Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, attends the Viva Technology conference on innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2022.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
President Donald Trump said he knew nothing about it Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao – or that company’s recent involvement in a cryptocurrency company linked to Trump’s family – despite granting him a pardon last month.
Asked why he pardoned the former crypto executive known as CZ, Trump responded in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday: “Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is.”
At the end of 2023, Zhao resigned as CEO of Binance and pleaded guilty to failing to adequately combat money laundering on his crypto exchange. He was sentenced to four months in prison and released in September 2024.
Trump suggested that his decision to pardon CZ was based on a desire to make the US more globally competitive in the emerging crypto industry. And he accused the administration under his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, of conducting a “witch hunt” against CZ, even though Trump repeatedly denied knowledge of his case.
“My sons are a lot more into crypto than I – I am. I – I know very little about it, except for one thing. It’s a huge industry,” he said. “And if we don’t take the lead, then it will be China, Japan or somewhere else.”
Although he said he didn’t know who CZ was, Trump said Zhao had been “treated really badly by the Biden administration.”
“They sent him to prison and really framed him. That’s my opinion. I’ve been told about it,” the president said.
“I don’t know the man at all. I don’t think I’ve ever met him,” Trump continued. “I have no idea who he is. I’m told that he, like me and like many other people, was a victim of an evil, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”
Trump’s claim that he knows nothing about a high-profile clemency recipient comes as he and Republicans have claimed that pardons issued by Biden via “autopen” were invalid because, in their view, the president did not know what he was signing.
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in March that many of Biden’s pardons were invalid “because they were made by autops. In other words, Joe Biden didn’t sign them, but more importantly, he knew nothing about them!”
After Republicans on the Oversight Committee released a report on Biden’s autopen use last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the former president “apparently didn’t even know what the categories were, let alone the individual people he was pardoning.”
In 2023, Binance agreed to pay a total of $4.3 billion to settle a multi-year investigation into allegations that the platform’s users made thousands of transactions in support of illegal activities, including terrorism and child abuse.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland called this fine “one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history.”
After Trump’s election, Zhao launched an aggressive clemency campaign, publicly praising the president and seeking pardons, The New York Times reported.
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Binance also recently became financially entangled with World Liberty Financial, a crypto financial platform that sends 75% of token sales proceeds to a company linked to Trump and his family.
In May, World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff — a son of top Trump administration official Steve Witkoff — said his company’s stablecoin would be used to facilitate a $2 billion investment in Binance by Emirati state investment firm MGX.
Later that month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said it was dropping its case against Binance and Zhao.
Trump announced Zhao’s pardon on October 23.
Trump was asked in Sunday’s CBS interview to address “the appearance of pay-for-play.”
“Well, here’s the thing, I don’t know anything about it because I’m too busy,” Trump said, before a moment of crosstalk.
“That’s all I can tell you. My sons are excited. I’m glad they are because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they run a business, they’re not in the government,” he said.
Returning to CZ, Trump said, “I don’t know anything about the guy except that I heard he was a victim of government weaponization. When you’re talking about the government, you’re talking about the Biden administration.”
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