President Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese-born Canadian billionaire founder and majority owner of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
Binance was investigated in 2021 by the Biden administration regarding allegations of money laundering and tax crimes. The company, alongside Zhao, pleaded guilty in November 2023. Reports have indicated that Zhao was pushing for a presidential pardon for several months.
When asked about Zhao’s pardon, Trump told reporters Thursday afternoon during a roundtable event that he “gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”
“I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people. I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people,” Trump said.
“A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything,” Trump continued, “I’ve been told by — a lot of support, he had a lot of support, and they said that what he did is not even a crime. It wasn’t 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.”
Zhao was released from prison in September 2024, almost a year after pleading guilty to American money laundering charges.
Binance and Zhao have closely supported the Trump family’s launch of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company that stood up ahead of last year’s election. World Liberty Financial has grown the Trump family’s wealth by hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars this year.
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“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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a statement. “In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims.”
“The Biden Administration sought to imprison Mr. Zhao for three years, a sentence so outside Sentencing Guidelines that even the Judge said he had never heard of this in his 30-year career,” she continued. “These actions by the Biden Administration severely damaged the United States’ reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation. The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over.”
