Trump pardons convicted Binance founder Changpeng Zhao

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNBC

Published Thu, Oct 23 2025 11:24 AM EDT Updated 12 Min Ago


President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had previously pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering while heading the cryptocurrency exchange, the White House said Thursday.

The pardon came two months after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s own crypto venture, which has generated about $4.5 billion since the 2024 election, has been helped by “a partnership with an under-the-radar trading platform quietly administered by Binance.”

“President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

“In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims,” Leavitt said.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/23/trump-pardons-binance-founder-cz-zhao.html

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REFERENCES

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143199220
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143233793
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143263808
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143337914

Article updated.

Previous article -

Published Thu, Oct 23 2025 11:24 AM EDT Updated 3 Min Ago


President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had previously pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering while heading the cryptocurrency exchange, the White House said Thursday.

"President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Zhao, in November 2023, pleaded guilty in the case and agreed to step down as Binance CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement by the company with the Department of Justice.

He was sentenced in April 2024 to just four months in jail. Federal prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence Zhao to three years in prison.

Original article -

Published Thu, Oct 23 2025 11:24 AM EDT Updated 2 Min Ago


President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had previously pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering while heading the cryptocurrency exchange, the White House said Thursday.

"President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Zhao in November 2023 pleaded guilty in the case and agreed to step down as Binance CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement by the company with the Department of Justice.

He was sentenced in April 2024 to just four months in jail.


This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

[Prairie Gates]

1. The only question that remains is how he funneled the bribe to Trump accounts

Haha just kidding it was in cryptocurrency!



The most corrupt administration in history.

[littlemissmartypants]

2. How long before he returns the settlement to the criminal?

[struggle4progress]

3. Enabling pedophiles -- but tis OK cuz he been helpin Donnie

Maybe Jeffie and Ghislaine wuz helpin Donnie too -- say, by scrubbin thems blackmail dollars through Donnie's casinos?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. Trump is a criminal enterprise.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. MaddowBlog-White House struggles to defend Trump's pardon for founder of Binance crypto exchange

Changpeng Zhao helped finance the president’s stablecoin and helped put money in the Trump family’s pockets while lobbying for a pardon. Evidently, it worked.

The Changpeng Zhao pardon is a timely reminder: Trump has abandoned the pretense of propriety.

He’s corrupted the pardon process; he knows that he’s corrupted the pardon process; he knows that we know that he’s corrupted the pardon process; and he’s doing it anyway. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-10-23T20:54:07.350Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-house-struggles-defend-trumps-pardon-founder-binance-crypto-exch-rcna239435

Just when it seemed Donald Trump’s pardons and commutations couldn’t become any more scandalous, the president appears to have dug a hole in the bottom of the barrel. The Wall Street Journal reported:

President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company. The president signed the pardon on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said.

The closer one looks at the details of this story, the more corrupt it appears.

When Zhao was first prosecuted a couple of years ago, the federal case was a joint effort launched by the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which collectively argued that Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange “in part because of the crimes it committed.”....

In a written statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to defend the president’s intervention in the case by claiming that Zhao was a victim of the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency.”

Among the obvious problems with this claim is that Zhao is a convicted felon who pleaded guilty to money laundering.

Q: On the pardon of Changpeng Zhao, Binance has significant business interests with World Liberty Financial, the president family's crypto company. How do you respond to criticisms that this is a corrupt act?

LEAVITT: I would respond and say the president is exercising his constitutional authority

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-23T17:45:45.086Z

Later during a press briefing, a reporter asked how the White House responds to fairly obvious criticisms about the apparent corruption behind Trump’s latest pardon. “The president is exercising his constitutional authority to grant clemency requests,” Leavitt replied.

In other words, Trump did this because he could.

With each new scandalous pardon, it becomes clearer that Trump isn’t the least bit concerned about appearances or the pretense of propriety. He’s corrupting the process. He knows he’s corrupting the process. He knows we know he’s corrupting the process — but he’s doing it anyway.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. When you have the now-defunct FTX suing Binance

and the FTX founder is sitting in jail (and I suppose that he - Sam Bankman-Fried - crypto bro extraordinaire, will get a pardon), then you know where Binance must stand.

[ancianita]

7. And who was the Attorney General in charge of the DOJ that made that happen?

Last edited Thu Oct 23, 2025, 11:22 PM - Edit history (1)

When Zhao was first prosecuted a couple of years ago, the federal case was a joint effort launched by the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which collectively argued that Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange “in part because of the crimes it committed.”....

Note at the top of today's DOJ's archive pages:

Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated. Please refer to the Department of Justice’s contingency plan for more information.

This is archived content from the U.S. Department of Justice website. The information here may be outdated and links may no longer function. Please contact [e-mail] if you have any questions about the archive site.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/binance-and-ceo-plead-guilty-federal-charges-4b-resolution#:~:text=“Changpeng%20Zhao%20made%20Binance%2C%20the,crimes%20in%20the%20United%20States.”

“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed – now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “In just the past month, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted the CEOs of two of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges in two separate criminal cases. The message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal.”

Binance/Zhao let state terrorist extremists transact on its platform, and now Zhao's working AI into his crypto schemes

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/technology/binance-founder-changpeng-zhao-sentenced.html

...In November, Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion to several U.S. agencies, including the Justice Department, to settle charges that it had permitted terrorist organizations like Hamas, the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to use its platform. Prosecutors said that, under Mr. Zhao’s watch, Binance had refused to comply with American sanctions, allowing access to customers in countries like Iran, Syria and Cuba. The company also failed to report suspicious transactions involving narcotics and child sexual abuse materials, the government said...

In court filings last week, prosecutors said Mr. Zhao’s crime carried a sentence of 12 to 18 months in prison under federal guidelines. But they asked Judge Jones to impose a three-year term, arguing that he had violated the law “on an unprecedented scale.”

“This wasn’t a mistake — it wasn’t a regulatory oops,” Kevin Mosley, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s money-laundering section, said in court on Tuesday. “Breaking U.S. law was not incidental to his plan to make as much money as possible. Violating the law was integral to that endeavor.”...

Since his guilty plea, Mr. Zhao has remained in the United States, after Judge Jones rejected his request to return home to Dubai before the sentencing. He has spent the last few months traveling across the country, including to New York, Los Angeles and Telluride, Colo.
Mr. Zhao has already laid the groundwork for his next act. He has networked with other entrepreneurs and unveiled an online education platform called Giggle Academy, which he said would involve artificial intelligence...