Pardoned Binance Founder After $2B Crypto Deal
Trump pardoned Binance founder CZ who had pleaded guilty to money laundering as part of a $4.3B settlement. The pardon came after a $2B deal linked Binance to Trump's own crypto company. Trump then claimed "I don't know who he is."
On October 23, 2025, Trump pardoned Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who had pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering as part of a $4.3 billion settlement. Zhao had served four months in prison.
The financial connections made the pardon extraordinary:
- A $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi's MGX into Binance used USD1, a stablecoin created by World Liberty Financial — the Trump family's own crypto company
- Binance had helped create code for World Liberty Financial's stablecoin
- The Trump family earned hundreds of millions from the crypto ecosystem Binance is part of
When pressed by CBS's Norah O'Donnell about the pardon, Trump claimed: "I don't know who he is" — despite having personally signed his pardon. Twenty-seven House Democrats formally condemned the pardon.
The pattern was clear: a convicted money launderer with financial ties to the president's family business received a pardon from that president, who then denied knowing him. It was corruption so brazen it dispensed with even the pretense of plausible deniability.