Trump pardons convicted crypto money launderer Changpeng Zhao after recieving investments from his company

[Sir Tortoise]

In late 2023, Changpeng Zhao pled guilty to failing to prevent money laundering at his crypto firm Binance. The company itself also pled guilty to conspiring to conduct business with US customers despite not being licensed, among other things.

It transpired at the trial that Zhao was actively involved with schemes to trick regulators into believing his company was guarding against illegal activity, while actually explicitly enabling it and bypassing regulations.

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.”

"On the surface we cannot be seen to have US users but in reality, we should get them through other creative means.” - CZ

Despite this, Trump has recently pardoned Zhao, framing it as an unfair prosecution, and claiming that "I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of good people." - seemingly an admission that the pardon was lobbied for by some of the Binance lobbyists who occupy positions within Trump's own crypto firm.

Another potential reason for the pardon, besides the self-confessed lobbying, may have been Binance's role in facilitating extremely profitable deals for Trump.

The Emirati investment fund MGX recently invested two billion dollars into Binance, using Trump's extremely new cryptocoin to do it. To date this has resulted in roughly $35 million of interest for Trump's crypto firm. Trump has since negotiated two deals on behalf of MGX, for access to AI chips and a stake in TikTok through the government managed sale.
Binance has also heavily promoted Trump's various crypto schemes, and has benefitted from Trump's SEC dropping other cases such as the case against Binance for operating as an unregistered securities exchange.

"we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro" - Binance Chief Compliance Officer

This is only one of Trump's many apparent attempts to use his position to profit from cryptocurrency. I broadly paraphrased this information from the Citation Needed newsletter, which I've been following for a while as these various crypto deals don't seem to get much coverage elsewhere. Much more information on this deal and others is available there if you are interested.

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-95/

carter had to give up his peanut farm

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

Some turdburgler later in this thread:

"Oh, but when BIDEN pardoned THIS guy..."

 

[Dark_Ansem]

profit from cryptocurrency

to part fools with their money, yes.

 

[Sir Tortoise]

It's okay. He's just doing what he is told by his handlers. He doesn't need to know the details. You can just tell him that it happened under Biden and he'll undo it.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/read-f...ll-60-minutes-interview-with-president-trump/

NORAH O'DONNELL: Looked at this, the government at the time said that C.Z. had caused "significant harm to U.S. national security", essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.

And then this absolute gem of a response after being asked "hey, do you think it could look weird if you pardon a guy who just gave you a shitton of money?"

NORAH O'DONNELL: So not concerned about the appearance of corruption with this?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't say, because-- I can't say-- I'm not concerned. I don't-- I'd rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, "Can I ask another question?" And I said, yeah. This is the question--

NORAH O'DONNELL: And you answered--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don't mind. Did I let you do it? I coulda walked away. I didn't have to answer this question. I'm proud to answer the question. You know why? We've taken crypto--

(he proceeds to not answer the question)

 

[DiscostewSM]

An actual president, regardless of party affiliation, would look into these sort of things before making any decision, and no amount of whataboutism will change that.