FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 23, 2025
CONTACT: Jarice Thompson, jarice@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Trump’s Disgraceful Pardon of Convicted Criminal CZ Gives Greenlight to Crypto Crime
Statement of Mark Hays, Associate Director of Crypto and Fintech Policy at Americans for Financial Reform:
President Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao demonstrates the corruption that is emanating from the White House. CZ’s business is entwined with the Trump family crypto empire and literally giving him a get out of jail free card sends a strong message that crypto crime is not just encouraged, it is rewarded.
CZ and Binance were caught red-handed for willfully ignoring mountains of dirty money and other illicit practices on these platforms that allowed drug trafficking, extremism, and sanctions evasion.
Binance was proud of this blatant lawbreaking: One Binance official was on record saying to another employee, “We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.” Another Binance compliance person was quoted in chats saying, “We need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days — come to Binance we got cake for you.’”
The magnitude of CZ and Binance’s crimes was apparently erased by the scale of CZ’s support for the president’s crypto ventures. There is the multibillion dollar deal between Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial platform, Binance, and the UAE-backed investment fund and the fact that the majority of the president’s stablecoins are traded on Binance, generating revenues for the First Family.
This is pay to play politics of the most corrupt sort and tramples flat the last vestiges of government ethics rules, law enforcement against crypto criminals, and financial oversight. It is the latest and most brazen of the administration’s wholehearted abandonment of enforcement cases against crypto scofflaws.
Congress beware. Passing the next crypto legislation without tough, enforceable, binding prohibitions on crypto corruption only facilitates profiteering and collusion with the crypto criminals. There is no credible way for the financial regulators or law enforcement agencies to pursue the widespread fraud and criminal activity in the crypto industry when the White House is letting convicted crypto criminals walk free.
Congress must take a stand and say that enough is enough. There cannot be credible crypto legislation while crypto cronyism and crypto corruption is allowed to flourish unchecked. New legislation and regulation will be only weaponized by these actors to enrich wealthy crypto billionaires, even as retail investors and consumers are cheated and exploited by a lawless and unaccountable industry.
###