On October 22, Trump granted a pardon to convicted criminal, money launderer, and founder of cryptocurrency company Binance, Changpeng Zhao.
In 2023, Zhao pled guilty to money laundering charges. Earlier in Trump’s second term, the Securities and Exchange Commission effectively dropped its case against Binance, despite its chief compliance officer admitting that it was an illegal enterprise. Eventually, and in a conflict of interest, Zhao and Ches McDowell, a lobbyist and lawyer that is a personal friend of Donald Trump Jr., would successfully lobby for a pardon from Trump. Zhao only served four months in prison and was released in September 2024.
The McDowell connection is not the only conflict of interest at play. Democrats in Congress have noted that Binance has ties to Trump’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also features in the web of corruption, as Zhao became a dual citizen of the UAE, his current country of residence, with Zhao being a Chinese-born Canadian criminal. This pardon comes despite Trump’s pledges to put working-class Americans first (Zhao is worth $85 billion), America first, and to be tough on crime.
As with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Trump stands to personally gain from his dealings in the UAE, notable through World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company partly owned by Trump and his family. Earlier this month, the company announced that Abu Dhabi state-backed firm MGX would use $2 billion worth of its stablecoin to finance a deal in crypto exchange company Binance—a deal that will generate millions of dollars for the Trump family.
The Center for American Progress
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, claimed that “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…” In reality, it was evidence in an independent courtroom that led to Zhao’s conviction, rather than a political purge against cryptocurrency leaders.
Zhao’s pardon is one of many executive actions that enabled Trump and his family to make over $5 billion from cryptocurrency, on top of deregulation, a cessation of legal enforcement actions, a gala for the top investors in Trump’s cryptocurrency (which featured a suspected Chinese criminal), and the placement of pro-crypto individuals in positions of power across the federal government.
