{"id":330961,"date":"2025-10-25T06:42:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T06:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330961\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T06:42:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T06:42:13","slug":"trump-is-rewriting-history-to-justify-his-sketchy-pardon-of-crypto-king-cz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330961\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is Rewriting History to Justify His Sketchy Pardon of Crypto King CZ"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Donald Trump pardoned a billionaire crypto king on Thursday, he claimed that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was \u201cpersecuted<\/a>\u201d by Joe Biden\u2019s Justice Department as part of what the White House called a \u201cwar on cryptocurrency.\u201d<\/p>\n

On one level, that assertion was an attempt to explain away a pardon that many see as a naked quid pro quo with a man whose business used Trump\u2019s crypto tokens in a transaction that benefited the president\u2019s family firm.<\/p>\n

On another level, observers say, that claim is simply wrong. Zhao willingly pleaded guilty under a carefully negotiated deal with former Attorney General Merrick Garland\u2019s Justice Department, which ultimately saw his company pay $4 billion in fines and serve only four months in prison. At the time, one analyst saw the overall package as a clear \u201cvictory<\/a>\u201d for Binance and Zhao, who is also known by his nickname CZ.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a sense of bitter irony for longtime critics of Biden Justice Department. They had long complained in general about Biden\u2019s approach to corporate crime, and Binance in particular was accused of facilitating everything from terrorism to child sexual abuse images<\/a> before it received a deal that allowed its founder to spend a few months in prison. He also paid a fine worth a small percentage of his wealth.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got to keep all his money, control of Binance, and was allowed to handpick his successor CEO,\u201d Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the financial reform nonprofit Better Markets, said in an email. \u201cEven a quick read of the charging documents detailing the actual facts and violations of law would reveal that Binance and CZ got a sweetheart deal from DOJ.\u201d<\/p>\n

Choosing Club Fed<\/p>\n

Progressive critics have maintained a drumbeat of criticism of Biden and Barack Obama\u2019s Justice Departments ever since the Great Recession, when top bankers<\/a> avoided jail time<\/a> for their role in the housing market crash<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prosecutions of corporate criminals fell to a record low during Biden\u2019s final year in office, according to a report released by Public Citizen earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cBiden is certainly not anybody to hold up as an exemplar of people \u2018persecuting\u2019 people,\u201d said Bart Naylor, a financial policy advocate with Public Citizen.<\/p>\n

Binance was one of the thinning ranks of companies to find itself in court, but critics say it may be the exception that proves the rule. Three years ago, it was one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, as it effectively thumbed its nose at U.S. anti-money-laundering laws designed to prevent terrorists, drug traffickers, and other criminals from making their dirty money look clean.<\/p>\n

In statements around the time of the November 2023 plea deal, Biden Justice Department officials laced into Zhao. Still, the deal they crafted allowed Binance to remain one of the leading players in the field.<\/p>\n

Unlike the bankers who escaped jail time, Zhao was the rare executive to see the inside of a prison\u2019s walls, but not for long.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors sought a three-year sentence for Zhao, but a federal judge dipped below that request<\/a> to hand him the monthslong term. He served his time at a low-security prison in California.<\/a> Since then, he has returned to serving as something of an oracle to crypto industry fanboys.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf you consider how seriously the establishment of both political parties takes issues like terrorism, I think a four-month prison sentence is comically inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIf you set the bar at response to the great financial crisis, then yeah, bar cleared. It was more than was common in the past,\u201d said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the left-leaning nonprofit Revolving Door Project. \u201cBut if you consider how seriously the establishment of both political parties takes issues like terrorism, I think a four-month prison sentence is comically inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even at the time of the settlement, observers believed that it might not dent Binance\u2019s business by much.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the massive penalty is a blow to the company\u2019s treasury and the humbling of Zhao undercuts Binance\u2019s longtime edge, the early market response suggests the company will survive,\u201d Fortune magazine intoned<\/a> shortly after the deal was announced. As of this quarter, Binance is still the world\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchange.<\/a><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Trump has cast the prosecution has a grave overreach by the Biden administration that he had to correct.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a crime, that he was persecuted by the Biden administration, and so, I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people,\u201d Trump said.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cUnparalleled, Open Corruption\u201d<\/p>\n

During and after the Biden administration, cryptocurrency insiders painted a dark portrait of regulators\u2019 attempts to place guardrails on the industry in the wake of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s far-reaching fraud. They complained about relentless attention from agencies ranging from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Justice Department.<\/p>\n

The idea that the Biden administration was single-mindedly focused on crushing crypto is absurd, Hauser said. At most, Hauser argued, the SEC under former Chair Gary Gensler was generally skeptical of the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Garland Justice Department did not, and nor did the Yellen Treasury Department, or other aspects of the national security state, never sought to delegitimatize crypto and tie it strongly to terrorism,\u201d Hauser said. \u201cIf they had told that story repeatedly, I think the reputation of crypto may have been very different, and that might have impacted at a minimum how Trump chose to be corrupt in this administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Trump\u2019s inauguration, he has sought to rapidly reverse perceptions of the federal government\u2019s attitude toward crypto. He has pardoned crypto executives and even a crypto company itself<\/a>, in an apparent first. In addition to cheerleading crypto\u2019s growth, moreover, he and his family have jumped headlong into crypto schemes themselves, relying on various ventures to rapidly boost Trump\u2019s net worth.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump directly tied his pardon of Zhao to the Biden administration\u2019s \u201cwar on cryptocurrency.\u201d In doing so, he also pardoned a man whose business is linked with his.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cZhao helps the Trumps make billions and gets a pardon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In May, an investment fund created by Abu Dhabi\u2019s sovereign wealth fund used the Trump family\u2019s stablecoins<\/a> to invest in Binance, effectively allowing the Trump family to reap the benefits of a large transaction relying on its token.<\/p>\n

Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor who studies pardons, said that if reporting on the financial ties between Binance and Trump\u2019s business ventures is accurate, \u201cthe pardon is perhaps the most overtly corrupt in American history. Zhao helps the Trumps make billions and gets a pardon. With Trump, one has already almost exhausted the superlatives. But this is unparalleled, open corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update: October 24, 2025, 9:40 p.m. ET<\/strong>. This article has been updated to include comment from Dennis Kelleher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Donald Trump pardoned a billionaire crypto king on Thursday, he claimed that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":330962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16429,64,120984,16437,16430,16428,16434,16435,16436,16433,164217,67,132,68,47536],"class_list":{"0":"post-330961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-article-type-article-post","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-day-friday","11":"tag-language-english","12":"tag-medium","13":"tag-page-type-article","14":"tag-partner-factiva","15":"tag-partner-smart-news","16":"tag-partner-social-flow","17":"tag-subject-politics","18":"tag-time-22-00","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-wc-1000-1999"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115433448734629499","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}