U.S. President Donald Trump has granted a pardon to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to a money laundering charge in 2023, the White House confirmed Thursday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that Trump “exercised his constitutional authority” to pardon Zhao, whom the Biden administration had prosecuted amid its crackdown on cryptocurrency. The move could potentially allow Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange and host to the Trump family’s crypto firm, to resume operations in the U.S., sparking concerns over potential conflicts of interest.
Trump defended the pardon in remarks to CNN, saying he acted “at the request of a lot of very good people” and that Zhao “was persecuted by the Biden administration” for actions that, according to Trump, “weren’t even a crime.”
Zhao, also known as CZ, was sentenced in May 2024 to four months in prison for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. Binance, which Zhao founded in 2017, agreed to pay over $4 billion in fines and other penalties as part of a federal settlement. Zhao also stepped down as CEO and paid a $200 million fine.
The Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, is hosted on Binance and has directly benefited from the exchange, including through the promotion of proprietary tokens that have reportedly generated hundreds of millions in fees. The Wall Street Journal estimates that World Liberty Financial has added more than $5 billion in paper wealth to the Trump family fortune, surpassing the value of their real estate assets.
Earlier this year, Binance lobbied for Zhao’s pardon after MGX, an Emirati-backed investment firm, agreed to invest $2 billion in World Liberty Financial using its USD1 stablecoin.
Leavitt defended the pardon amid Democratic criticism, saying the White House carefully reviews every request and viewed Zhao’s case as “overly prosecuted” under the Biden administration, which she said had been “very hostile to the cryptocurrency industry.”
Trump has previously pardoned other crypto figures, including Ross Ulbricht of the Silk Road marketplace and three co-founders of BitMEX. Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto billionaire with ties to World Liberty Financial, also had U.S. civil fraud charges dropped under Trump’s administration.
