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The pardon was the payoff -- Molly White
https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-95/Binance’s Changpeng Zhao earns a gold-plated pardon as other industry figures fund Trump’s $300 million ballroom
A very long, very detailed discussion of crypto and corruption and trump. Many other cons are included, not jut Changpeng Zhao and trump.
After months of lobbying, President Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. Zhao, who in 2017 founded what would later become the largest crypto exchange in the world, pleaded guilty in late 2023 to one felony charge of failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program at Binance. The company itself pleaded guilty to three additional charges: conspiracy to conduct an unlicensed money transmitting business and to fail to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business, and sanctions violations. CZ served four months of prison time, and was released in September 2024 [I68]. He paid a $50 million fine, and his company paid another $4.3 billion in penalties.
The indictment was damning, with evidence suggesting that CZ himself had directed Binance to implement a sham compliance program that would fool US regulators into believing they were screening for suspicious or illicit activity, while simultaneously allowing illicit transactions to continue unimpeded. While the primary Binance platform was not permitted to serve US customers, the company actively encouraged US-based users to circumvent Binance’s own geofencing, with CZ instructing: “On the surface we cannot be seen to have US users but in reality, we should get them through other creative means.” Binance was simultaneously aware that it was offering services to sanctioned users, with the company’s Chief Compliance Officer writing that “There is no fking way in hell I am signing off as the CCO for the ofac shit” out of fear he could go to jail. (OFAC is the Treasury office that administers sanctions.) Another compliance team member acknowledged the prevalence of illicit activity on Binance, writing: “we need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you’.” In discussions regarding Binance’s use by designated terror groups like ISIS and Hamas, or sanctioned customers from Russia, Binance’s CCO urged other employees not to freeze the assets, and acknowledged “Like come on. They are here for crime.” Another employee in charge of money laundering reporting agreed, “we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes.”
Nevertheless, the White House press secretary has positioned the pardon as relief from an unfair prosecution, asserting that “The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over” and describing Zhao’s conviction as evidence of the previous administration’s “desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry”. While the crypto industry and the Trump administration have tried to portray any regulatory oversight or enforcement in the crypto space as an unjust “war on crypto”, I think the Trump administration has overplayed its hand by describing this prosecution as such. Most outsiders can distinguish targeted enforcement against clear misconduct from hostility toward innovation, and excusing justifiable prosecutions as mere political persecution only serves to highlight how frequently the Trump administration and the crypto industry use this tactic to try to dodge justice, accountability, and reasonable regulatory oversight.
In a statement to the press, Trump acknowledged that Zhao “had a lot of support... and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of good people.” Some of these “good people” were lobbyists hired by Zhao and/or Binance, including BakerHostetler lawyer Teresa Goody Guillén. While she lobbied the president for Zhao’s pardon, Goody Guillén simultaneously represented Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency project; she wrote the brief May retort from the company in response to Senator Blumenthal’s questions about Trump’s conflicts of interest [I83, 84, 90]. Also helping facilitate CZ’s pardon was Ches McDowell, a lobbyist with little in the way of credentials besides being a big-game-hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr.1
But while Trump acknowledged he was being urged behind the scenes to pardon the crypto billionaire, he did not address his own financial gains linked to Binance. Taken together, his personal profits and the subsequent executive leniency toward the company and its figureheads create the clear appearance of a quid pro quo — and only one of many swirling around crypto interests during Trump’s second administration.
. . .
The indictment was damning, with evidence suggesting that CZ himself had directed Binance to implement a sham compliance program that would fool US regulators into believing they were screening for suspicious or illicit activity, while simultaneously allowing illicit transactions to continue unimpeded. While the primary Binance platform was not permitted to serve US customers, the company actively encouraged US-based users to circumvent Binance’s own geofencing, with CZ instructing: “On the surface we cannot be seen to have US users but in reality, we should get them through other creative means.” Binance was simultaneously aware that it was offering services to sanctioned users, with the company’s Chief Compliance Officer writing that “There is no fking way in hell I am signing off as the CCO for the ofac shit” out of fear he could go to jail. (OFAC is the Treasury office that administers sanctions.) Another compliance team member acknowledged the prevalence of illicit activity on Binance, writing: “we need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you’.” In discussions regarding Binance’s use by designated terror groups like ISIS and Hamas, or sanctioned customers from Russia, Binance’s CCO urged other employees not to freeze the assets, and acknowledged “Like come on. They are here for crime.” Another employee in charge of money laundering reporting agreed, “we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes.”
Nevertheless, the White House press secretary has positioned the pardon as relief from an unfair prosecution, asserting that “The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over” and describing Zhao’s conviction as evidence of the previous administration’s “desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry”. While the crypto industry and the Trump administration have tried to portray any regulatory oversight or enforcement in the crypto space as an unjust “war on crypto”, I think the Trump administration has overplayed its hand by describing this prosecution as such. Most outsiders can distinguish targeted enforcement against clear misconduct from hostility toward innovation, and excusing justifiable prosecutions as mere political persecution only serves to highlight how frequently the Trump administration and the crypto industry use this tactic to try to dodge justice, accountability, and reasonable regulatory oversight.
In a statement to the press, Trump acknowledged that Zhao “had a lot of support... and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of good people.” Some of these “good people” were lobbyists hired by Zhao and/or Binance, including BakerHostetler lawyer Teresa Goody Guillén. While she lobbied the president for Zhao’s pardon, Goody Guillén simultaneously represented Trump’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency project; she wrote the brief May retort from the company in response to Senator Blumenthal’s questions about Trump’s conflicts of interest [I83, 84, 90]. Also helping facilitate CZ’s pardon was Ches McDowell, a lobbyist with little in the way of credentials besides being a big-game-hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr.1
But while Trump acknowledged he was being urged behind the scenes to pardon the crypto billionaire, he did not address his own financial gains linked to Binance. Taken together, his personal profits and the subsequent executive leniency toward the company and its figureheads create the clear appearance of a quid pro quo — and only one of many swirling around crypto interests during Trump’s second administration.
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