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 t
he 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.
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