pentagon signed a new agreement with the school that ran through 2019.

One FBI agent called the renewal incredible in an email.

Chen told the FBI she was never a PLA colonel.

After Herridge's reporting, the Pentagon cut the school off from military tuition money – roughly $200,000 a month, according to Herridge's filing.

In December 2018, Chen sued the FBI, the Justice Department and other agencies under the Privacy Act, claiming officials leaked her files to Herridge.

To win that lawsuit, she needs names.

Judge Cooper's Wife Represented Lisa Page and Joe Biden

Herridge refused under oath to say who helped her.

On February 29, 2024, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper – an Obama appointee – held her in civil contempt and set the fine at $800 a day.

That same month, CBS News laid Herridge off and seized her reporting files.

Cooper is married to Amy Jeffress, a former Obama Justice Department attorney.

Jeffress represented Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer whose anti-Trump texts with Peter Strzok became infamous.

Since July 2025, she has also served as Joe Biden's personal attorney.

This is the same Judge Cooper who ruled in May 2026 that Trump's name had to come off the Kennedy Center.

Key documents in the Herridge case remain sealed, which The Federalist's Margot Cleveland argued blocks the public from "assessing the propriety of the contempt decision."

Herridge Wrote a Check Every Day While the Courts Stalled

The D.C. Circuit upheld the contempt order.

Chief Justice John Roberts briefly paused the fine while the Supreme Court weighed an emergency request.

On July 2, 2026, the court refused to keep it on hold, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the lone vote to protect her.

Jonathan Turley reported that Herridge had to write a check every day from her two children's college funds.

Those daily checks stopped only when the fines were paused in August pending her appeal.

Chen, meanwhile, tried to jack the penalty up to $5,000 a day.

"The irony in the case is crushing," Turley wrote.

Every Federal Whistleblower Is Watching the Herridge Fine

Someone inside the federal government decided Americans deserved to know a suspected Chinese military officer was cashing Pentagon checks to educate American troops.

That person trusted Catherine Herridge.

If the courts force her to give up that name, the next FBI agent or Pentagon official who spots a threat from Beijing will keep his mouth shut.

Judith Miller sat 85 days in a jail cell in 2005 rather than give up a source.

Cooper chose a fine instead of a cell.

Fox News Media is paying her lawyers even though she left the network in 2019, but no network can promise every freelancer and small-town reporter the same protection.

Nobody was charged.

The Pentagon money stopped.

Herridge got the bill.

If the justices turn her away, the checks can start again.

Four justices can end this by taking her case, and they should.

Sources:

• Morgan Phillips, "$800-a-Day Penalty Threatens to Bleed Investigative Reporter Dry as Explosive Legal Fight Escalates," Fox News, October 26, 2026.
• Pamela K. Browne, Cyd Upson and Catherine Herridge, "Fox News Investigation: DoD-Funded School at Center of Federal Probes Over Suspected Chinese Military Ties," Fox News, February 24, 2017.
• Fox News, "Judge With Intimate Ties to Dem Party's Key Russia Hoax Players Behind Latest Anti-Trump Decision," Fox News, June 3, 2026.
• Jonathan Turley, "Supreme Showdown: Investigative Reporter and Accused Chinese Operative Face Off in Press Freedom Case," JonathanTurley.org, October 19, 2026.
• Margot Cleveland, "Everything About the Catherine Herridge Contempt Case Stinks," The Federalist, September 25, 2026.
• U.S. Supreme Court, "Branzburg v. Hayes," U.S. Supreme Court, June 29, 1972.